Increasingly over recent years, market based mechanisms have been developed and implemented to address environmental concerns. The first such traded market was The US Acid Rain Program to cap and trade sulphur emissions. This successful intervention paved the way for carbon trading arrangements to be included in the Kyoto treaty. Such trading has resulted in a market with an annual value reaching $64 billion by 2007 and still growing rapidly. The largest mandatory market is found in the EU, and is mostly traded on the European Climate Exchange. A parallel voluntary market exists, in which people and companies not required by law choose to offset their personal or business emissions, a decision which can greatly enhance brand image. This voluntary market is primarily traded on the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX).

‘Removing CO2 from the atmosphere is not enough - we also have to minimise new GHG emissions.’

Businesses are also becoming more aware of other environmental impacts, such as that caused to bio-diversity by major building projects. Once reasonable steps have been taken on site to protect living things, such businesses might choose, or be required to take steps elsewhere to improve habitat and so offset the damage their projects are doing to local bio-diversity. This has given rise to trading in Biodiversity Certificates. We intend to generate and trade both Carbon and Bio-diversity credits for both regulatory and voluntary markets, and to set up registries of Voluntary Carbon and Biodiversity credits. Additional environmental trading systems are also expected to emerge.

Finance Technical Overview
Since the Kyoto agreement, a large number of different mechanisms have been put in place to reduce CO2 emissions. These include measures to improve energy efficiency, and also trading mechanisms. At the present time in Europe, major emitters are granted permits to emit a certain amount of CO2; if they wish to emit more, they need to purchase spare permits from someone else. In this way, the companies with the lowest cost of emission reduction are able to sell this service to someone for whom it would be more expensive.

‘C-Questor specialises in the implementation of ‘clean’ or ‘green’ projects that qualify for the creation of Carbon Credits under the various protocols associated with the Kyoto Treaty.’

As well as the legally mandated markets, there is also the voluntary offset sector where companies and individuals agree to pay for carbon reducing activities elsewhere to balance out their own emissions. A range of similar measures operate in certain other parts of the world. The climate exchanges operate on the basis of cap and trade. An offshoot of the above trading is the Clean Development Mechanism, where a company in a developed nation obtains emission permits by paying for energy efficiency, renewable power generation, or forest preservation as a carbon sink in a developing country.

Specific Aims
As with everything done under the C-Questor umbrella, the aim is to facilitate the fight against global warming by encouraging energy efficiency, renewable energy, and carbon sequestration. In this case, we will actively market the carbon credits obtained for work carried out by our franchisees. As well as this, we aim to launch a range of credit cards where carbon offsets are obtained each time the card is used, and we aim to encourage companies and individuals to purchase voluntary carbon offsets to provide funds with which we can implement various carbon reducing strategies.

In many of our markets, a secondary benefit of the use of carbon credits will be to assist with habitat and bio-diversity preservation, and open up new possibilities, such as sustainable cultivation and  harvesting of medicinal and other valuable plants within a diverse and vibrant forest. C-Questor believes that eventually, new financial instruments will be developed to reward forest services, such as water purification, rain generation, and biodiversity, in which case, we aim to take full advantage of such markets to further encourage forestry and other habitat restoration projects.