Today Carbonplace, the blockchain-based carbon credit network, announced a new CEO Scott Eaton and a $45 million seed funding round.
The investment comes from the founding banks that include BBVA, BNP Paribas, CIBC, Itaú Unibanco, National Australia Bank, NatWest, Standard Chartered, SMBC and UBS.
Eaton previously spent almost two years as CEO of London-based Nivaura, a London Stock Exchange backed company that developed a workflow solution for bond issuance, including a DLT platform. He spent the earlier part of his career at various banks, including UBS, Deutsche Bank, Royal Bank of Scotland, ABN Amro and Unicredit. Until 2018 he was European COO of MarketAxess.
Last year, one of the early users of Nivaura’s bond issuance platform was Natwest, also one of the initial four founders of Carbonplace.
“Carbonplace creates an efficient and secure network for carbon credit transactions,” said Robert Begbie, CEO of NatWest Markets. “According to McKinsey, global demand for voluntary carbon credits is likely to increase by a factor of 15 in the next seven years.”
“To meet that demand, Carbonplace is delivering a reliable, secure and scalable technology that will form a crucial part of the infrastructure for carbon markets to drive climate action at scale.”
Carbonplace plans to launch later this year and uses distributed ledger technology (DLT) to provide a settlement network for carbon credits, ensuring the simultaneous transfer of ownership of credits and payment. It also intends to be a distribution network for carbon credits linking with numerous marketplaces and carbon credit registries.
Another founder, National Australia Bank, is launching a stablecoin and eyeing its use for settling carbon credit transactions.
At the end of 2022, Carbonplace executed a pilot in conjunction with the Singapore carbon credit exchange CIX, where Standard Chartered is also a backer.
