Emissions house of the year: BP

The emissions trading sphere has grown in substance and opportunity over the past few years, but it has taken an energy giant to lean a shoulder against the market to really help it take off.

BP’s emissions trading services, and the information the firm provides on environmental concerns, has created waves in the sector in recent times. Within the firm’s supply and trading business sits the global environmental products (GEP) team, which has become involved in “direct financing of abatement activity through the offtake of both physical and environmental commodities, trading and optimisation, and demand-driven margin businesses in environmental markets in the US, Europe and Asia”, according to the firm. During 2016, that offering gained a deeper audience. The team aims to serve compliance needs in futures markets, engaging in a number of activities to promote the flow of financing into REDD+ (reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation).

BP’s global environmental products team is becoming renowned for innovative emissions trading expertise – from China to Australia and North America. By offering greater product knowledge and a distinct awareness of emissions markets, the firm is helping to create stability in a young, relatively illiquid market. Throughout the course of last year, BP engaged with developers of high-calibre forest protection projects while helping to offset carbon dioxide emissions. The firm is also actively supportive of well-designed cap-and-trade programmes, working to reduce costs while conversing on a number of management systems to help the market grow. 

Elsewhere, the GEP team has helped provide finance in the form of carbon credit prepayments, enabling climate-friendly projects to get off the ground. Given the youth of the market BP has helped shape emissions trading, while allowing it to build expertise as well as a portfolio of projects and interests that set it apart from the competition.