Global carbon exchange, Climate Impact X (CIX), has launched its spot trading platform, CIX Exchange. Powered by Nasdaq’s trading technology, it offers carbon traders a customized platform aimed at stability, performance and governance.
Carbon markets have been plagued by inconsistent data and a lack of price discovery. CIX hopes to change this with the first daily on-exchange liquidity window in the voluntary carbon market with firm bids and offers. This dedicated 30-minute pricing session pools all-day liquidity from Asia, Europe and Middle East to help sharpen benchmark prices and improve order depth for spot nature-based credits.
Bids, offers and transactions came from a variety of active market participants spanning leading project developers and suppliers, major financial institutions, trading houses and corporate endusers, demonstrating support for price discovery and market scaling.
The first trades were executed by Chevron, CICC Commodity Trading, Engie Energy Marketing Singapore and Standard Chartered. Other supporters that participated include Carbon Growth Partners, DBS Bank, Hana Securities, RWE Supply & Trading, South Pole, Viridios Capital and Vitol Asia.
By close of trading on 7 June, bids and offers had converged to just a few cents and seven transactions totalling 12,000 tonnes of carbon credits had traded and cleared on CIX’s first standardised contract announced in March, Nature X.
“Nature X represents the level of transparency, pricing certainty and market representation that is critical to achieve scale and inspire confidence in carbon markets.” Said Chris Leeds, Head of Carbon Markets Development at Standard Chartered.
“By participating in this inaugural trading of Nature X, Standard Chartered is pleased to support the development of a liquid carbon credit market. We are confident that Nature X will become a key benchmark that will enable project developers to more effectively manage their price risks, and in doing so potentially draw more funds towards quality projects that will help cut global emissions in line with the Paris Agreement.”
The launch of CIX Exchange is a significant milestone, providing a much-needed platform for the trading of carbon credits and will help to scale the market, making it more accessible to businesses and individuals looking to offset their emissions.