Current catchment markets
A Catchment Market is an online marketplace where Nature-based Projects can be sold, and credits for the Environmental Services delivered by these Projects can be bought.
EnTrade's markets make it easier for:
- landholders to earn money from delivering nature-based projects such as woodlands, wetlands and arable reversion to grassland
- businesses to meet their environmental goals by purchasing environmental credits, including for nutrient mitigation, carbon sequestration and biodiversity gain.
If you are interested in participating in one of our markets then please follow the links below to get more information,
Somerset Catchment Market
The Somerset Catchment Market Pilot is working with its Defra and its agencies for innovative projects that could contribute to a Green Economic Recovery.
The pilot phase of the Market will focus on buying Nature-based Projects and selling Phosphorus mitigation and Carbon credits in two broad areas of the Somerset Levels and Moors
Bristol Avon Catchment Market
The Bristol Avon Catchment Market is being delivered through a collaboration between Avon Wildlife Trust, Wiltshire Wildlife Trust and EnTrade.
The Avon and the Wiltshire Wildlife Trusts and EnTrade are working together to create a market that delivers local, high-impact and verified projects to restore nature and deliver a range of environmental services such as increased biodiversity, carbon reduction and natural flood management.
Solent Nutrient Market Pilot
The Solent Nutrient Market Pilot is testing the use of an online nutrient trading platform and associated trading processes, rules and governance to:
- support landowners to make long-term land-use changes in the Test and Itchen Catchment that reduce nitrogen pollution and deliver wider environmental benefits; and
- enable new developments to meet the requirement to deliver Nutrient Neutrality on protected sites.
How the markets work
EnTrade has successfully set up markets for a range of environmental services, including nutrient mitigation, biodiversity, natural flood management and carbon abatement.
During a market round:
- Landholders make offers for the minimum payment they need to carry out a nature-based project; and
- Buyers enter bids stating their maximum payment to secure the credits for environmental services they need.
Once Supplier Offers and Buyer bids have been received, an independent market settlement process is used to determine the combination of offers and bids that most efficiently matches project supply with the demand for each credit type.
How we ensure market integrity
In order to participate in the market, nature-based projects must meet approved standards using up-to-date metrics so that buyers can be confident that the credits will be accepted by relevant authorities.
The market settlement process has been designed in collaboration with experts from Exeter University to ensure fair payments for both buyers and sellers, with any surplus shared equitably between participants.
Legally binding contracts are put in place with project suppliers to ensure that the projects will be maintained throughout the lifetime of the project.
The EnTrade platform
Since 2016, EnTrade has conducted over 30 separate trading events and invested over £1 million in IT and software development to produce a highly configurable online trading platform which can support trade across a range of different project types, environmental services and market settlement rules.
The user-friendly platform makes it easy for landholders to submit their project offers, and organisations to make their bids for environmental credits.
The EnTrade platform is used to register to participate in the market, register projects, submit project offers, bid for environmental credits, and check on the status of the market you are interested in.
Other market events
Before the development of the Catchments Markets, EnTrade ran schemes for single buyers of nature-based projects from multiple project suppliers in specific geographies.
Examples include:
- Anglian Water source protection
- Affinity Water and Cambridge Water nutrient and pesticide reduction
- Poole Harbour nutrient and biodiversity outcomes.
- District licensing newt pond auctions.
Details of all EnTrade schemes are detailed by news items that we publish on our Latest insights page
For organisations (environmental credit buyers)
EnTrade’s market-led approach gives organisations a way to:
- Demonstrate leadership in driving nature’s recovery
- Comply with regulatory and planning requirements, such as nutrient neutrality and biodiversity net gain
- Meet consumer and employee expectations that organisations will play a role in restoring nature
- Build resilience in a changing policy environment
We are available to discuss how one of our markets can help you achieve your environmental goals.