The fight against climate change demands the world´s urgent attention. The worst part: emission levels continue to increase, and we need to act now! The less bad part and my key takeaway after spending a week at COP27: companies, NGOs and other key stakeholders are getting the message and understands that collaboration between public and private sector is needed to manage the situation.

This is key, as the transition to a low-carbon environment requires a collective effort across governments, the corporate community, and broader society.

And while reducing carbon emissions remains the most critical action, we also need carbon removal technologies that physically capture carbon from the atmosphere, stabilize it, and place it in durable storage for thousands of years.

On the back of credible sources such as the IPCC and the Oxford Net Zero initiative, we at Nasdaq strongly believes that carbon removals will play a key role in the transition towards a net zero economy. In fact, experts say that to get global warming back under the 1.5-degree goal of the Paris Agreement, 5-7 gigatons of carbon needs to be removed annually from the atmosphere by 2050.

Nasdaq is most known to people as an operator of markets and provider of technology. As such, Nasdaq is able to help accelerate the climate journey by supporting capital allocation, price discovery and transparency. With our direct relationship with the over 5,000 companies that trade on Nasdaq´s exchanges across the globe, we are on the frontlines of corporate efforts to reduce carbon emissions and implement sustainability strategies.

But Nasdaq also has a more direct involvement in world of climate and carbon. In 2021, we acquired a majority stake in Puro.earth, a carbon removal platform and one of the most innovative companies in the area of engineered carbon removals.

Platforms like Puro.earth are essential to help projects and suppliers of net negative emissions to monetize it production and get access to financing, to be able to scale up to meet the increasing demand from both corporates and nations.

As any other market, there is a simple correlation between supply and demand. As an example, once Stockholm Exergi are ready to start producing negative emissions, they will need a well-functioning market that provide them with price transparency, credible standards as well a registry of the different projects in order to avoid double accounting and greenwashing. This is where Nasdaq and Puro.earth aim to be part of the solution.

My key takeaway from Egypt is that in order to turn climate change around, we need more collaboration between public sector and the private markets allowing them to interact with each other in order to reach the only relevant target: to remove as much CO2 from the atmosphere as possible to fight climate change.

Innovation and ideas along with capital are key success factors, and with Nasdaq´s resources, experiences of building global markets, market integrity and wide network of corporate clients, I believe that we will be able to make a real difference.

Fredrik Ekström

Fredrik Ekström is President of Nasdaq Stockholm as well as globally responsible for Nasdaq´s carbon markets. He is also Chairman of Puro.earth. For more information about Nasdaq and its presence at COP27, please visit their COP27 website. To find out more about Puro.earth, please visit their website.