Intercontinental Exchange, Inc. (NYSE: ICE), a leading global provider of data, technology, and market infrastructure, today announced that ICE Benchmark Administration Limited (IBA) has launched the ICE Carbon Reference Entity Data Service (ICE CRED) to facilitate the management of carbon credits through the trade lifecycle.

Verified carbon credits are issued in respect of registered projects, and are typically recorded and held in registries which identify the number of carbon credits that are issued, retired, canceled or converted. ICE CRED normalises, standardises, aggregates and supplements carbon credit reference data from global registries and assigns a unique ICE Carbon Credit Reference Identifier (ICE CREF) to carbon credits for each project and vintage, providing a universal reference code to facilitate their use. ICE CRED is designed to help reduce operational risk and cost by giving buyers and sellers of carbon credits the enhanced reference data necessary to manage their carbon credit trading processes.

“For nascent financial markets to scale successfully, they must be underpinned by meaningful data standardisation, which helps to bring predictability and transparency to their operation,” said Clive de Ruig, President of ICE Benchmark Administration. “IBA designed ICE CRED to provide carbon credit markets with a reliable and rigorous reference data service that aims to significantly improve the practicalities of analysing, trading, risk-managing and valuing carbon credits.”

“Users of ICE CRED will benefit from IBA’s data management and reporting framework, as well as its long-standing experience and reputation for establishing robust governance and oversight functions,” continued Clive de Ruig. “IBA is applying similar rigour to ICE CRED to give the carbon credit market confidence in the information it depends upon to effectively manage trading operations.”

ICE CRED is designed to support the soon-to-be-published 2022 International Swaps and Derivatives Association’s (ISDA) Verified Carbon Credit Transactions Definitions, which outline terms for the secondary market trading of physically settled carbon credit spot, forward and option transactions. In addition, ICE CRED aims to support the actions set out by the International Organization for Securities Commissions (IOSCO) to contribute to sustainability disclosure standards benefitting issuers and investors, and to promote well-functioning carbon markets.

ICE CRED will be available from multiple access points in a digital standardised format via ICE’s SFTP server, ICE Chat and ICE’s web Report Center. For more information on how to access the service, please visit: https://theice.com/iba/ice-cred. To subscribe to ICE CRED, please contact iba@ice.com.