Every mature, deep financial market rests on a thin layer of foundational infrastructure that performs the same basic functions: an authoritative record of title, settlement finality, common identifiers, and a common way to convey information between institutions. Equities have it. Bonds have it. Foreign exchange has it. The specific institutions differ, but the layer is always there, and it always does the same few things.

Carbon markets, for the most part, lack this layer.

Carbon markets have been around for three decades, and we are still working out the foundational infrastructure they need to scale.

On the newest episode of This Week in Carbon, GCMU CEO Chris Canavan spoke with Rene Velasquez on why this is, and what it will take to close that gap.

The conversation ranges from what we can learn from the origins of the likes of the Depository Trust Company, SWIFT, and Chicago as the capital of commodities trading, to the challenges of demonstrating that a transfer of carbon credit from a seller to a buyer is a legally enforceable transfer of ownership.

GCMU wishes to engage an experienced finance consultancy to provide fractional Chief Financial Officer services to the group on an independent consultancy basis. The engagement is for a newly established organisation that provides financial services.

The Consultant will provide strategic and operational finance leadership services in relation to day-to-day finance, statutory and tax compliance and audit across the group's US and UK operations, and intercompany arrangements, working alongside the CEO and Chief of Staff, the board and external advisers.

The engagement is suited to a finance consultancy comfortable building processes from the ground up and providing services across a cross-border group.

• 37 organizations including Isometric, Verra, South Pole, and Kita commit to continue supporting the adoption and development of the Carbon Data Open Protocol (CDOP) Version 1.0 

• Open-source data schema for project location, details & approach addresses carbon market fragmentation

• Developed in alignment with, and building upon, other data standardization initiatives, including the G20-led Common Carbon Credit Data Model (CCCDM), the CAD Trust, and the UNFCCC (relating to Article 6)

Co-Chairs GCMU, Sylvera, RMI and S&P Global Commodity Insights invite experts to advance transparency in carbon markets and collaborate on Carbon Data Open Protocol

Lack of Standardization Fragments Market & Impedes Markets’ Potential as Driver of Climate Action

LONDON, NEW YORK, SINGAPORE (March 18, 2025) – A group of 30 leading businesses, nonprofits and public sector organizations have joined forces to help facilitate and scale carbon markets by launching an open, multi-stakeholder initiative to develop a protocol that harmonizes the definitions and rules that standardize data describing carbon crediting projects and carbon credits across markets, geographies and activity types.    

This co-hosted event at New York Climate Week showed what it takes to harness the power of markets and deliver real impact, today. It was convened by the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market (ICVCM), the Global Carbon Market Utility (GCMU), and the Voluntary Carbon Markets Integrity Initiative (VCMI), supported by Bloomberg Philanthropies.

Wall Street Journal – Voluntary carbon markets are getting the backing of some of the world’s leading economists, policymakers and philanthropists, as businesses search for ways to meet their climate goals and move funds to developing countries.

Politico – Climate Week is holding its first ever “VCM Day” on Wednesday, sponsored by Bloomberg Philanthropies and featuring Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo and U.N. Environment Programme Executive Director Inger Andersen along with other corporate and government officials.

TIME – The voluntary carbon market can play a critical role. It can provide finance for a wide range of emissions reduction and removal projects in the places that need it most, and a way for businesses to be more ambitious, and go beyond their all important decarbonization efforts.