ANZ and Grollo Carbon Ventures partner to successfully trade tokenised Australian carbon credits.
ANZ bank recently announced their partnership with Grollo Carbon Ventures (GCV) to trade Australian carbon credit units (ACCUs). Using a public, permissionless blockchain, the transaction demonstrated the use of digital assets to reduce settlement time and help reduce counter-party risk. To further mitigate risk Australia’s Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) pilot was used to support their issuance of their stablecoin A$DC.
ANZ Banking Services Lead, Nigel Dobson said, “ANZ is pleased to be working with GCV to test what’s possible as we explore secure access to the digital economy in a way that also supports the community and environment. When applied to carbon markets, tokenisation has the potential to improve efficiency and transparency, reduce risk and preserve the unique characteristics of underlying projects to incentivise investment in climate solutions.”
The successful transaction marks the completion of the bank’s first use-case as part of the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) and the Digital Finance Cooperative Research Centre (DFCRC)’s CBDC pilot.
The use-case involved ANZ and GCV testing the tokenisation of “real-world, nature based assets,” starting with ACCUs. To do this, ANZ tokenised existing ACCUs, issuing A$DC, enabling GCV to purchase the tokenised ACCUs with a settlement occurring in near real-time via ANZ smart contracts.
Issued by the Australian Government’s Clean Energy Regulator to projects compliant with approved methodologies for emissions avoidance, reduction or removal, ACCUs possess unique information and environmental and social benefits. Tokenisation enables accurate record-keeping and ensures asset integrity.
“Grollo Carbon Ventures was established to invest in innovative sustainability solutions, and this transaction has been an exciting research opportunity. As more organisations implement net-zero transition plans the demand for nature-based assets is expected to grow significantly,” added the CEO of Grollo Group, Lorenz Grollo.
In 2022, ANZ successfully completed a payment with A$DC, the first-ever Australian-bank issued Australian-dollar stablecoin, through a public, permissionless blockchain transaction, demonstrating the bank’s ability and commitment to digital assets.
Moving forward, the RBA will be using the DFCRC pilot to explore use cases for a CBDC in Australia and its potential economic benefits.
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