How does investor sentiment toward sustainability in 2025 compare with five years ago?
From a European perspective, the EU is still very focused on the energy transition. In that context, what we’re doing around carbon markets and Puro.earth is very relevant. In that space, investment and engagement are similar or even higher than five years ago, and we continue to see an escalation in activity.
For example, in voluntary carbon markets, we’re seeing negative emissions projects starting to scale up more significantly to support the transition. That’s encouraging.
What are the biggest risks investors and companies face when putting money into these sustainable transition and carbon markets?
Looking at the carbon removal markets, we are still early, even though the market has been around for a while. We’re investing in new technologies, and as always in innovation phases, there’s a risk that the tech doesn’t deliver as expected.
That’s why collaboration between public funding, incentives, and private capital is critical. This transition requires both public and private efforts—neither can succeed without the other.
Why is standardization in pricing and registries so critical to making carbon trading more credible and efficient?
The market is at a stage where we need a lot of investments to move these projects from pilots to full-scale production of negative emissions.
One of the most important tools to allocate capital is the offtake agreement—a buyer's commitment to purchase future output from a specific facility. That kind of demand signal helps justify the investment needed to scale production. At Nasdaq and Puro.earth, we’re working with other stakeholders in the market to standardize offtakes and make them more transparent and bankable. That helps projects get financed, much like we saw in renewable energy markets, where offtake agreements played a big role.
In terms of scaling and bringing things to market, there are definitely similarities in how the carbon market and the renewable energy markets develop. Offtake agreements have proven to be key in supporting financing and allocating capital, both in renewables and now in carbon.
Nasdaq Stockholm is positioned as a key platform for financing the sustainable economy. How are you helping companies access funding, particularly through your debt market?
This year marks the anniversary of Nasdaq’s Sustainable Bond Market in Stockholm, which was the first to launch a sustainable bond market back in 2015.
Bonds play a crucial role in capital markets as financial tools. Our sustainable bond market here in Europe has now raised a cumulative €80 billion to date in funding for companies and organizations since launch, critical financing to enable this transition.
What are the key barriers to scaling carbon markets today, and what policy changes would help overcome them?
To scale carbon removal markets, we need coordinated efforts from both policymakers and industry bodies like SBTi and ICVCM. SBTi gives corporate guidance on how to use carbon credits, and ICVCM helps define frameworks for quality and trust around carbon credits. But those industry initiatives need to be paired with clear policy direction to create the right incentives. In Europe, for example, EU is exploring how to connect voluntary carbon markets with compliance markets.
It would help to create a common framework defining how companies should reduce emissions and use removals to address the rest. We already have the European Emissions Trading System, EU ETS, in place to drive emission reductions and pricing. Now we need to integrate voluntary removals as a tool within that framework. In Europe, we’ve seen the EU Commission begin to implement the Carbon Removal Certification Framework, which is an important starting point for recognizing removal credits. The next discussion is whether credits certified under that framework can be used within the compliance system, perhaps to cover 5% or 10% of a company’s obligations. We’re engaged in that and supportive of moving it forward.
Beyond policy, what role does infrastructure play in scaling climate solutions, and what impact could integration deliver?
In the carbon market, collaboration is key between policymakers, industry bodies, and different market participants. One important enabler for collaboration is better technology infrastructure.
The carbon market today suffers from a very fragmented infrastructure. With more advanced technology, we could integrate better between market players like liquidity pools, brokers, registries, and different types of carbon markets. The big goal is to reach the 1.5°C target. That means scaling renewables, negative emissions, and cutting CO₂ across sectors. For these markets to work, we need trust—that comes from policy, industry standards, and transparency. And we need tech to make the markets less fragmented and more functional.
