Northern Trust (Nasdaq: NTRS) has announced a significant enhancement for the Voluntary Carbon Market (VCM) through the ability to generate digital voluntary carbon credits in near real-time on The Northern Trust Carbon Ecosystem™️.
Northern Trust has been working with project developers focused on climate solutions and their data collection providers to streamline the generation of verified carbon credits to enable more automation in the VCM. The Northern Trust Carbon Ecosystem was able to receive data and record verified carbon credits in near real-time from participating providers, with the associated data attributes captured and stored on individual credits for accuracy and transparency. These data attributes encompass precise measurements including carbon dioxide capture flow rates, power consumed to capture the carbon dioxide and parameters critical for robust verification and traceability such as when and where the carbon was captured.
Justin Chapman, global head of Digital Assets and Financial Markets, at Northern Trust, said: “Despite some automation and digitization in the VCM over the last few years, the measurement, reporting and verification of carbon credits has been characterised by manual processes which are resource- and time-intensive. This additional capability of The Northern Trust Carbon Ecosystem further enhances our ability to support a fully digital lifecycle management solution for voluntary carbon credits. The recordation of verified carbon credits in near real-time on our platform supports project developers in expediting the commercialisation opportunity of their projects.”
Northern Trust has been collaborating with data collection providers and project developers, including:
- InceptionX which provides an end-to-end platform for equipment monitoring and carbon measurement, enabling the quantification and validation of carbon assets and industrial equipment in real-time. By integrating advanced IoT devices, machine learning capabilities, and real-time data collection, InceptionX successfully transmitted quantified carbon data from a wastewater recycling installation in San Francisco to The Northern Trust Carbon Ecosystem, facilitating the creation of carbon credits.
- Mangrove Systems, a digital measurement, reporting and verification (dMRV) solution for project developers focused on carbon dioxide removal and carbon storage, and The Carbon Removers, a UK-based project developer which captures, removes and sequesters biogenic carbon. Northern Trust is working in partnership with Mangrove Systems to enable a more automated and timely verification of the carbon credits generated from The Carbon Removers’ carbon capture plants located at a Scottish distillery. Real-time data from the plants is being collected automatically by Mangrove’s dMRV system and mapped against The Carbon Removers’ protocol. It is then sent to Northern Trust to generate carbon credits via its ecosystem, leveraging the detailed data and evidence related to the carbon dioxide capture and sequestration provided by Mangrove Systems.
Tom Dickie, Chief Executive Officer, at InceptionX, said: “The Northern Trust Carbon Ecosystem provides us with a set of solutions that allows us to securely create carbon credits in near real-time on behalf of our project developer clients, enabling them to transact those credits in a shorter timeframe.”
Brandon Vlaar, Chief Executive Officer, at Mangrove Systems, said: “The Northern Trust Carbon Ecosystem will store critical data parameters required for robust verification and traceability of each credit, enhancing the transparency into the verified carbon credits and speeding up the time it takes to have them recorded on a register.”
Sanjay Parekh, Chief Commercial Officer, at The Carbon Removers, said: “Having the capability to capture specific information like the date, location and flow rate for every carbon credit we capture and sequester allows us to ensure that the buyers of our credits can see the full lifecycle of each credit created – providing full transparency and traceability.”
Northern Trust announced the formal launch of The Northern Trust Carbon Ecosystem in September 2024 with the first live transactions. The ecosystem connects institutional buyers with project developers focused on climate solutions to avoid, reduce, or remove greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Supported by private ledger digital blockchain technology, buyers can purchase digital carbon credits directly from project developers and retire these against their emissions footprint. Northern Trust acts on instruction to record, transfer and settle digital carbon credits in its capacity as the designated custodian.
The Northern Trust Carbon Ecosystem is powered by Northern Trust’s digital assets platform, Northern Trust Matrix Zenith™️. The latest milestone in Northern Trust’s asset servicing innovation journey, Northern Trust Matrix Zenith supports key digital asset lifecycle events from asset creation, trading, pricing and custody to reporting.
The Northern Trust Carbon Ecosystem is offered through The Northern Trust Company, Chicago.
