Center for Green Market Activation Announces Launch

June 12, 2024 (Washington, DC) – Today, the Center for Green Market Activation (GMA) launched as a new non-profit dedicated to harnessing corporate net zero ambition in hard-to-decarbonize sectors and jump-starting new markets for green fuels and materials. GMA is building on models developed by the Sustainable Aviation Buyers Alliance (SABA), a joint initiative of RMI and the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), and the Zero Emission Maritime Buyers Alliance (ZEMBA), run by the Aspen Institute. Working closely with those key partners as well as the Smart Freight Centre and many others, GMA will engage companies willing to pay a premium for decarbonized goods and services and aggregate their demand to catalyze the adoption of low-carbon technologies within the hardest to decarbonize industries. Through GMA, companies seeking to reduce their suppliers’ emissions have an accessible, high integrity pathway to direct low-carbon investment deep within their value chain where it is needed most.

“GMA is scaling a proven model for raising critical capital in service of deep decarbonization in high emitting sectors, including aviation, trucking, concrete, and chemicals,” said Kim Carnahan, CEO of the Center for Green Market Activation. “Other organizations have successfully driven companies to set ambitious climate targets. GMA’s focus is turning those targets into bankable contracts.”

A US-based nonprofit organization, GMA received inaugural funding from the Bezos Earth Fund, and its programs are supported by grants from several other organizations. It focuses on high emitting sectors of the economy where decarbonization is particularly challenging due to the current high cost and limited availability of alternatives, and where the current pace of change is far from sufficient to reach climate goals. These critical, carbon-intensive sectors will require deployment of new technologies and significant capital to decarbonize, as well as strong demand signals to encourage commercial scale production. GMA’s programs are specifically designed to enable scalability at speed.

“The GMA team has been essential to ZEMBA’s success, from their technical expertise on alternative fuels and book-and-claim to their vision for widespread impact,” said Ingrid Irigoyen, CEO of ZEMBA and Senior Director, Ocean and Climate for the Aspen Institute. “We are eager to continue our collaboration and build on our great work together so far.”

GMA is an organization that enables broad cross-sector innovation, financing, and climate action by member companies through engagement with multiple sector-specific programs under a single umbrella. It leverages common infrastructure and the GMA team’s unique experience partnering with leading environmental non-profits and standard-setting organizations to design and stand up systems that channel funding towards high-quality, game-changing green technologies. Through participation in collective procurement programs for physical goods or environmental attribute certificates (EACs), members can address their Scope 3 emissions while benefiting from the quality assurance and economies of scale offered by GMA. GMA also supports suppliers of decarbonized goods and services by aggregating demand that represents a new, secure revenue stream.

“RMI has found that strong aggregated demand signals are critical to shifting and shaping the market for much needed low carbon solutions within the transportation and heavy industries sectors,” said Bryan Fisher, Managing Director of RMI. “The radical collaboration that we’ve been facilitating through demand platforms like SABA is critical to spark the investment needed for new technology and infrastructure deployment in these yet-to-decarbonize sectors. We look forward to deepening our work with GMA to further activate and organize demand.”

The GMA team has served as the Secretariat of SABA since its inception in 2021 and as strategic and technical advisors to the ZEMBA team throughout the process of designing its first tender. In addition to maintaining those roles, GMA will run programs for heavy duty trucking, cement and concrete, and chemicals, with plans to expand to other sectors in the future. A collective procurement for zero emission trucking is expected to be issued later this year. GMA ensures that all procurement it supports meets rigorous environmental standards, including third party verification.

“To decarbonize today’s economy – especially in challenging sectors such as aviation and maritime shipping – we need to rapidly ramp up funding for solutions with the greatest environmental integrity,” said Angela Churie Kallhauge, Executive Vice President for Impact at EDF. “Organizations like GMA, working with trusted partners like EDF, are instrumental to shaping the markets for green fuels, safeguarding against greenwashing, and ensuring that new technologies genuinely benefit both people and the planet.”

In addition to CEO Kim Carnahan, GMA’s leadership team includes Ellen Palmer as Chief Finance & Operations Officer, Andre de Fontaine as Senior Director of Programs, and Kari Pederson as Chief of Staff and Senior Advisor.

“To spur new green markets, we need a new breed of climate action focused on deployment,” said Christoph Wolff, CEO of Smart Freight Centre. “Leveraging the Smart Freight Centre’s normative accounting framework and close partnership with global shippers active in decarbonizing their logistics, we are excited to partner with GMA to jointly aggregate shipper demand for the environmental attributes of zero-emission trucks and therefore accelerate the deployment of zero-emission trucks.”

GMA’s work will leverage the efforts of the Advanced and Indirect Mitigation (AIM) Platform, a partnership with C2ES and Gold Standard focused on developing a standard and guidance for accounting, claiming, and reporting the impacts of value chain interventions towards corporate climate targets. The AIM Platform’s draft criteria is currently out for public comment and can be accessed at AIMPlatform.org.

Companies interested in becoming members or joining any of GMA’s sector initiatives are encouraged to visit www.gmacenter.org or email info@gmacenter.org.

About Center for Green Market Activation

The Center for Green Market Activation (GMA) is a US-based, globally focused non-profit. Through innovative book-and-claim systems, new and creative procurement approaches, and demand aggregating buyers’ alliances, GMA catalyzes and scales the uptake of low-carbon goods and services within carbon intensive industries such as aviation, maritime, trucking, cement and concrete, and chemicals. With collective decades of experience in environmental markets and alternative fuels and materials, GMA works to standardize new, green markets and forges mutually beneficial partnerships between climate-focused companies, suppliers, and mission-aligned non-profit organizations to channel funding to critical climate technologies in pursuit of accelerated sectoral decarbonization. For more information, please visit gmacenter.org.

Media inquiries should be directed to pr@gmacenter.org.