Promethium Carbon wins Best Project Implementer award

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Danette Breitenbach

The carbon and climate change advisory firm, Promethium Carbon, has received an award as the Best Project Implementer of the British High Commission's Prosperity Fund.

The Prosperity Fund supports projects across Southern Africa with a total budget of £700,000. This fund aims to support projects which create the conditions for global growth by advancing South Africa's development in the realms of business environment, open economy, energy, climate change, illegal wildlife trade, education and science/innovation.

Promethium Carbon implemented a project with Prosperity Fund support in 2014 and 2015 in which the design of a carbon trading platform in South Africa was considered. The outcome of the project was a showcasing of a pilot trade of carbon on the JSE on 29 January 2015.

Applicability and functionality

The trading demonstrated the applicability, functionality, utility and readiness of the well-established commercial and financial electronic infrastructure provided by Silocerts (a South African private sector commodity registry) and the JSE as a potential platform for the exchange of carbon offsets in South Africa.

"This showed that the required infrastructure to trade carbon exists in South Africa. Market readiness for carbon trading is relevant within the South African context as developing government policy, with respect to both carbon tax and carbon budgets, allow for the potential use of offsets to mitigate the carbon liability of emitters," Robbie Louw, a director of Promethium Carbon, said.

"The successful development of a carbon market will result in significant benefits to the domestic economy with respect to green growth, green job creation and climate change mitigation."