Kuala Lumpur, 1 June 2021 – Bursa Malaysia Berhad (“Bursa Malaysia” or the “Exchange”) signed a memorandum of understanding (“MOU”) with Verra on 12 May 2022. This MOU will enable the Exchange to further pursue its objective to establish a Voluntary Carbon Market (“VCM”) that can be scaled up, able to serve a wide-variety of participants in the market, and be based on established rules and international best practices.
Announced in October last year, the Voluntary Carbon Market is an initiative spearheaded by the Exchange, that will allow businesses to offset their carbon footprints by purchasing carbon credits produced through projects targeted at removing or reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The establishment of the VCM is in line with Malaysia’s transition towards a low carbon economy and goal to achieve a carbon-neutral country by 2050.
A non-profit organisation, Verra is a leading international standard setter that manages the Verified Carbon Standard (“VCS”) Programme, the world’s largest Greenhouse Gas (“GHG”) crediting program. The VCS Programme has more than 1,800 registered projects in almost 100 countries that have generated more than 900 million carbon credits. Verra helps to tackle the world’s most intractable environmental and social challenges by developing and managing standards that help the private sector, countries, and civil society achieve ambitious sustainable development and climate action goals.
With this MOU, the Exchange aims to ensure that it establishes a VCM that will digitally trade standardized contracts of high-quality carbon credits in a transparent and orderly manner.
Datuk Muhamad Umar Swift, Chief Executive Officer of Bursa Malaysia said, “This is the first of many avenues that we will pursue to establish a fair and orderly VCM. We will continue to work with other entities, like Verra, who have well-established methodologies to measure climate action and sustainable development outcomes and have gone through extensive stakeholder consultation and review.”
“It is anticipated that the market will recognize Verra’s VCS Programme as one of the main standards used to issue high-quality carbon credits to be transacted,” added Datuk Umar.
David Antonioli, Chief Executive Officer of Verra said, “Building on our expertise in managing the world’s leading voluntary carbon standard, we look forward to supporting Bursa Malaysia in establishing a voluntary carbon market in Malaysia to help scale up urgently needed climate action.”
This MOU was signed with the aim of developing local capacity in Bursa Malaysia as well as the potential market participants and local ecosystem players through the webinars, workshops, seminars, or other events, towards building the necessary foundation for a robust voluntary carbon market in Malaysia.
