Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Limited (ANZ) has completed the first use-case of carbon credit trading as part of Australia's central bank digital currency (CBDC) pilot, the Melbourne headquartered bank said Wednesday.

Australia's CBDC pilot, run by the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) and the Digital Finance Cooperative Research Centre (DFCRC), began last year to explore use cases for a CBDC. The DFCRC is a 180 million Australian dollar (US$124.3 million) program funded by industry partners, universities and the Australian Government.

ANZ partnered with Grollo Carbon Ventures to trade Australian Carbon Credit Units (ACCU), which are issued by the Australian Government’s Clean Energy Regulator.

ANZ and GCV tested real-world ACCUs by first tokenizing existing ACCUs. ANZ's own stablecoin (A$DC) was then used to purchase the tokenized ACCUs. Australia's Pilot CBDC was used as a risk-free asset to support the issuance of A$DC, the announcement said.

Tokenization of carbon markets can reduce settlement time and partnership risk and provide incentives for investment in climate solutions.

The RBA has revealed a set of projects to test use cases for its CBDC. Partners for the pilot projects include Mastercard, Monoova, the Australian Bond Exchange, DigiCash, Commonwealth Bank and others.

Regulations Australia Carbon Emissions CBDC ANZ

Amitoj Singh

Amitoj Singh is a CoinDesk reporter focusing on regulation and the politics shaping the future of finance. He also presents shows for CoinDesk TV on occasion. He has previously contributed to various news organizations such as CNN, Al Jazeera, Business Insider and SBS Australia. Previously, he was Principal Anchor and News Editor at NDTV (New Delhi Television Ltd.), the go-to news network for Indians globally. Amitoj owns a marginal amount of Bitcoin and Ether below CoinDesk's disclosure threshold of $1,000.