LONDON- Trading companies Hartree Partners, Mercuria and Vitol all participated in the first trades of CME’s new carbon offset futures contracts, broker Evolutions Markets, which facilitated the trade, said on Monday.

CME launched the Global Emissions Offset (GEO) contract on Monday to help establish a global price for voluntary carbon credits that are currently traded on a mostly project-by-project basis. 

The voluntary carbon offset market is expected to grow rapidly over the next few years as more companies seek to buy offsets to meet their climate targets. urn:newsml:reuters.com:*:nL1N2KW0PE

The trade was a partial strip comprising 10,000 offsets for June 2021 delivery at $2.00 and 10,000 for Sept. 2021 delivery at $2.05, Evolution said in a statement.

Each offset represents one metric tonne of carbon dioxide reduction.

Hartree Partners was the seller of the offsets while Mercuria bought the June contracts and Vitol bought the September contracts, Evolution said.

(Reporting by Susanna Twidale; editing by Jason Neely) ((susanna.twidale@thomsonreuters.com; +44 207 5424753;))