New Partnership Initiated to Support the Scaling of Carbon Removals

Standard Chartered Bank and SEB are now expanding their partnership with Puro.earth, aiming to increase capital allocation for negative emissions to support more offtake transactions between buyers and sellers. This will help develop the capacity of negative emissions, while ensuring corporations are empowered to achieve their carbon net-zero targets. The collaboration is expected to bring more liquidity into the carbon removal market.

Standard Chartered Bank and SEB will act as intermediaries, facilitating the offtake agreements of high-quality, Puro Standard-certified carbon removal credits, the CO2 Removal Certificates (CORCs), to their clients. Offtake agreements are essential for projects in the development phase, offering a way to secure future revenue and helping suppliers secure debt and equity financing.

Buyers benefit from securing early access to removals, while significantly enabling the growth of the carbon removal ecosystem. Puro.earth applies its rigorous certification framework to ensure these credits are only issued for projects that meet the highest standards in carbon accounting, social and environmental safeguards, and permanence.

Fredrik Ekström, Head of Carbon Markets at Nasdaq, and Chairman of Puro.earth, said, “To scale up capacity in carbon removal we need allocation of capital into projects aiming to deliver negative emissions. Offtake agreements play a crucial role at this stage of the market development to support funding and demand signaling. The partnership between Puro.earth, SEB and Standard Chartered represents an important step to support increased investments into early-stage carbon removal projects.”

Scaling The Carbon Dioxide Removal Market 

In order to address the ongoing climate challenges, The Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) market will need to continue to scale, incentives will need to come in place to stimulate the production of net-negative emissions and uncertainties must be minimized for both producers and buyers of such negative emissions. The important question is how net-negative carbon removal projects can develop in parallel with emission abatement and be rewarded to ensure increased investments into real climate impact. 

A key factor is the establishment of an efficient market for offtake agreements (or advanced market commitment) – a contract where buyers and sellers of negative emissions agree on a transaction on future deliveries of CDR. “We need every tool in the toolbox to help accelerate efforts to achieve net zero. Investment in emissions reductions and avoidance beyond company value chains are crucial but we also need to invest in carbon dioxide removal technology today, that will scale tomorrow and put the net in net-zero. We look forward to our continued work with Puro, Nasdaq and other partner companies, to support and scale this critical market.” said Chris Leeds, Head of Carbon Market Development, at Standard Chartered Bank, said,

Maximilian Brodin, Head of Commodities, at SEB, said, “The carbon dioxide removal market needs to scale to address the ongoing climate crisis. The partnership with Puro will support SEB in our strive to equip our clients with the necessary tools they need to deliver on their net-zero targets.”

A panel discussion on this topic will be held at the Nasdaq Annual New York Climate Week Conference 2024, focusing on how the finance industry can drive climate action, regulation, and investment.