Xpansiv's CBL energy and environmental commodity spot exchange is set to become the first exchange to start offering Australian Carbon Credit Unit trading, starting in the first quarter of 2023, the company said in a statement Oct. 25.
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Register NowACCUs are issued by the Clean Energy Regulator, with one credit equivalent to one metric ton of CO2 stored or avoided by a project.
ACCU contracts that are currently traded in the spot market will become available within the CBL ecosystem, the statement said.
"As first movers in this space, we saw the opportunity to align closely with Australia's Clean Energy Regulator to allow ACCU contracts to trade side by side with voluntary offsets," said Ben Stuart, Xpansiv CCO and CBL co-founder. "Alignment between government-led regulatory initiatives and private infrastructure serves to accelerate our shared goal of bringing efficiency, transparency, and liquidity to environmental markets."
CBL has been granted an Australian financial services license by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, which authorizes CBL to make a market for ACCUs in the form of a central counterparty market making platform.
CBL handles an array of exchange-traded carbon credits globally, most notably the suite of Global Emissions Offset standardized contracts for the global carbon market. In Australia, it already offers energy products such as Renewable Energy Certificates, Energy Efficiency Certificates and Tasmanian Gas Pipeline storage among others.
Demand for ACCUs is likely to grow among top polluters in the country, with the Australian federal government earlier this month ruling out the use of international carbon permits under a reform of the country's safeguard mechanism, which imposes emissions caps on all facilities emitting over 100,000 mt/year of CO2e.
An ACCU is currently priced at $29-$30/mtCO2e, according to market sources.