ESG

Carbon Offsetting POC White Paper

Recognising their responsibility to respond to the climate crisis, businesses, organisations and governments have set challenging carbon reduction targets, which increasingly include net-zero aspirations. While energy reductions and renewables are key first steps, some of these reductions need to be generated from carbon offsetting and sequestration.
To facilitate this transition to a net-zero future and meet the potential demand in the market, we believe carbon projects and offsets need to be scaled more quickly and be more cost effective to allow the investment to flow into these essential projects. As a successful and important leader in the global commodities industry, Marex is in a prime position to deliver a positive ESG impact in our markets.

Our involvement in this project goes far beyond the financial backing, with active involvement from members of the firm who provide expertise and data across commodity, environmental and derivatives markets.
Marex has assembled a consortium of world-class partners to work on this solution concept and we thank them for their valuable contributions. Our belief is that market appetite is high for ultra-high integrity carbon credits, underpinned by transparent, science-based approaches. Marex Spectron Asia Pte Ltd was awarded the Monetary Authority of Singapore’s Financial Sector Technology and Innovation (FSTI) Proof of Concept (POC) grant on 1-October-2021. The FSTI POC grant provides funding support for experimentation, development, and dissemination of nascent innovative technologies in the financial services sector.
Key highlights from this project are:

• Deforestation continues at rates in excess of 6% annualised making conservation critical.
• Degradation is under-appreciated. 25% of over 4,500 trees sampled were cut down or dead.
• Geo-spatial approaches require resolutions in excess of 10m to be sufficiently accurate.

The primary aims of this POC were to:

Determine whether mangrove areas in SE Asia were a viable source of blue carbon credits -at scale.
Determine whether the latest high-resolution satellite technology could derive biomass estimates at greater levels of accuracy than existing approaches. Hence, achieve a high-quality blue carbon credit that was both operationally scalable and fully transparent for buyer confidence.

Access the white paper

ESG Webinar: Decarbonising the global energy system

Our ESG Webinar entitled ‘Decarbonising the global energy system and why it might happen faster than you think’ with Dr Matt Ives from the University of Oxford took place on Thursday 17 June 2021. This event was part of Marex’s ESG collaboration with the University of Oxford.

Dr Ives is part of the Oxford Martin Post-Carbon Transition Programme and author of the recent report ‘A new perspective on decarbonising the global energy system.’

Decarbonising the global energy system is a fascinating subject, with Dr Ives’ research suggesting that technology advances in renewables are constantly being under-estimated and there will be trigger point, when clean energy costs falls below products, such as coal. Such a scenario would make the transition to ‘net zero’ cheaper, faster and easier than is currently assumed.

In the session, we also got to hear from Professor Moritz Riede from the Oxford Department of Physics, who provided insights on emerging trends in renewable technologies.

If you have any questions about any of this subject matter, do contact Dr Guy Wolf.

Thank you to our Chair Carla Stent for introducing this great event.