Search
Choose an account to sign in:

CBL provides access to the world’s energy and environmental markets. With a vision of bringing efficiency, transparency and liquidity to environmental markets, we connect buyers and sellers around the world to facilitate the secure and seamless trading of products in environmental commodity markets.

Sign In Learn More

H2OX supports efficient, transparent trading of water entitlements and allocations in Australian water markets. By introducing state of the art technology to the sale and purchase of water and associated products, H2OX has streamlined the market, providing independence, efficiency, transparency and 24/7 real-time trading to owners and users of water.

Sign In Learn More

Aviation Carbon Exchange is a partnership between CBL and IATA to provide a marketplace for emissions-compliance obligations under the Carbon Offset Reduction Scheme for International Aviation (CORSIA). CORSIA addresses the increase in total CO2 emissions from international aviation above 2020 levels.

Sign In Learn More

OTX is a leading market-access provider for compulsory stockholding obligations (CSO) tickets—a product related to the oil sector regulation. OTX is rapidly expanding into markets for renewable fuels and renewable-fuel certificates.

Sign In Learn More

Environmental Management Account (EMA) is a comprehensive portfolio-management platform with a unique account structure that makes it easy to consolidate and transact environmental commodities across multiple regulatory regimes, all from one intuitive interface.

Sign In Learn More

The JSE Ventures Carbon Market is a comprehensive marketplace for buying and selling carbon and renewable energy credits via Xpansiv CBL, the largest venue for environmental commodities. The marketplace provides direct access to hundreds of live carbon credit and renewable energy certificates (RECs) on a live marketplace with full depth-of-market view and online order types.

Sign In Learn More

By

H2OX Response to ACCC Water Markets Report

SYDNEY, NEW YORK, SAN FRANCISCO — Xpansiv market H2OX welcomes the release of the ACCC’s Murray-Darling Basin Water Markets Inquiry Final Report. We support the ACCC’s recommendations for reform, particularly the establishment of conduct-and-integrity legislation and the creation of a Water Market Agency; H2OX has been calling for regulation since our inception.

While H2OX supports these outcomes, we are disappointed the ACCC didn’t press for broader water-market reform. Many of the report’s recommendations relate to post-trade transparency, which will do little to improve critical aspects of pre-trade transparency, which influences participant decisions. We believe price discovery and liquidity—critical elements of pre-trade transparency—are key for a healthy water market.

Only one ACCC recommendation relates to this issue: the establishment of a Public Facing Water Market Information Platform. Such an idea has been attempted before by way of the National Water Market System and other state-based and private-sector initiatives, resulting in huge costs and limited benefits to most participants. A water-market-information platform is only as good as the data that supplies it, and while the ACCC recommends making significant improvements to post-trade data, pre-trade data—relating to price discovery and liquidity—is reliant on data from intermediaries. With most brokers operating paper-based, over-the-counter markets, the information related to price and water availability will remain opaque.

The ACCC has recommended meaningful, comprehensive reforms that will no doubt improve the water market. In our view, however, too many of these recommendations target only post-trade improvements. These recommendations will result in better historical pricing and volume data, offering a clearer picture to the new regulator, but will provide little benefit to an irrigator trying to discover the price of water and the amount that is available.

H2OX supports much of the ACCC’s final report, but we are concerned that it contains too few improvements to pre-trade transparency. Transparency affects every water transaction and offers the most meaningful improvement to the Murray-Darling Basin water market. By not tackling pre-trade transparency, market participants will still be forced to transact in a market rife with information asymmetry. H2OX is dedicated to the development of a market that offers a level playing field for all participants.

Lex Batters
H2OX CEO

 

About Xpansiv
Xpansiv is the global market for ESG-inclusive commodities. These Intelligent Commodities bring transparency and liquidity to markets, empowering participants to value energy, carbon, and water to meet the challenges of an information-rich, resource-constrained world. The company’s main business units include CBL, the leading spot exchange for ESG commodities, including carbon, renewable energy certificates, and Digital Natural Gas™; H2OX, the leading spot exchange for water in Australia; and XSignals, which provides end-of-day and historical market data. Xpansiv is the digital nexus where ESG and price signals merge. Xpansiv.com

Media Contact:

AU Contact: Michael Mullane, Xpansiv PR Contact—michael.mullane@edelman.com

US Contact: Rob Dalton, Xpansiv VP Communications—rdalton@xpansiv.com