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By Ling Hui
KUCHING, Sep 4: Bursa Carbon Exchange (BCX) is waiving the RM6,000 onboarding fee for all commodity traders or brokers, financial institutions, project developers or corporates who are registering to join the BCX ecosystem this year.
BCX Head of Carbon Market Dr Chen Wei Nee said BCX, which is under Bursa Malaysia, was mandated by the Federal government to spearhead the Voluntary Carbon Market (VCM) in Malaysia.
BCX, touted to be the world’s first Shariah-compliant carbon exchange, was launched in December 2022, and it successfully held its first carbon auction on March 16 this year, with around RM7.7 million in carbon credits sold.
Today, Dr Chen said, BCX is accepting carbon credits from projects, including nature-based solutions or technology-based solutions, which must adhere to methodologies accepted by the Verified Carbon Standard (VCS) by Verra.
“Basically, in the voluntary carbon market space, there would be a project developer who invests in a carbon project that essentially either avoids emissions from entering into the atmosphere reduce or remove emissions.
“Once that project has been implemented, he monetises or sells the carbon emission reduction (carbon credits) to a corporate buyer for the purpose of offsetting or reducing their carbon footprint,” she said in her welcome remarks for the Biogas Roundtable 2.0 at Bursa Malaysia’s East Malaysia Palm & Lauric Oils Price Outlook Conference & Exhibition 2023 (emPOC2023) held at a local hotel here today.
Elaborating further, Dr Chen said the VCM is a reward-based system whereby the company is rewarded with carbon credits that can be sold to the corporate market for every amount of emission reduced.
Meanwhile, she noted a penalty-based system or better known as a compliance mechanism, which can be either the implementation of a carbon tax or the Emissions Trading System (ETS).
“In Malaysia, the Ministry of Finance is working with the World Bank to study the carbon tax mechanism, whereas the Ministry of Natural Resources, Environment and Climate Change is looking into the ETS.
“So, we have to wait for a few years for the study results, and the government will then take a position on whether to implement a carbon tax or ETS,” she added. — DayakDaily
