Blackstone invests in environmental commodities exchange platform

Blackstone has invested $400 million in Xpansiv, a global carbon and environmental commodities exchange platform, to accelerate growth in environmental commodities.

The partnership will help Xpansiv, which connects buyers and sellers of environmental commodities and provides market data, further support companies seeking to meet environmental and emissions reduction goals by scaling markets and products.

This will enable Xpansiv to accelerate the energy transition across renewable energy, digital fuels, and beyond.

Environmental commodities are a “critical new asset class that must scale exponentially” to meet climate change mitigation targets, according to Bilal Khan, senior managing director at Blackstone.

Additionally, Xpansiv will have the capital to continue its growth across both organic initiatives and future acquisitions.

In 2021, Xpansiv made three acquisitions: aggregator of solar renewable energy certificates SRECTrade, energy investment execution provider HVB and market access provider OTX.

The acquisition of OTX allowed Xpansiv to expand into Europe.

The firm has also invested in APX, a provider of registry infrastructure for energy and environmental markets.

David Foley, global head of Blackstone Energy Partners, commented: “As a private equity investor in the dynamic energy transition market, we proactively seek out companies with entrepreneurial management teams that are well positioned to benefit from fundamental long-term trends.”

According to Foley, as more corporations make net-zero commitments, there is an increasing need to efficiently connect them with — and indirectly provide funding for — the most efficient, high-quality developers of CO₂ reduction projects.