07 Jun 2022
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.
