About Us
The Global Carbon Market Utility
The GCMU is an early-stage financial services organization with a mission to build market infrastructure to help grow the carbon market. This market is essential to drive capital toward reducing and removing emissions. But today, the market is too small to make a significant climate impact, because it lacks many structures and processes that are critical foundations of the mature markets that make our global financial system safe and trustworthy.
The GCMU aims to provide the services of a public financial market-utility. It will establish and maintain robust data standards and ledgers and provide a central book of record. It will develop and operate systems for data transparency and management, contracts, audits, verification, and dispute resolution. This infrastructure will enable financial intermediaries to enter the market, provide project financing, manage risk, and match thousands of buyers and sellers together.
As the enabling infrastructure for a new market, the GCMU must facilitate efficient interaction among diverse market participants ranging from scientists, engineers, policymakers, regulators, audit and accounting professionals, corporations, and governments. The GCMU will be staffed with professionals working to meet the needs of various stakeholder groups, including financial institutions, auditors, technology providers, and regulatory agencies.
Background
The Global Carbon Market Utility and the Governing Council were launched at COP27 with philanthropic support from Three Cairns Group and Bloomberg Philanthropies and have worked since then to define operations, build consensus around their approach, and recruit partners and organizational staff.
In Conversation at COP27
GCMU Governing Council
To ensure that climate outcomes are not at odds with financial incentives, the GCMU Governing Council—a separate philanthropic entity—will oversee the GCMU operating body. The Governing Council will consist of leaders from civil society and environmental advocacy organizations, as well as leading subject matter experts, with the sole purpose of safeguarding the interests of the climate.
The Governing Council will oversee the GCMU’s operations. It also will be responsible for ensuring that transactions result in legitimate climate impact through two key functions:
The Governing Council will set annually updated rules to allow for the comparison of output by project type.
The Governing Council will commission an annual report that will assess the impact on the global carbon budget of the tons offset and processed through the GCMU.