Northern Trust Carbon Ecosystem Goes Live

Northern Trust has announced the formal launch of The Northern Trust Carbon Ecosystem™ with the first live transactions on the blockchain-based platform which enables institutional buyers to digitally access carbon credits from leading project developers. According to a story in MarketsMedia news, the official live transactions were initiated by Water Recovery Systems IP Limited and CUT Carbon Distributed Technologies AG, which sold carbon credits to institutional buyers for retirement. The live transactions follow Northern Trust’s successful milestone of completing fully automated transactions on the initial minimum viable product, announced in September 2023. The ecosystem is powered by Northern Trust’s digital assets platform, Northern Trust Matrix Zenith, to connect 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. Northern Trust Matrix Zenith is part of Northern Trust’s Digital Assets and Financial Markets group which combines the teams responsible for supporting the fast-growing digital asset markets and those dedicated to providing market access and insights across the traditional securities services markets. Further transactions on the platform are planned for later in 2024.