Moscow, 18 October 2024 — The first transaction with a foreign buyer was completed in the Russian carbon units registry. The deal was arranged by Gazprombank (Joint Stock Company) with the buyer – Equity International General Trading (United Arab Emirates) and the project executor – JSC Rusal Krasnoyarsk. The announcement was made at the BRICS Business Forum held in Moscow on October 17-18.
The transaction involved the transfer of carbon units issued from a climate project designed to protect forests from wildfires. These are the first carbon units to be issued in Russia from a nature-based climate project, marking a significant milestone in the country's climate action journey. Furthermore, Rusal Krasnoyarsk was the first company to publish the project documentation and the reports of the validation and verification bodies on the Carbon Units Registry’s website. The latter was the main reason in the selection of the project for the transaction.The price was determined based on the most recent deals in the commodities section of the Moscow Exchange.
Gazprombank attracted the buyer and managed the transaction from project selection to technical support at all stages.
“The successful sales transaction of Russian carbon units to a foreign buyer demonstrated the readiness of the Russian Carbon Units Registry infrastructure for international trade. Gazprombank works systematically on creating a high-quality carbon units market in Russia with a particular focus on developing the methodological framework, increasing confidence in Russian climate projects and building long-term partnerships with foreign players. This has paved the way for us to arrange deals on the international market and help our clients in these issues” Ekaterina Salugina-Sorokovaya, the First Vice President of Gazprombank said.
“Being an innovative company, we support climate ambitions of the partner companies in the Emirates and Gulf Countries, including green net zero oil & LNG and policy advice in corporate climate & sustainability strategies. The deal concerned we regard as a first step in integrating the Carbon Markets of the BRICS countries. This step may be followed by creating a common Carbon Trading Platform by the Russian Federation and the United Arab Emirates. This platform could be located in Dubai and serve as a prototype Carbon Facility to be open for all of the potential Carbon Market participants from BRICS countries” shared Salem Humaid Saif Almzaini, the Chairman of the Equity International General Trading.
“Commitment to carbon neutrality is a global economic trend. Within BRICS, countries can join efforts in the field of low-carbon economy. We are pleased that our forest climate project, issued in full compliance with current quality criteria for such projects, has become the initial case of the transaction with Russian carbon units at the international level” Elena Myakotnikova, Director of Sustainable Development at RUSAL commented.
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Gazprombank (Joint Stock Company) is one of the largest multi-faceted financial institutions in Russia, providing a wide range of products and services to corporate and private customers, financial institutions, institutional and private investors. The total number of its outlets in Russia exceeds 470. The Bank also has representative offices in Astana (Kazakhstan), Beijing (China), Ulaanbaatar (Mongolia), New Delhi (India) and Tashkent (Uzbekistan). Its customers number over 5 million individuals and about 167,000 legal entities.
The Bank provides services to key sectors of the Russian economy and has a strong position on national and global financial markets, holding Russian leadership in arranging and underwriting corporate bond issues, asset management, private banking, corporate financing, and other areas of investment banking.
Retail business is also a strategically important activity of the Bank, and its scale is consistently increasing. Private customers are offered a full range of services: bank cards, deposits, consumer and mortgage lending, FX transactions, brokerage services and much more.
The Bank is one of the technology leaders in the Russian financial market. Over the recent years, the Bank has successfully implemented a digital transformation project, which has remodeled its IT infrastructure, introduced new services to improve customer experience, and relaunched remote service channels.
Since its establishment in 1990, Gazprombank has been guided by the principles of sustainable development. The Bank takes an active part in all the important areas of the current ESG agenda.