The Regional Voluntary Carbon Market Company (VCM), established by the Public Investment Fund (PIF) and Saudi Tadawul Group, is proud to announce a series of strategic agreements that would see VCM expand its number of international partners, grow its corporate advisory division, and further enhance the integrity of its platform.
Under these agreements, VCM is honoured to announce that:
• Simplenight, a global digital transformation technology company, and VCM signed an MoU to build out an emissions offsetting offering to customers purchasing travel, lifestyle, government services and more through Simplenight’s proprietary software. Simplenight is a digitalization engine accelerating the innovation of some of the largest countries and ecosystems in the world. Simplenight builds super apps and AI-powered digital solutions for sectors including government, financial services, real estate, automotive, travel and more.
• Altitude, a Swiss-based aggregator of durable carbon removal credits, and VCM signed an exclusive agreement for VCM to offer Altitude’s credits in Saudi Arabia, supporting VCM’s vison of increasing the share of durable carbon removals used by corporates as they approach net zero.
Further to VCM's efforts to empower businesses to pursue carbon credit generation and decarbonization strategies, we are proud to announce that:
• Al Qaryan group, an industrial recycling company, and VCM have entered into a partnership. Under this agreement, VCM will advise Al Qaryan on generation of carbon credits through the recycling of e-waste, further enhancing the exchange’s availability of local carbon credits.
• MSCI, the world’s leading insights provider for carbon markets, and VCM have entered into a strategic partnership to introduce carbon market analytics and insights to Saudi companies to develop and implement decarbonization strategies, driving the Kingdom's net-zero target for 2060.
• In pursuit of enhancing the integrity of its carbon markets and quality of credits, VCM signed an agreement with BeZero Carbon, an independent carbon rating agency, to leverage its services and rate the exchange’s carbon credits. This provides the platform participants with an additional layer of due diligence, increasing the transparency of the quality of carbon credits.
Fadi Saadeh, Acting Chief Executive Officer and Head of Technology of VCM, said: “Expanding our ecosystem through major partnerships on our exchange and other offerings marks a crucial moment for the Saudi carbon market and reflects the trust and confidence in our vision. The diversification of companies, across industries and geographies, is showing the world that the VCM Exchange is the key platform for connecting ambitious new market entrants with high-quality, verifiable projects.
He added: “We are honoured to have the privilege of enabling Al Qaryan Group and Simplenight’s carbon offset strategies. These partnerships demonstrate the full extent of our capabilities to create an efficient carbon credit marketplace, as well as our capabilities to empower corporations to reach their net zero targets and deliver their sustainability strategies.”
VCM launched Saudi Arabia’s first voluntary carbon credit exchange platform on November 12, 2024. The platform is designed to meet market requirements for a transparent, scalable, and increasingly liquid marketplace, by offering:
• Institutional grade infrastructure, to enable transparent and secure transactions
• Price and data discovery for carbon credit projects, key to growing the market globally and
providing a price signal on projects from the MENA region
• Open market connectivity, integrated with leading global registries
• Scope to develop specialized infrastructure for trade in carbon credits to enable Islamic
Finance
• Auction market, Request for Quote and Reported trade functionality, with more
functionalities launching in the future
The voluntary carbon offset market is expected to grow from USD 2 billion in 2020 to around USD 250 billion by 2050. To promote growth of the voluntary carbon market in Saudi Arabia and the region, VCM’s exchange is being designed to offer buyers and sellers institutional grade infrastructure, enabling fast and secure transactions.
