A year after Malaysia’s Bursa Carbon Exchange (BCX) became the world’s first Shariah compliant platform to trade carbon credits, continuous trading on a daily basis has been extended to renewable energy certificates (RECs) as of the 9th September 2024.
This development includes facilitating off-market transactions, for these extra products had become additional asset classes, investment opportunities and trading choices offered on BCX – after the inaugural RECs auction was conducted in June 2024.
The inaugural auction was for the Malaysia Hydropower REC Contract (HREC) – which represents the generation of one megawatt-hour (MWh) of renewable energy from a domestic hydropower source.
The 268,800 HREC 2024 (HRECv24) units auction was conducted on the 25th June 2024, tied to the Murum Hydroelectric Plant, managed by Sarawak Energy, and these were purchased by 15 industrial buyers at the calibrated bid price of RM4.5 (US$0.96) per contract.
BCX – one of only eight exchanges accredited globally by the I-TRACK Foundation (formerly known as I-REC Standard Foundation) – also reserved potential offerings for the 2022 and 2023 vintages with respective product codes of HRECv22 and HRECv23.
Another two RECs offered on the BCX are the Malaysia Solar REC Contract (SREC) and the Malaysia Bioenergy REC Contract (BREC), representing 1MWh of renewable energy respectively from domestic solar power generation and bio-energy sources.
While each contract comes with vintages of 2022, 2023 and 2024 – for a cumulative total of nine REC categories which may be offered on BCX – the continuous trading facility currently in operation only deals in the HRECv24, SRECv23 and BRECv23 units.
BCX CEO Muhamad Umar Swift said the product range will allow local corporates to obtain “environmental assets such as RECs and carbon credits, supporting their commitment to reducing carbon footprints and promoting renewable energy and decarbonisation projects”.
“Enabling the trading of RECs encourages more renewable energy projects by making them more financially viable and attractive to investors.”
