The country has launched its first carbon credit exchange, marking a major step towards the country’s goal to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050 and combat climate change.
The new carbon market, called FTIX, will be operated by the Federation of Thai Industries.
Its supporting platform will allow firms and government agencies to buy and sell carbon credits and track their emissions on an online dashboard, said Somphote Ahunai, a vice-chairman at the federation and chief executive officer of Energy Absolute Pcl.
The new platform will incorporate the government’s existing voluntary emission reduction programme and follows a previous effort by the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand and 10 of the nation’s biggest companies to set up a separate private market to trade credits over the counter.
“The carbon credit exchange will play a key part as the national trading mechanism to monitor and analyse our greenhouse gas emission reduction,” Varawut Silpa-archa, minister of natural resources and environment, said at a conference.
The launch paves the way for Thailand to try to become a carbon-trading hub for South-East Asia.
Although it only allows domestic trading for now with the government’s T-VER programme, the platform is expected to expand to include other international ones later.
FTIX joins existing carbon exchanges in other Asian markets including China and Singapore, which plans to launch futures trading as early as this year as companies look to hedge risks from greenhouse-gas emissions.
Thailand is expected to see peak emissions in 2025 at 368 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents, said Varawut, adding that it aims to cut emissions by 40% by 2030. — Bloomberg
