In the global push toward net-zero, green energy and carbon credits are frequently in focus. The market naturally expects these assets to gain new funding channels and liquidity through real-world asset (RWA) tokenisation. When we survey live experiments, clear differences emerge between Europe and Hong Kong in route selection, rollout speed, and structural design.
Beneath these differences lies the core challenge for green-energy and carbon-credit RWAs: how off-chain data becomes trusted and integrated into traditional financial structures. This is the key to commercialisation at scale.
Article Roadmap
- Representative Hong Kong pilots and trends in green energy and carbon credits
- How Europe and Hong Kong diverge in logic and implementation
- A path forward centred on data trust + structured-finance design, and the challenges in Europe’s financial context
1) Hong Kong’s Green-Energy and Carbon-Credit RWAs: Cases and Status
In recent years, Hong Kong regulators, banks, and technology providers have collaborated on pilots spanning asset identification, issuance, clearing, settlement, and liquidity, forming an early end-to-end loop. Illustrative examples include:
Case A: SCBHK + Mox + Libeara pilot for carbon-credit tokens and tokenised deposits
In 2024, Standard Chartered Hong Kong (SCBHK), virtual bank Mox, Mastercard, and Libeara conducted a pilot (POC) under HKMA’s sandbox. Users could swap a deposit in a Mox account for a carbon-credit token, while deposits were also tokenised to enable atomic swaps with the carbon credit. This showcased “asset-on-chain + payments integration,” bringing a carbon token into banking flows and testing settlement between tokenised deposits and tokenised assets.
Case B: Northern Trust + HKMA Project Ensemble for cross-border voluntary carbon credits
Northern Trust, working with Project Ensemble, is piloting a cross-border channel for tokenised voluntary carbon credits, allowing overseas investors to access Hong Kong-traded digital credits and manage the full lifecycle via Northern Trust’s Carbon Ecosystem. This links a local carbon-credit market to international investors.
Case C: Ant Digital’s renewable-energy tokenisation plan
Reports indicate Ant Digital is advancing a large tokenisation programme (~RMB 8bn in renewable-energy assets), including a previously noted project involving ~9,000 EV charging-station revenue rights anchored in Hong Kong, and exploration of solar-infrastructure tokenisation. Ant has also considered DEX trading to enhance liquidity, subject to regulatory approval.
Case D: Hong Kong’s RWA Registry Platform
In August 2025, Hong Kong introduced an RWA registry platform in an initial phase to provide coding, classification, valuation norms, and other baseline infrastructure integrating asset definition, compliance review, and recordation. Positioned as a first-of-its-kind registry for RWA, it supports renewable energy, carbon credits, infrastructure, real estate, and more, aiming to standardise and increase transparency.
These Hong Kong cases share a common feature: they emphasise verifiable data and the potential for financing and liquidity, rather than focusing only on token-issuance proofs of concept. That said, most remain in pilot, sandbox, or proof-of-concept stages, and large, active secondary markets have not yet formed.
2) Europe vs. Hong Kong: Divergent Logic and Delivery Paths
Foundational Logic: Institution vs. Market
- Europe: RWA is seen as a digital extension of TradFi. Supervisors prefer “regulate first, then permit innovation,” stressing legal clarity, asset delineation, and investor protection.
- Hong Kong: RWA is treated as a market-innovation tool to bring green assets into capital markets. Policy leans on open pilots and sandboxes to let market mechanisms iterate.
Implementation Route: Off-Chain Verification + Structured Financing
- Europe: Even in green pilots, Europe tends to combine on-chain registration and settlement with off-chain validation and audit, focusing first on mature, legally clear assets and institutional participants.
- Hong Kong: Seeks to connect the asset, data, and financing layers together through registries, sandboxes, and cross-border channels to ensure credibility and transactability.
Target Outcomes: Efficiency vs. New Tradable Assets
- Europe: Prioritises system efficiency, upgrades, and risk control, improving trading, settlement, and supervisory tooling rather than rebuilding financing ecosystems
- Hong Kong: Prioritises the conversion of real-world assets into tradable, financeable securities, awakening dormant assets and opening fresh capital gateways.
3) Key Challenges: “Data Trust,” “Structural Integration,” and Beyond
Green-energy RWAs and carbon-credit RWAs are among the most typical yet complex scenarios, because they involve both “physical” aspects (power generation, emissions reduction) and “financing/investment processes”. This makes data trustworthiness and structured-product design the core difficulties.
How can off-chain data be made trustworthy? This entails:
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Data reported from devices, monitoring systems, and certification bodies to the blockchain requires reliable oracle mechanisms to prevent tampering, delay, or forgery.
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Multiple data sources (e.g., power operators, sensor networks, third-party auditors) may be needed to verify the same data point.
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Even after data is on-chain, mechanisms should allow traceability back to off-chain evidence so that real-world records can be restored in the event of disputes or compliance reviews.
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If an on-chain datum is proven incorrect or distorted, there must be clear accountability and correction mechanisms.
Hong Kong’s registry platform is intended to address these infrastructure issues by standardising asset registration, classification and coding, and verification processes to improve data transparency and the trust foundation for tokenised assets.
In addition, HKMA’s Project Ensemble includes research into OTC settlement and oracle infrastructure for several asset types, including green bonds, carbon credits, and EV charging stations.
In Hong Kong, institutions such as Northern Trust are also testing cross-border tokenisation of carbon credits, signalling a willingness to invest in trust mechanisms, infrastructure, and institutional design.
Europe offers precedents as well: BIS’s Project Genesis 2.0 proposed a structure in which a carbon-credit forward instrument (MOIs, Mitigation Outcome Instruments) is attached to green bonds, requiring real-time tracking of emissions-reduction data as part of the bond coupon.
This design binds emissions-reduction results (off-chain physical events) to a financial contract (an on-chain bond), requiring trusted data, time synchronisation, and enforceable penalties for non-compliance. It is a conceptual model for green-energy RWAs and carbon-credit RWAs.
Another question is how to integrate on-chain tokens into traditional financial structures: securitisation, custody, and liquidity design.
Even once data trust is achieved, integrating tokenised assets into traditional product architectures still faces multiple challenges:
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In each jurisdiction, it must be clearly defined whether a green-energy token is a security, a commodity, or a derivative.
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Tokenised assets require credible custodians or compliant institutions to hold and settle off-chain rights, so that they are traceable in legal disputes or compliance reviews.
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Tokenised assets need price references, valuation models, and market makers; otherwise liquidity is difficult.
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Entering public markets requires meeting traditional rules such as investor suitability, disclosure, and risk-control reviews.
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For green-energy and carbon-credit RWA projects, credit-enhancement measures (e.g., buy-back clauses, insurance and guarantees) may be needed to attract conservative capital.
Multiple Hong Kong RWA experiments are exploring these aspects. For example, the registry platform seeks to balance legal asset registration and on-chain circulation; Project Ensemble is also exploring settlement channels between tokenised assets and tokenised deposits and wCBDC (wholesale central bank digital currency), enabling capital, assets, and payments to interoperate on-chain. In addition, Hong Kong’s “Declaration 2.0” policy explicitly supports including new energy, EV revenue rights, and carbon credits in the scope of tokenisation. Ant Digital’s energy-asset tokenisation plans also contemplate trading on a decentralised exchange to enhance liquidity (subject to regulatory approval).
In Europe, the tendency is to start with mature securities and then gradually expand to green assets. The approach is to first establish custody providers and compliance-centred platforms, then allow assets to go on-chain, and later introduce market makers and trading mechanisms.
After solving “data trust” and “integration with traditional finance”, further considerations include cross-border connectivity, asset pooling, and financial innovation, including but not limited to:
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Cross-border channels for carbon credits and energy assets: for example, the Northern Trust project in Hong Kong attempts to connect overseas institutions to the local carbon-credit token market, serving as a bridgehead for future global circulation of green assets.
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Asset pooling and securitisation: aggregating multiple small renewable-energy or carbon-credit projects into a pooled vehicle and issuing securitised notes can diversify project risk and improve liquidity.
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Credit enhancement and guarantee mechanisms: providing credit upgrades for early-stage projects (insurance, margin, guarantors) to attract more conservative capital.
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Structured-product design: for example, a hybrid coupon combining green bonds with carbon-credit forwards (similar to the Genesis 2.0 model), or variable-rate products linked to output.
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Standardisation and ratings: similar to traditional credit ratings, third parties should issue rating reports for green RWA projects, assessing risk, sustainability, and data verifiability.
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Tax and incentive policy design: policy support (such as tax benefits and subsidies) can significantly increase project attractiveness—an area where Hong Kong has been relatively proactive.
4) Will Europe move toward a “new financial layer”:
a shift from grafted RWAs to a parallel, institutionalised RWA framework
Europe’s stance is subtly shifting: beyond merely letting new technology enter the old system, policymakers are exploring whether a parallel, regulated digital layer is needed.
Switzerland’s DLT Act recognises DLT-based (ledger) securities with legal parity to traditional securities—an embryonic legal digital layer that remains tethered to FINMA-regulated entities. The EU DLT Pilot Regime creates a sandboxed, parallel market for blockchain exchanges, central securities depositories, and custodians with targeted exemptions. If made permanent after 2026, it would be Europe’s first formal recognition of on-chain market infrastructure operating alongside traditional rails.
Why this matters: green-finance data volumes strain legacy reporting and audit systems, while carbon credits and energy output require real-time, machine-verifiable processes. A parallel digital layer could better ingest and supervise such data, aligning with the Capital Markets Union agenda for deeper, more integrated markets.
Europe’s path is likely slow, steady, and institutional, but once crystallised, it may deliver unmatched legal certainty and cross-border recognition.
Further Reading
I. Green Energy
Green energy refers to energy types that emit little or no greenhouse gases during production and use, and that have minimal environmental impact. It generally comes from renewable natural processes, and is therefore also called renewable energy.
Main types include:
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Solar energy: generating electricity through photovoltaic or thermal conversion.
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Wind energy: using wind power to drive generators and produce electricity.
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Hydropower: converting the potential energy of water flow into electricity.
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Geothermal energy: using heat from the earth’s crust for power or heating.
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Biomass and hydrogen energy: converting energy through organic matter or electrolysis of water.
These energies share the characteristics of being low-carbon, sustainable, and data-rich. Power output, emissions reductions, and storage efficiency can be collected in real time and recorded on chain, making green-energy projects among the asset types best suited for real-world asset tokenisation that enables clear rights and financialisation.
II. Carbon Credit
A carbon credit is a tradable certificate based on the reduction of greenhouse-gas emissions. Each carbon credit represents one tonne of carbon dioxide (CO₂) or an equivalent amount of other greenhouse gases reduced.
There are two primary markets:
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Compliance market: companies buy or sell allowances under government-set caps to meet obligations, such as the EU ETS.
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Voluntary market: companies or individuals fund reduction projects (reforestation, wind power, carbon capture, and others). After third-party verification bodies such as Verra or Gold Standard certify a project, credits are issued that can be used to offset emissions or be resold.
Carbon credits are both a policy tool and a new type of financial asset. Their advantages are standardisation, verifiability, and tradability: each tonne of reduction has a unique identifier and data support, allowing it to be quantified, tracked, and transferred. In an RWA model, reduction data can be recorded directly on chain to establish title, and smart contracts can automate distributions or collateralised financing, turning environmental contributions into financial assets that can be invested in, traded, and priced.
III. An attempt at green-energy RWA from Italy
Energy group Enel and fintech firm Conio launched the ebitts programme, which tokenises revenue rights from photovoltaic and wind projects and records them on the Algorand blockchain. Users do not need to install equipment; by purchasing tokens they can hold a fractional share of renewable-energy output and receive bill credits or cash returns based on generation. Project data is captured in real time from energy equipment and recorded on chain after third-party verification, making production and distribution fully transparent. Conio is responsible for token issuance, custody, and wallet management, abstracting away technical complexity for users. ebitts is regarded as an important pilot for green-energy RWA in Europe, showing how a traditional energy company can use blockchain to achieve energy inclusion and financing innovation. The project did not enter the full financial architecture; it has the attributes of an early RWA model, and the issued token is a non-security token.
Note (as of Oct 2025): Some initiatives cited are pilots or sandbox trials and may change before full-scale market adoption.