AirCarbon Exchange (ACX) hosted the first trades of the newly launched Global Emission Reduction Contract, or GER, which aims to become the global reference price for voluntary carbon markets.

The contract, which was created by Net Zero Markets, went live on ACX on Friday, June 17th, and traded at between $7.23 a tonne to $7.60 a tonne with Bioeconomy, who is led by Dorjee Sun, a TIME Magazine Hero of the Environment, as one of the first buyers. Its current bid/ask range is $7.65-$7.70.

“The world is facing a climate catastrophe, so we need game-changing scale and speed in voluntary carbon markets,” said Dorjee Sun. “Bioeconomy is actively investing and developing large scale carbon projects and market innovations such as the GER. Bioeconomy was proud to be involved from the very outset of the new contract which can derisk and unlock liquidity for all stakeholders. The Net Zero Markets team have launched a great product that I can see quickly becoming the reference price for carbon offsetters.”

The GER has been designed to tackle some of the problems with existing voluntary carbon markets by providing a single price for carbon, akin to the standardization and calibration provided by the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme for compliance markets. By combining the current mixture of standards, jurisdictions, project types and vintages into a single price, via four easy to understand sub-contracts that maintain price differentiation for harder to reach projects such as long-lived removals, the GER will help increase both liquidity and transparency in the often-opaque voluntary sector and make it much easier for corporates as well as small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to offset the carbon emissions they are unable to reduce.

“ACX continues to break new ground in the carbon space,” said William Pazos, Managing Director and Co-Founder of ACX. “The GER is a key innovation in order to streamline carbon trading. It provides a clear price of carbon which will, in turn, unlock investment into climate mitigating activities globally.  We are excited to be an integral part of bringing this product to market.”

ACX is the first exchange to host this new contract as well as the four underlying products that the GER is comprised of. The four sub-contracts consist of the:

• Base Carbon Contract, or BCC, which covers the renewables and energy efficiency sector
• Forestry Carbon Contract, or FCC, which encompasses the agricultural, forestry and land use sectors
• Prime Carbon Contract, or PCC, for those projects with additional benefits that meet at least three of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
• Carbon Capture Contract, or CCC, which covers projects that provide long-lived removal of carbon emissions, such as biochar projects.

“We’re obviously pleased that the GER was up and trading on its first day and pleasantly surprised by the positive interest that it has generated in such a short space of time,” said Louis Redshaw, CEO of Net Zero Markets. “We’ve spent two years perfecting the GER and it ticks a lot of boxes for investors as well as the corporates and individuals that it was designed for.”

Note: For more information on the GER, please visit: https://netzeromarkets.co/solutions/ger/