Project on how to leverage Geneva’s Oil Trading Platform to an Alternative Energy Trading Platform renewable energy using the Internet

Project on how to leverage Geneva’s Oil Trading Platform to an Alternative Energy Trading Platform renewable energy using the Internet

Geneva ties with London as Europe’s Number One oil trading hub with roughly one-third or about 700 million tons per year of the world’s free oil trade in terms of physical trade. Also about 75% of Russian exports of crude oil and oil products are managed through Geneva. Of the 85 million barrels per day of crude oil consumed daily, we estimate that about 30 million barrels are traded internationally. To this volume, which corresponds to about 1.5 billion tons annually, one should add about 600,000 tons of refined products (corresponding to the quantity transported by sea).

The typical trader based in Geneva buys a commodity from a producer and sells it to an importer or final user, moving the commodity from one location to another. The trader’s expertise is in transport, logistics, financial instruments and risk management. The more the trader manages the logistics in purchasing further upstream and selling further downstream, the more he can obtain a competitive advantage. Geneva’s trading companies tend to specialize in certain commodities, for example, in oil and/or gas, steel or in such “soft” commodities as grains, vegetable oils and oilseeds, rice, coffee, sugar, ethanol, cotton or paper pulp and paper. Interestingly, we see that both oil and sugar traders, for different reasons, are starting to expand into trading ethanol.

World Trade Center Geneva, WISekey and the OISTE Foundation in Geneva are presently working with the Global Clinton Initiative and the Global Climate Summit to develop a an electronic trading platform for renewable energy credits, the first of its kind within the environmental brokerage community http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS127879+24-Nov-2008+PRN20081124 .

The objective will be to leverage the position of Geneva as a world trading hub to become the hub for an electronic trading platform for renewable energy
Credits. The platform will be based on existing WISekey technology using the Internet http://www.netcarbonoffset.com . The electronic trading platform for renewable energy provides a real-time forum for buyers and sellers of renewable energy credits (RECs) to review available inventory and place bids or offers for all tradable REC programs from a single location.

This market is totally unregulated as alternative energy generators, resellers, marketers, and other parties interested in renewable energy credits trading only rely on more fragmented, intrusive "voice brokerage" channels to
identify inventories and counterparties for REC purchases and sales.

By locating this electronic trading platform for renewable energy in Geneva will allow organizations located in the city and new one moving to Geneva to speed, and centralization to a burgeoning albeit complicated and fragmented
Market. Renewable energy credits, also called "green tags", are tradable environmental commodities issued by an appropriate oversight entity to represent a set amount of energy produced (typically 1,000 kilowatt hours) from renewable natural resources, such as solar, wind and biomass.