Carbon credits are crucial for environmental leadership, but success hinges on prioritizing transparency and integrity in corporate sustainability efforts.
Spain Surpasses 2022 Renewable Energy Goals, ClimateTrade Leads with Innovative Green Energy Solutions
The initiative is a recognition from both companies of climate risks as the most pressing threat to people and the planet.
Last month ClimateTrade’s CEO and Co-Founder Fran Benedito took the stage at the prestigious Finovate Fall 2023 event, showcasing our climate action platform to an audience of fintech industry leaders, innovators, and enthusiasts.
We are thrilled to announce the newest addition to our team at ClimateTrade: Javier Santoyo, who will be taking on the role of Commercial Development Director – Europe.
Angara Global Ltd. and ClimateTrade have signed an MOU, in a groundbreaking initiative to forge a path toward a more sustainable future.
Valencia, Spain and Glasgow, Scotland – (November 8, 2021) – Alongside the UN COP26 meeting in Glasgow, Scotland, ClimateTrade, a pioneer in climate markets since 2017, today announced that it has incorporated the digital carbon registries of Spain and Colombia onto its climate marketplace. This marks the first time that a carbon trading platform has connected directly with national registries, allowing real-time offset cancellations and transfers, stimulating local projects and real-time outcomes generation. The news was delivered today by CEO Francisco Benedito, during a panel discussion at the COP26 Sustainable Innovation Forum entitled: “Natural Capital: How We Make Nature Bankable.” “ClimateTrade aims to offer governments and project developers a more efficient, less costly way to generate revenue for their capital nature, while allowing project developers and offset purchasers in these nations access to a secure, traceable, and verified climate registry, simplifying carbon credit accounting while maximizing value and impact,” said Francisco Benedito, CEO of ClimateTrade. “By extending our platform into Spain and Colombia, we can offer those nations greater fairness in carbon pricing, bring more of their projects to market, and fulfill demand for verified credits from companies racing to zero their emissions,” he continued. “Thanks to our digital registry, and interconnected digital measurement, reporting and verification, we can allow project developers to generate their credits in real time, reduce the price for their generation and add more innovative digital methodologies to connect developers and purchasers.” Establishing and connecting climate registries is a critical step in addressing the carbon market challenges posed in the Paris Climate Accords, and aids in bringing public and private markets into alignment with such international agreements. The ClimateTrade platform currently works with Ecoregistry and Iberclear (BME & SIX Group), but invites collaboration from others as well. “Our partners have seen the importance of a unified, transparent and collaborative system like ClimateTrade, and we invite other registries to join us as well in creating a more holistic, interdependent and collaborative platform for climate action,” Benedito said. ClimateTrade’s ecosystem allows companies to easily offset their climate footprint by investing in verified environmental projects through disruptive blockchain technology. The company hosts a diversity of projects on its platform, from renewable energy, waste, reforestation, REDD+, NbS, soil, removals, blue carbon, and recently biodiversity and resilience – all aligned with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and helping to push forward its 2030 sustainability agenda. ClimateTrade’s proprietary API adds further value to its network, allowing companies to provide micro-offsetting in any commercial transaction. By means of a simple connection with the API, ClimateTrade partners can offer their customers the option to purchase offsets, and receive an official personalized certificate, while purchasing products and services. ClimateTrade is already a leader in the voluntary carbon market, serving corporations like Santander bank, Melià Hotels Int., Cabify, Telefónica, Prosegur, Suez, Sacyr and many others. ClimateTrade’s marketplace functions as a showcase for climate change mitigation projects, connecting project developers to companies with offsetting needs. Unlike conventional carbon markets, historically managed by brokers or commodity traders, ClimateTrade’s marketplace automatically records transactions and cancels credits in the corresponding registry, providing transparency, traceability and speed while eliminating the possibility of double accounting and greenwashing impediments. ClimateTrade’s blockchain technology reduces the costs involved in verifying transactions, by removing the need for trusted third-parties. ClimateTrade also recently partnered with Algorand, a leading blockchain technology company, pledging to be the greenest, fully carbon neutral blockchain as a result of their alliance. About ClimateTrade ClimateTrade is the world’s leading climate marketplace. The company’s environmental services help companies offset CO2 emissions and financing projects in order to achieve their sustainability goals with complete transparency and traceability. A pioneer in establishing a voluntary marketplace for climate credits, and having led the development of blockchain, ClimateTrade has launched a digital solution that allows and promotes the acquisition of carbon-neutral products and services by customers and suppliers of different companies. Contact us to find out more.
Biosphere and ClimateTrade forge a strategic alliance to promote and facilitate the adoption of sustainable practices in organizations globally.
Panelists at the North America Carbon Summit (NACS), part of Climate Week NYC, discussed the urgent need to build integrity into carbon markets in order to meet the public demand for transparent and impactful carbon offsetting. ClimateTrade participated in the North America Carbon Summit organized by the International Emissions Trading Association in New York on Wednesday, September 21, with CEO Francisco Benedito speaking in two panels. In both cases, speakers highlighted the importance of making carbon offsetting more transparent and traceable, and of standardizing the quality of carbon credits to bring the market to its full potential. Unstoppable growth The value of the voluntary carbon market topped US$2 billion this year, and this number is expected to skyrocket in the coming years, as more and more companies resort to carbon offsetting to complement carbon reduction measures. At one of the NACS panels, Stephen Donofrio, Managing Director of Ecosystem Marketplace, the organization that monitors the growth and evolution of the voluntary carbon market, noted: “The voluntary carbon market is now too global to be slowed down, with demand coming from every continent. The true global nature of the market has taken off, and it needs high-quality, high-integrity data.” This unstoppable growth makes it all the more important to bring integrity to the market, at a time when the actual impact of carbon credits on the planet is sometimes put into question. “Trust underpins the value of the voluntary carbon market, and there are a lot of gaps we need to fill in order to create that trust,” said Lydia Sheldrake, Director of External Affairs at the Voluntary Carbon Markets Integrity Initiative (VCMI). Lack of consensus on integrity initiatives Organizations like the VCMI and the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market (ICVCM) aim to create industry-backed standards and guidelines to establish a quality baseline for carbon credit generation and trading. ICVCM, for instance, is currently gathering comments from different industry stakeholders on its draft Core Carbon Principles (CCPs), Assessment Framework, and Assessment Procedure. But reaching consensus is proving difficult. Voluntary carbon registry Verra yesterday published an opinion letter saying its faith in the initiative is “shaken” and the CCPs are “on the wrong track”. Speaking at one of the NACS panels, Verra’s CEO David Antionioli explained: “The ICVCM and VCMI are great initiatives, but my belief in them is shaken because much of the process they are trying to set up is unworkable.” He added that integrity is not the only issue in the market, but that there’s also a lot of confusion around carbon credits, with most people unable to compare their quality. “We shouldn’t let a small group of individuals make decisions for the entire market.” ICVCM Chair Annette Nazareth admitted that a big point of contention in the consensus-seeking process has been “stringency vs workability”. ClimateTrade’s Head of Impact José Lindo reacted to Verra’s statement that CCPs are too burdensom to direct significant flows of financing to projects in Carbon Pulse on September 21: “Perhaps this was the case in the past, however there are now emerging technologies such as DLT/Blockchain, IoT, smart contracts which can automate processes in ways which were unthinkable only five years ago. Yet we must acknowledge that CCPs are an innovative tool to raise integrity standards and interdependence across the industry,” he said. Technology for traceability In a panel on the role of technology to streamline transparent decarbonization, Santander’s Head of Responsible Banking, Marta Aisa, and Global Cards Product Manager, Clara Arrocha talked about the bank’s experience integrating ClimateTrade’s carbon offsetting capabilities into their app and web page. “With this functionality, we’re tracking the customers’ footprint and offering tips, but we’re also enabling offsetting. Traceability is key for the customer to know that the credits they buy are actually being used to offset their carbon footprint,” said Arrocha. ClimateTrade uses blockchain technology to create this traceability, with each transaction resulting in the emission of a certificate with information about the project selected and a unique blockchain key. And while the relevance of so-called “crypto carbon” has come under fire recently, our CEO Francisco Benedito reminded the audience that blockchain and crypto are not the same thing. “Crypto is different from blockchain. Tokenization will be important for B2C at some point, but blockchain is already key for transparency in carbon markets today. It is not the panacea, but it’s a very important element,” he said. Want to learn more about corporate decarbonization and the voluntary carbon market? Download ClimateTrade’s free white paper ‘A Comprehensive Guide to Designing Efficient Net Zero Strategies’.