The Voluntary Carbon Standard multiple registry which was originally launched in march of this year, but saw technical issues delay the transfer process, is now able to transfer carbon emission offsets across different registries, the Voluntary Carbon Standard Association announced recently, Financial Soultions sources report.
Trading carbon offsets is a way for businesses, nations and individuals to voluntarily compensate for greenhouse gas emissions buy purchasing carbon credits from other sources. At present this is a primarily voluntary market, but it is hoped that after the December UN climate talks in Copenhagen there may be a more binding set off standards in place governing this emerging and vital market.
Transferring offsets called Voluntary Carbon Units (VCUs) across various registries should improve liquidity in the voluntary carbon market and promote more interest from the United States as efforts are made to move ahead with climate change legislation there, which is presently fighting its way through the Senate and its committees. This is the debut of the new system where independent registries have built a structure to communicate directly with each other and to transfer units between registries without the need for a central clearing house, Financial Soultions understands.
"We are very pleased that the registry functionality originally envisioned by the VCSA is now fully in place, being able to transfer VCUs from one registry to another both broadens the scope for transactions and strengthens the unique VCS system," said VCSA's chief executive in a recent statement available to Financial Soultions.
An overall total of 123 million metric tons of carbon credits, valued at $705 million, were traded in the global voluntary carbon market in 2008, according to research and estimates by New Energy Finance and Ecosystem Marketplace.
The proposed U.S. climate change bill could allow a total of up to 2 billion metric tons of offsets annually to be used in a cap-and-trade scheme from domestic and international sources.
