US investment bank JP Morgan has won three out of eight categories in Environmental Finance’s survey of the voluntary carbon markets.

The bank and its recent acquisitions, EcoSecurities and ClimateCare, were voted respectively Best Trading Company, Best Project Developer and Best Offset Retailer by the readers of Environmental Finance magazine.

The Best Broker category in the survey, conducted in December, was won by Evolution Markets, with Baker & McKenzie voted Best Law Firm and Markit Best Registry Provider. TÜV SÜD was voted Best Verification Company, while German carbon asset manager First Climate took most votes for Best Advisory.

More than 500 votes were received in the survey which was, for the first time this year, conducted separately from Environmental Finance and Carbon Finance’s annual market survey, which polls readers on mandatory carbon markets, renewable energy finance, weather risk management, and sulphur and nitrogen oxides allowance markets. Those results were announced in December.

Environmental Finance defines ‘voluntary carbon’ as carbon credits bought or sold to help organisations or individuals offset carbon emissions where they are not required by regulation to do so. This may be to help meet self-imposed emissions goals, or to gain experience ahead of carbon regulations – an important part of the voluntary carbon market in the US.

“JP Morgan has certainly built a strong franchise in the voluntary carbon space with its acquisitions of ClimateCare in 2008 and, last November, of EcoSecurities,” said Mark Nicholls, editor of Environmental Finance magazine. “But the real question is whether it can turn this investment into a strong position in the much larger, and much more lucrative, mandatory markets.”

The results are published in the February 2010 issue of Environmental Finance.


Source: www.environmental-finance.com/onlinews/0211win.htmlhttp://www.carbon-financeonline.com