Catalytic Market Instruments for Green Innovation

The workshop convened ~70 participants to stress-test whether Environmental Attribute Certificates (EACs) — issued by Green Market Makers (GMMs) — can credibly catalyze green commodity markets for hard-to-abate sectors (i.e., steel, ammonia, cement and concrete, shipping, aviation). Six speakers provided their insights on GMMs and EACs: Florian Berg (MIT), Saman Baghestani (S3 Markets), Andrew Alcorta (GMA), Nabil Bennouna (RMI), Sean Chu (Amazon), and Jonathan Broyles (MIT). Three breakouts probed: (1) trust and the risk of backlash, (2) the business case for early demand, and (3) whether eligibility for EACs should hinge on a path to cost-competitiveness. 

• The paradox. A carbon-negative cement producer described declining EAC offers, because unbundling the carbon attribute would leave them with only a novel material in a deeply conservative market. This points at a broader question: when is selling the attribute strategically self-defeating for early-stage innovators? 
• The SBTi bottleneck. Multiple voices treated SBTi recognition as the rate-limiter on voluntary demand, with an estimated five-year horizon to incentive recognition.
• Local vs. global baselines. North American buyers flagged that globally-derived baselines can exclude regionally-relevant technologies — a baseline-design problem rather than a methodology
• First-mover reward mechanics. Preferential buying, secondary-market access, and “ahead-of-regulation” optionality were named as more concrete motivators than reputation alone.