AirCarbon Exchange (ACX), a Singapore-based carbon trading exchange, has completely offset its own emissions from the date of the company’s inception in 2018 to March 2022 (based on projected emissions), making it the world’s first carbon-negative trading platform. It says no other exchanges, including those in London or New York, are currently offsetting their own carbon emissions.
The exchange calculated all of its direct and indirect emissions over the past three years with a widely-used international accounting tool, the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Protocol (Scopes 1, 2, and 3). Using the data, the company also predicted its emissions in 2022 in order to offset CO2 emissions in advance and become carbon negative.
To offset its carbon emissions until 2022, ACX purchased and retired verified carbon units (VCUs) from C-Quest Capital, a social impact project developer transforming the lives of families in poor communities around the world.
ACX specifically purchased credits from the Onil Stoves Guatemala Uspantan project, which distributes fuel-efficient and improved cook stoves to households across Guatemala, where conventional open fires are still commonly used for cooking and other domestic tasks.
The replacement of open fires with more advanced devices reduces the amount of wood consumption through improved combustion efficiency, reducing the GHG emissions linked to non-renewable biomass and the incomplete combustion of fuel wood.
On top of its environmental credentials, the project also carries health and social benefits. By providing stoves with a flue pipe, the health of women and children who are often exposed to carbon through wood burning, is improved. The project also reduces the large and hard-to-find wood they will need for their stoves, minimizing the time and danger involved in gathering the fuel. This in turn helps to reduce not only deforestation in the region, but also the drudgery that such activity entails.
ACX has already successfully onboarded over a third of its rapidly growing client list which currently stands at 90-strong. The businesses already on the exchange range from OSL, part of the BC Group, Asia’s leading digital asset and fintech company, to Redshaw Advisors, a prestigious carbon risk management and procurement firm based in London.
Thom McMahon, ACX co-founder and chief executive officer, says: “The decision to offset all of our emissions so far and go beyond to one year in advance was an easy and obvious course of action towards helping our planet achieve its global Net Zero goals. Singapore is leading the financial world by example with its environmental thinking, and as active players in the carbon markets we are looking forward to enabling other companies around the world to make similar carbon-offsetting commitments.”
