ION launches Carbon Zero for trading and managing carbon credits and environmental certificates

London – 22 May 2023: ION, a leading provider of trading, risk, and treasury management solutions for financial institutions, central banks, governments, and corporations, announces Carbon Zero. Powered by ION’s Aspect solution, Carbon Zero is a SaaS solution designed for trading and managing carbon credits and environmental certificates across the entire lifecycle. This innovative solution enables organizations to meet their CO2 emissions, obligations, and voluntary sustainability targets.

ION developed Carbon Zero to support the accelerating global push toward Net Zero. The global carbon market is highly volatile and still in its infancy. According to a survey by Climate Impact Partners, 42% of Fortune Global 500 companies are already committed to reducing their greenhouse gas emissions.

Existing participants and new entrants face the key challenge of managing risk and pricing amid low liquidity. New processes for certificate trading, tracking emissions and managing carbon inventories add further complexities. Overall, the demand for carbon credits and environmental certificates is expected to increase by a factor of 15 by 2030, with the market for carbon credits worth $50 billion by then.

With ION’s Carbon Zero, businesses can monitor risk exposures, prices, and P&L in real time. This allows them to deploy effective hedging strategies with advanced risk analytics, using tools such as stress testing, portfolio limits, and Value-at-Risk (VaR), giving even greater control over trading portfolios. Designed to supersede existing market offerings, the ION solution provides pre-packaged data, rapid time to market, and optimal flexibility. Carbon Zero empowers firms to optimize their carbon inventories, manage their carbon emission goals, and trade these certificates profitably, in parallel with other financial instruments.

To remain agile, businesses need a highly flexible solution that brings together disparate methodologies for calculating emissions, pricing carbon, and matching supply to demand. Carbon Zero builds transparency across critical workflows, from creation and registration to transfers and surrenders. The solution comes preloaded with over 8,000 carbon projects across the major registries and schemes, facilitating rapid deployment.

“Carbon Zero brings together the advanced monitoring, analytics, and risk management capabilities needed to navigate the vagaries of a complex and nascent carbon market,” says Sunil Biswas, Chief Product Officer, ION Commodities. “As participants reckon with high volatility, complex risk, and fast-changing regulation, we are proud to help our customers leverage carbon project data in a way that guarantees fast, accurate decision-making, and helps them fulfill their decarbonization objectives,” he adds.