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ICE Partners with ERT to Launch ICE GreenTrace™ its New Environmental Registry Technology Service
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Launch Partner’s leading carbon crediting programs ACR and ART migrated to ICE GreenTrace™, which offers cutting edge financial market infrastructure to the carbon credit market for the first time
LITTLE ROCK—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. 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
https://greentrace.ice.com/art
About Environmental Resources Trust
Environmental Resources Trust (ERT), a nonprofit enterprise of Winrock International, offers trusted solutions to environmental markets to catalyze transformational climate impacts. With the mission of harnessing the power of markets to improve the environment, ERT operates internationally recognized carbon crediting programs, ACR and the Architecture for REDD+ Transactions (ART). Founded in 1996 as the world’s first private carbon registry, ACR has extensive operational experience in global compliance and voluntary carbon markets, having issued 375 million high-quality, verified CO2 emission reduction and removals credits. ART is the leading global carbon market initiative for jurisdictional REDD+, ensuring the social and environmental integrity of climate results from protecting and restoring forests at scale. ART’s growing pipeline of participating jurisdictions currently includes over two dozen governments on five continents covering 400 million hectares of tropical forests. ERT has also developed the Standard for the Transformation of the Electric Power Sector (STEPS), a first-of-a-kind sector-wide carbon crediting standard that aims to incentivize host country planning and policies to deliver long-term structural changes necessary for electric power sector emissions to peak sooner and decline faster to meet Paris Agreement temperature goals.
About Intercontinental Exchange
Intercontinental Exchange, Inc. (NYSE: ICE) is a Fortune 500 company that designs, builds, and operates digital networks that connect people to opportunity. We provide financial technology and data services across major asset classes helping our customers access mission-critical workflow tools that increase transparency and efficiency. ICE’s futures, equity, and options exchanges, including the New York Stock Exchange, and clearing houses help people invest, raise capital and manage risk. We offer some of the world’s largest markets to trade and clear energy and environmental products. Our fixed income, data services and execution capabilities provide information, analytics and platforms that help our customers streamline processes and capitalise on opportunities. At ICE Mortgage Technology, we are transforming U.S. housing finance, from initial consumer engagement through loan production, closing, registration and the long-term servicing relationship. Together, ICE transforms, streamlines, and automates industries to connect our customers to opportunity.
Trademarks of ICE and/or its affiliates include Intercontinental Exchange, ICE, ICE block design, NYSE and New York Stock Exchange. Information regarding additional trademarks and intellectual property rights of Intercontinental Exchange, Inc. and/or its affiliates is located at www.ice.com/privacy-security-center/terms-of-use.
Safe Harbor Statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 — Statements in this press release regarding ICE’s business that are not historical facts are “forward-looking statements” that involve risks and uncertainties. For a discussion of additional risks and uncertainties, which could cause actual results to differ from those contained in the forward-looking statements, see ICE’s Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings, including, but not limited to, the risk factors in ICE’s Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2025, as filed with the SEC on February 5, 2026.