Mikkel Larsen, the chief sustainability officer of Singapore’s DBS Bank, has joined carbon credits platform Climate Impact X (CIX) as chief executive officer. He will continue to be based in Singapore, where CIX was set up as a global voluntary carbon exchange by the Singapore Exchange, DBS, Standard Chartered Bank and state investment firm Temasek earlier this year.
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Larsen’s role will involve working with technology partners to build up its project marketplace and exchange platforms and developing a pipeline of carbon credit projects to feature on its platforms. He has been acting as interim CEO for CIX since May 2021.
In October, CIX completed a pilot auction of a curated portfolio of high-quality carbon credits, where it cleared 170,000 tonnes of carbon credits from eight projects spanning Africa, Asia and Latin America.
Larsen’s appointment marks a departure from the bank he joined nine years ago, initially as global head of tax and accounting policies. He was appointed chief sustainability officer in 2017.
DBS did not share who would be coming in as the bank’s new CSO, but said a replacement had been secured.
In 2020, Larsen was appointed as the DBS lead for the working group of the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD), an international effort to help corporates report and act on nature-related risks, and redirect finance towards nature-positive initiatives. He was involved in Singapore’s Emerging Stronger Taskforce to work out how to bring about a carbon-conscious society.
In a statement, he said: “The carbon market is going through a transition. We have a unique opportunity to establish a trusted market that can both help preserve the crucially important existing carbon sinks while developing new ones.”
Larsen was named in the Eco-Business A-List, which recognises Asia Pacific’s most influential sustainability practitioners, in 2020.
