Intercontinental Exchange, Inc. (NYSE:ICE), one of the world's leading providers of financial market technology and data powering global capital markets, and the world’s largest operator of environmental and energy derivatives markets, today announced the launch of ICE GreenTrace™, an environmental registry technology service to bring cutting edge financial market infrastructure and technology to carbon credit registries for the first time. ICE GreenTrace™ supports the life cycle of environmental instruments, including carbon credits, emission allowances and energy attribute certificates.
Winrock International's Environmental Resources Trust (ERT) has migrated its registry operations onto ICE GreenTrace™. As launch partner, ERT now leverages the new platform to power its world-leading crediting programs, ACR (formerly American Carbon Registry), the Architecture for REDD+ Transactions (ART), and the Standard for the Transformation of the Electric Power Sector (STEPS).
The migration of ACR and ART to ICE GreenTrace™ was one of the most complex transitions ever undertaken in the carbon credit market. The team transferred over two and a half decades of GHG emission reduction and removal credits and associated data and documentation. Approximately 437 million serialized credits and over 40,000 documents and files were migrated from 1,162 projects and programs to 857 Registry Account Holders from issuance to retirement.
“ERT’s migration to ICE GreenTrace™ is a landmark moment for carbon markets,” said Gordon Bennett, Managing Director of Utility Markets at ICE. “ACR was founded in 1996 as the world’s first carbon crediting program, and ERT has now moved its three programs to ICE so that they are operated on the same technology stack that powers globally systemic financial infrastructure and operates under the strictest financial regulations in the world.”
“ICE was founded on the vision that analogue markets could be transformed through digital infrastructure. For over two decades, ICE has built the network that prices and transfers risk for environmental markets. ICE GreenTrace™ extends ICE's digital network to carbon credits, from inception to retirement, creating the foundation for carbon credits to scale and become an institutional asset class,” continued Bennett.
“ICE GreenTrace™ is a leap forward in leveraging ICE’s trusted financial market infrastructure to scale carbon markets,” said Mary Grady, CEO of Environmental Resources Trust. “Our globally recognized crediting programs – ACR and ART – are now positioned to meet the demands of institutional investors around the world. We are incredibly excited about what this will enable for the evolution of carbon markets globally.”
For the first time, ICE GreenTrace™ provides carbon market participants with access to a registry technology service operated by ICE, where participants can benefit from ICE’s deep expertise in operating platforms with differing regulatory reporting across multiple jurisdictions, as well as differing data requirements, timelines and legal obligations.
ICE’s environmental markets underpin price discovery across five cap-and-trade programs globally, as well as the world’s first exchange-traded CORSIA Phase 1 and Phase 2 Eligible Emissions Units futures contracts, which recognize ACR and ART among eligible crediting programs. In 2025, a record 20.9 million environmental contracts traded on ICE, equivalent to over $1 trillion in notional value for the fifth consecutive year, with $117 billion physically delivered to multiple registries.
To find out more about ICE GreenTrace™, please visit www.ice.com/energy/environmental/ice-greentrace or contact GreenTrace@ICE.com.
Visit the ACR and ART registries on ICE GreenTrace™: https://greentrace.ice.com/acr and https://greentrace.ice.com/art.
