Today AirCarbon Exchange (ACX), a blockchain-based Voluntary Carbon market, announced it had received significant funding from the Deutsche Börse group.
At the same time, it announced a partnership with the Deutsche Boerse subsidiary, the European Energy Exchange (EEX). The EEX operates the common auction platform for the EU Emissions Trading System (EU ETS).
ACX trades carbon credits in a similar way to a commodity market, with a conventional trade matching engine. However, the carbon credit certificates are tokenized on the public Binance Smart Chain blockchain, making their ownership easier to trace and allowing for real-time settlement.
The majority of the transactions on the ACX platform so far are for CORSIA tokens which support carbon offsets in the aviation sector. During the first half of 2021, the transaction volumes across all its markets represented 3,603,284 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent. The company says it has more than 130 corporate clients.
“I am confident that our 15 years of experience in operating spot and derivatives markets within the European Emissions Trading Scheme, coupled with ACX’s unique carbon solutions, will lead to a greater level of standardization required to successfully scale up Voluntary Carbon Markets,” said Tobias Paulun, Chief Strategy Officer of EEX.
The Binance cryptocurrency exchange initiated Binance Smart Chain. It’s based on Ethereum code but with some modifications which enable faster consensus. The trade-off is that it’s far less decentralized compared to Ethereum, with just 21 validator nodes.
Numerous initiatives are targeting voluntary carbon markets, some of them using cryptocurrencies and others on private blockchains. Several major banks, including the National Bank of Australia, Natwest, BNP Paribas and Standard Chartered, are collaborating on Carbonplace. And in Singapore, where ACX first launched, Standard Chartered alongside DBS Bank, the Singapore Exchange (SGX) and Temasek are involved in the Climate Impact X (CIX).
