Digitizing Environmental Commodities with Xpansiv

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Dec 18, 2023

John Melby, CEO at Xpansiv, discusses environmental commodities, registries, commodity marketplaces, and financial incentives for promoting environmental outcomes. Xpansiv operates the largest carbon offset exchange, covering 40% of the voluntary carbon market volumes. They also provide infrastructure for trading various environmental commodities. The podcast covers topics such as offset standards, buyer preferences, standardized contracts, market efficiency, pricing offsets, institutional customer base, traders, voluntary vs compliance markets, double counting prevention, and startup trading strategies.

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Introduction

00:00 • 2min

Environmental Commodities and Xpansiv: Driving Positive Environmental Outcomes

01:39 • 21min

The Role of Liquidity Providers in the Market for Environmental Commodities

22:43 • 2min

The Process of Buying and Selling Carbon Credits in the Marketplace

24:44 • 2min

The Process of Bundling and Retiring Environmental Commodities

27:06 • 2min

Environmental Claims and Compliance Markets

28:38 • 16min

Incentivizing Environmental Actions and the Story of Xpansiv

45:05 • 4min

John Melby is CEO at Xpansiv. Xpansiv operates what they claim to be the largest carbon offset exchange in the world, purportedly covering 40% of the voluntary carbon market volumes and 90% of exchange traded volumes. Beyond carbon, Xpansiv provides global market infrastructure for registering, managing, trading, settling, retiring, analyzing, and reporting a wide array of data-driven environmental commodities, from water to renewable energy to digital fuels and more.

John and Cody have an in-depth conversation about what it means for something to be an environmental commodity, how these environmental commodities are bought and sold, how registries exist, how commodity marketplaces work, and a lot more. At the end of the day, our conversation is about incentives and the role that financial services can play in enablement of environmental outcomes.

In this episode, we cover:

[02:11]: An introduction to Xpansiv
[03:04] How registries and marketplaces differ
[05:46] How standards ensure offset quality
[08:28] Offset buyer preferences beyond carbon impact
[10:00] Xpansiv's standardized offset contracts
[11:49] How standardization enables market efficiency
[15:41] Pricing offsets based on special attributes
[18:26] Xpansiv's institutional customer base
[23:42] The role of traders in providing market liquidity
[29:09] A comparison of voluntary and compliance markets
[32:35] Preventing double counting at the international level
[34:00] How startups can use bilateral and exchange trading
[37:00] Xpansiv's portfolio management system
[39:22] Water rights trading in Australia
[41:16] Using markets to efficiently allocate resources
[46:19] The origins of Xpansiv

Episode recorded on Nov 14, 2023 (Published on Dec 18, 2023)

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*Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant