Japanese financial conglomerate SBI Holdings Inc. and climate tech startup Asuene Inc. have entered a joint venture to set up a carbon exchange in the Asian nation that will open around October.
The aim is for the exchange, called Carbon EX, to become a regional trading hub with services being offered in English and Japanese, according to Kohei Nishiwada, chief executive officer of Asuene and the new bourse.
The exchange will host a variety of contracts including private-sector voluntary credits and non-fossil certificates, he said in an interview on Wednesday. Separately, Carbon EX will start over-the-counter carbon credit trading this month.
The new bourse is the latest in a wave of carbon-credit trading platforms that have launched across Asia as demand from companies seeking to offset their emissions explodes. However, slumping carbon prices and growing skepticism over how much voluntary offsets actually contribute to fighting climate change are raising questions about the long-term prospects of the exchanges.
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The Carbon EX announcement follows Japan Exchange Group Inc., which began trial trading of carbon credits in the country last September. Offsets from renewable energy projects have dominated the small volume of trading on that bourse so far, and credits from so-called forest sinks appeared to be the most highly prized, BloombergNEF said in a report in October.
--With assistance from Heesu Lee and Takashi Umekawa.
