Nasdaq to Speak on Carbon Removal at COP28

The United Nations Climate Change Conference, commonly known as COP28,  kicked off on Nov. 30 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE) and is expected to draw more than 70,000 delegates for its 28th conference. 

Given Nasdaq’s positioning at the intersection of the capital markets and technology, it has unique insight into how companies are approaching climate change, dedicated to utilizing its position to best support companies on their climate journey to making a more sustainable world. 

Nasdaq will be participating in five discussions, all of which will be live-streamed on Business Sweden:

• Operationalization of Article 6 and Voluntary Claims 
• Financing the Scale-Up of Carbon Removal
• Navigating the Path to Net Zero: Capital Markets and Corporate Sustainability
• World Federation of Exchanges Event on Green Equities 
• Role of Exchanges in Solving the Climate Crisis

Additional information about COP28

Hosted at Expo City Dubai, the event will be divided into two zones: the Blue Zone (which will be open to the UNFCCC only) and the Green Zone (which will be open to the general public).

Sultan Al Jaber will host the global climate action event. Al Jaber is the minister of Industry and Advanced Technology of the United Arab Emirates, as well as CEO of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company and Chairman of Masdar, a UAE state-owned renewable energy company.

President Biden will not attend the climate action event in the Middle East; however, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken is expected to represent the United States.

The story behind COP

In 1992, over 150 nations gathered at the Earth Summit in Rio De Janeiro with the goal of stabilizing “greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.” This Convention of Parties (COP) is the only multilateral decision-making forum on climate change with membership from nearly every country.

One of the various commitments the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) made was the agreement to hold annual meetings to “review the implementation of the Convention and any other legal instruments that the COP adopts and take decisions necessary to promote the effective implementation of the Convention.” 

The significance of this year’s COP

At COP21, the Convention agreed on The Paris Agreement, with the goal to limit “the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre industrial levels.” While the agreement operates over a five-year cycle, COP28 will be the first-ever global stocktake, meaning for the first time, countries and stakeholders will be assessed based on the progress they have made towards their goals.

Additional discussion points at COP28

• Fossil fuel: While countries agreed at COP26 to phase out the use of coal, they failed to reach a consensus to phase out all fossil fuels, including coal, oil and gas. The United States and the European Union are among others pushing for a deal to come out of COP28 that phases out fossil fuels once and for all. Amnesty International, an international NGO human rights organization, recently published a piece titled Fatal Fuels, which calls for a “full, fast, fair and funded phase out of the demand for and supply of fossil fuel production and use.”
• Climate finance: The fight against climate change is not going to be cheap. Heavy investment, particularly in developing countries, is needed to deal with the consequences of the climate crisis and establish the infrastructure needed to make renewable energy a viable option. Just weeks before COP28, a draft agreement of the loss and damage fund (which originated at COP27 to compensate developing countries for being disproportionately impacted by the climate crisis) was created. The draft agreement states that the World Bank will temporarily host the fund. 
• Clean energy capacity: COP28 President Sultan Al Jaber has called on governments to triple their clean energy capacity and double their energy efficiency improvements by 2030. International Energy Agency and the International Renewable Energy Agency supported Al-Jaber’s requests. Clean energy capacity is the maximum capacity of electricity that renewable sources can create.
• Capturing and storing carbon: Scalable technologies that allow the capture and storage of CO2 emissions are crucial in achieving the goals that were put forward in The Paris Agreement. Reducing and reversing the carbon in the atmosphere can slow and even reverse climate change. 

Nasdaq believes in the power of carbon markets to confront the climate challenge

As companies look to achieve net-zero emissions, carbon markets are evolving into a popular pathway to help them in their climate action efforts. 

To help scale carbon markets for companies looking to reduce emissions, Nasdaq has provided technology to Climate Impact X (CIX), a global marketplace, auctions house and exchange for trusted carbon credits, and acquired a majority stake in the world’s leading crediting platform for engineered carbon removal, Puro.earth. 

Puro.earth, a Nasdaq Ventures portfolio, will utilize Nasdaq’s recently released technology that digitizes the issuance, settlement and custody of carbon credits. 

Nasdaq’s solution will enable Puro.earth to more effectively register CO2 Removal Certificates, CORCs, through tracking the issuance, retirement, and the transfer of the assets — providing full traceability and transparency to avoid double counting carbon removal projects.  

As a leading global exchange and innovative technology company, Nasdaq is leveraging its marketplace technology to bring these markets to scale, build their integrity across the globe and help innovate the future of carbon removal.