Latest news with #carbonoffsets
Forbes
14-08-2025
- Business
- Forbes
The ‘Unsexy' RWAs: How Domains And IP Are Quietly Disrupting Ownership
Everyone's watching Bitcoin ETFs hit record highs and meme coins pump to absurd valuations, but the real action in tokenization is happening somewhere most people aren't looking. Domain names are becoming collateral for DeFi loans. Patents trade like stocks. Carbon offsets flow through automated smart contracts. These aren't the glamorous real-world assets that grab headlines. Nobody gets excited about DNS records or intellectual property licensing — until they realize what tokenization can do to these forgotten corners of the global economy. D3 Global's recent partnership to tokenize 22 million domains represents just the beginning of this shift toward practical, utility-driven RWA adoption. Non-financial tokenized assets grew 240% year-over-year in 2024, significantly outpacing traditional RWA categories. It's clear the money is following functionality, not hype. Domain Names Get Programmable The $360 billion domain industry has been completely illiquid — you own a domain or you don't. Some domains are becoming extremely profitable business, even at a sovereign level. Since the release of ChatGPT in late 2022, registrations of '.ai' domains have surged significantly. Anguilla, a small Caribbean island, owns the country-specific top-level domain '.ai,', and this boom in domain registration fees now accounts for about 20-25% of Anguilla's total government revenue, representing a major fiscal boost for its economy. D3 Global's collaboration with InterNetX through their Doma Protocol transforms 22 million domains into programmable assets with cross-chain compatibility across Solana, Base, and other networks. Tokenization enables fractional ownership, secondary markets, and domain-backed lending for the first time. Fred Hsu, D3's CEO, frames the opportunity clearly: "This isn't just about trading — it's about turning dormant assets into productive capital." Unlike speculative assets, domains serve essential infrastructure functions with inherent utility. Domains also avoid regulatory battles plaguing other RWA categories. While the SEC scrutinizes tokenized securities and real estate, domains occupy clearer legal territory as digital assets with established ownership frameworks. Intellectual Property Becomes Tradable Blockchain-based IP registries such as Oasys create immutable provenance records that reduce fraud, a persistent problem in traditional IP markets. IPwe's patent marketplace provides verifiable ownership histories and automated licensing agreements. Musicians tokenize song rights, enabling fans to purchase fractional ownership in royalty streams. This model expands across creative industries wherever intellectual property generates ongoing revenue, though legal systems must recognize blockchain-based IP rights for widespread adoption. Carbon Credits Meet DeFi Toucan Protocol's tokenization of carbon offsets addresses opacity and liquidity constraints in voluntary carbon markets. Tokenized credits eliminate friction through instant settlement and transparent trading mechanisms. Corporations purchase verified offsets directly through DeFi protocols with automatic compliance reporting and immutable audit trails. Toucan's carbon pool grew 400% in 2024 as institutional ESG demand accelerated. The model works because carbon credits represent quantified CO2 reduction with regulatory backing, but satellite monitoring and verification systems must integrate with blockchain infrastructure to prevent greenwashing claims. Practical Problems, Real Solutions Successful, "unsexy" RWA projects solve actual liquidity problems in established markets rather than creating artificial scarcity. Domains, IP rights, and carbon credits represent multi-billion-dollar industries with genuine utility but limited secondary market access. Tokenization unlocks trapped value without forcing industries to abandon decades of established practices. A domain owner still controls their website's functionality exactly as before — tokenization simply adds new financial capabilities on top of existing infrastructure. The domain still resolves to the same IP address, still handles email routing, and still maintains its SEO value. This approach explains why regulators haven't targeted these projects with the same intensity they've shown toward tokenized securities. Rather than creating new asset classes that compete with traditional finance, these tokens enhance familiar business operations. A carbon credit remains a verified environmental offset whether it's traded through a traditional broker or a DeFi protocol. Implementation Challenges Despite their practical advantages, these "unsexy" RWAs face significant adoption barriers that could slow mainstream integration. Enterprise adoption requires overcoming substantial trust hurdles. Critical web infrastructure depends on reliable DNS resolution, raising questions about whether businesses will risk domain functionality for tokenization benefits. Traditional registrars also face disintermediation threats and may resist integration efforts that could reduce their control over lucrative renewal fees. Legal uncertainty complicates IP tokenization across jurisdictions with different copyright and patent enforcement mechanisms. Smart contracts can automate royalty payments, but court systems still determine ownership disputes and infringement claims. The gap between programmable assets and legal reality creates enforcement risks. Additionally, carbon credit verification presents ongoing technical challenges that extend beyond blockchain capabilities. The infrastructure must integrate with satellite monitoring, field measurements, and regulatory reporting systems to maintain credibility. Any gap in the verification chain undermines the entire tokenization premise, potentially exposing buyers to greenwashing accusations. Real Adoption Ahead Financial RWAs dominated early tokenization because they offered familiar investment structures. As those markets mature, attention shifts toward practical applications that enhance business operations rather than create new trading vehicles. The next wave focuses on utility over speculation — solving operational problems rather than generating protocol fees. IP, domains, and carbon credits represent the beginning of this transition toward pragmatic blockchain applications that make tokenization invisible while providing enhanced functionality.
Wall Street Journal
13-08-2025
- Business
- Wall Street Journal
New U.S. Accounting Rule to Establish How Companies Record Environmental Credits
The Financial Accounting Standards Board voted to set first-ever requirements on how companies account for environmental credits such as renewable-energy certificates and carbon offsets, while dialing back the extent of disclosures it had proposed last year. The standard setter on Wednesday voted to require U.S. public and private companies to apply one model to various credits that companies obtain for their compliance programs or voluntary use.
Bloomberg
10-07-2025
- Science
- Bloomberg
Auditors Fail in Role of Safeguarding Carbon Market, Study Finds
Auditors are failing in their role as third-party guarantors of the quality of carbon offsets, according to new academic research. In a paper published Thursday in Science, an international peer-reviewed journal, Cary Coglianese, a law and political science professor at University of Pennsylvania, and Cynthia Giles, a former senior adviser at the US Environmental Protection Agency, conclude that auditors selected and paid by the companies they inspect can't affirm the credibility of the projects they assess.
Reuters
27-05-2025
- Business
- Reuters
Will CORSIA flight offsetting scheme pay for green projects - or greenwash?
May 16 - Airlines using offsets to market flights as sustainable have frequently been accused of greenwash, opens new tab by campaigners, with the risks demonstrated last year by the legal precedent-setting Dutch Court ruling against KLM. Now, however, the industry is gearing up to buy hundreds of millions of credits through a global scheme agreed under the United Nation's International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). The Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation (CORSIA) is expected to unlock unprecedented demand for carbon offsets. But will the scheme have enough integrity baked in to assuage greenwash concerns? CORSIA aims to offset growth in the sector's greenhouse gas emissions by mandating airlines to purchase credits for each tonne they emit over a baseline of 85% of 2019 emissions. As with most offset schemes, airlines are only meant to buy carbon credits as a last resort, once they have put in place other emissions reduction strategies. These include making aircraft and engines more efficient and lighter, more efficient operations such as take-off and landing, and electric engines for short-haul flights. CORSIA also has a list of eligible feedstocks for sustainable aviation fuels (SAFs), which airlines can use to reduce their need to purchase offsets, though these are in short supply. CORSIA is being implemented in phases ahead of becoming mandatory for all international flights from 2027. During a pilot phase, from 2021-2023, and the first phase, 2024-2026, offsetting is required only for flights between states that volunteer to participate, but as of this year, 129 states are included in the scheme. Integrity under scrutiny IATA insists that CORSIA and the carbon credits sold under it are high integrity, backed by several safeguards and independent checks. In December, the body approved four new CORSIA-compliant carbon standards: Gold Standard, Verra, Climate Action Reserve and Global Carbon Council, adding to the two existing standards, American Carbon Registry (ACR) and Architecture for REDD+ Transactions (ART), which manages The REDD+ Environmental Excellence Standard (TREES). All projects must meet eligibility criteria that emissions reductions are real, additional and permanent. IATA has, however, removed some categories of credits that have attracted the most controversy from eligibility for CORSIA. These include afforestation and reforestation, and project-level REDD+ schemes, which pay for projects that protect forests that are under threat. Allowed are jurisdictional-level REDD+, which are administered at a national level, the type of scheme certified by ART TREES. In addition to ICAO's process, governments of host countries must agree 'a corresponding adjustment' to prevent double counting, so that credits supporting projects under CORSIA are not also used to meet national obligations under the Paris Agreement on climate change. So far, only Guyana has agreed a corresponding adjustment for 7.15 million credits issued by TREES. One million of these were purchased for a fixed price of $21.70 by 11 airlines late last year, when IATA held the first large-scale auction. But the forestry schemes the South American nation intends to finance through CORSIA have previously been criticised by scientists, who said they would overstate the amount of emissions they will prevent, given that Guyana is a country with high forest cover, but low amounts of deforestation (HFLD). While some Indigenous groups has supported the Guyanese government, others have complained to ART about insufficient consultation, and questioned whether they are receiving adequate compensation for their role in protecting Guyana's forests. ART, however, defends its crediting approach for HFLD countries like Guyana, citing gold mining exploration as one of numerous threats to Guyana's intact forests. "Forests cannot be protected indefinitely without ongoing support and incentives." It also said all 242 Indigenous communities in Guyana have received funds from an earlier sale of 33.47 million TREES credits, some of which had been bought by corporate buyers. While Guyana's credits are currently the only game in town under CORSIA, 15 countries – mostly in Africa – are in the process of issuing Letters of Adjustment, according to IETA. 'These are like a promissory note that you will issue a corresponding adjustment within two years,' explains Will Gifford, policy manager, aviation and natural climate solutions lead at IETA. 'A lot of countries are figuring out how many credits they can authorise to go out of the Paris Agreement bucket and into the CORSIA bucket. Guyana is the only one we have now, but we expect a lot more,' he says. Until some of these come to fruition, just 7.6 million credits meet the eligibility criteria for CORSIA, according to carbon market analysts Abatable. It estimates demand from airlines at 135-182 million units during the first phase, leaving demand two or three times larger than supply. This gap widens during the second phase, when it forecasts demand as reaching 825 million to 1.6 billion units, nine to 10 times supply. In spite of the removal of some project types from CORSIA, critics have questioned the emissions-reduction potential of some categories that are still eligible, such as projects that provide communities with efficient cookstoves to replace burning of wood cut from local forests. In March, the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market (ICVCM) tightened up the eligibility criteria for cookstove projects that meet its Core Carbon Principles on the voluntary carbon market, removing those at risk of overestimating the amount of carbon they reduced due to insufficiently robust methodology. Derik Broekhoff, a senior scientist at the Stockholm Environment Institute, says such credits are, however, still eligible under CORSIA. 'The approach under CORSIA has been to assess the major credit issuing programmes and approve them, with some restrictions on particular categories of projects. But one of the challenges with these markets in general is that, even within individual categories, you find good and bad projects, and there's no granular-level screening to weed out the bad ones,' he says. Bastien Bonnet-Cantalloube, expert on decarbonisation of aviation and shipping at Carbon Market Watch, said: 'It's fairly positive that the eligibility rules have been made more stringent for phase one (of CORSIA). But we've already seen problems with the very first batch, so we don't expect these other registries and the new batch of credits that will be made available to airlines to be great.' Gifford of IETA believes that international scrutiny of offsets under CORSIA will bring accountability to the system. Integrity will also be supported by the fact that countries hosting the projects funded by the scheme must also approve them, he believes. 'We can draw a distinction here between CORSIA and a voluntary scheme for passengers to offset emissions from their flight. Even though CORSIA is a global scheme, there is local control over how it is used. It's not simply anyone buying whatever they want from wherever they want,' he says. The LEAF Coalition is a public-private coalition that has signed agreements with countries including Ecuador, Costa Rica and Ghana to undertake jurisdicational scale REDD+ reforestation projects. Its credits have been certified by both ART TREES and the ICVCM. Some will be sold to airlines through CORSIA, once the countries have signed corresponding adjustments. Eron Bloomgarden is CEO of Emergent, which acts as a non-profit intermediary for the coalition. He says reversing deforestation is reliant on sufficient finance for projects that make protecting forests worth more than destroying them. 'The constraint is really unlocking large sources of demand – this is where CORSIA comes in. Our goal is to achieve net zero deforestation by 2030. To do that, we need to catalyse $10 billion-$20 billion by 2030, and CORSIA could provide maybe a quarter of that,' he says. Bloomgarden says the scheme should be viewed as a transition tool, until efficiency technologies and alternatives to long-haul travel become viable. 'Airline offsets are the best possible solution in the intervening time – they're as good as, if not better, than SAFs (sustainable aviation fuels),' he says. Judit Legrady, senior managing consultant for Article 6 and CORSIA at consultancy South Pole, points out that growth in demand for international air travel is estimated at 4-5% a year. 'If you look at projected annual improvements in efficiencies of aircraft fuel or operations, and those resulting from using SAF, there will still be a CO2 emissions-reduction gap,' she says Alongside addressing residual emissions through offsets, CORSIA will incentivise airlines to reduce emissions, invest in new technologies and adopt SAF. Juan Carlos Arredondo Brun, director of knowledge, policy and advocacy at Abatable, points to the additional environmental and social benefits of projects funded by CORSIA, such as reductions in air pollution and support for livelihoods of communities where projects take place. It will also provide a continuous source of funding for up to 30 years' operation, which will be an improvement on the ad hoc funding such projects typically currently receive through voluntary markets. 'CORSIA is the first truly global carbon market, so it should be allowed to become more mature and efficient. We must not lose sight of the benefits of projects funded by CORSIA that go beyond the quantification of carbon emissions reductions,' he says. For Bloomgarden, CORSIA marks a shift in the global approach to greenhouse gas emissions. 'Given where we are in the climate emergency, every tonne of emissions should be paid for,' Bloomgarden adds. 'The era of using the atmosphere as a free resource to store our climate pollution should be over.' Terry Slavin contributed to this article. This feature is part of The Ethical Corporation's in-depth briefing on Sustainable Tourism. To download the PDF, click here
Zawya
20-05-2025
- Business
- Zawya
Bahrain: Alba expands EternAlTM product line with in-house carbon offsets
Bahrain - Alba, the world's largest smelter on one site, has expanded its EternAlTM low carbon product line with the groundbreaking launch of 'EternAl-AC' – a new product series incorporating verified carbon offsets that are directly generated from within Alba's own operational efficiencies. EternAl-AC offers customers a uniquely transparent and credible path to achieving their carbon reduction targets. By procuring aluminium from this line, customers will gain access to traceable, third-party verified greenhouse gas (GHG) offsets originating from Alba's internal sustainability initiatives. The new EternAl-AC series features a user-friendly tiered carbon reduction classification system spanning EternAl-AC0 (net-zero footprint) to AC4 (up to 4 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions per tonne), thus providing customers flexibility in selecting optimal low-carbon solutions with clear and verifiable data. Most importantly, the carbon offsets embedded in EternAl-AC are a direct result of GHG savings generated by various projects within Alba's operational boundaries. These reductions are rigorously measured and recorded in accordance with international standards for GHG accounting (ISO 14064-2) and independently verified by a certified independent party. Commenting on this important development, Alba's chief executive Ali Al Baqali stated: 'Alba is proud to introduce EternAl-AC, a game-changer in the low-carbon aluminium market. By embedding verified carbon offsets generated directly from our own operational improvements, we are offering our customers an unparalleled level of transparency and confidence in their sustainability journey, providing a distinct advantage in a world increasingly focused on carbon accountability. 'This initiative underscores our proactive commitment to reducing our environmental footprint and empowering our partners to achieve their net-zero ambitions. We also welcome Alueuropa – a leading Spanish aluminium extruder – as our first customer for EternAl-AC, highlighting the growing demand for sustainable aluminium.' Adding further, Alueuropa managing director Marta Colino stated: 'Sustainability and decarbonisation are among top priorities for our business, and we look forward to using the new low carbon products from Alba which will enable us to meet our targets and serve our clients better.' Launched as part of Alba's broader ESG Roadmap, the EternAlTM product line debuted in May 2024 with two initial variants in its recycled content series: EternAl-30 and EternAl-15, containing 30 per cent and 15pc recycled scrap metal respectively. This series was later expanded to include EternAl-20 and EternAl-50, featuring 20pc and 50pc of recycled content, further contributing to emissions reduction within Alba and across its aluminium value chain. Copyright 2022 Al Hilal Publishing and Marketing Group Provided by SyndiGate Media Inc. (
