ASHGABAT, Turkmenistan, October 24. Work continues in Central Asia to develop carbon markets and attract investment in projects to reduce carbon emissions, the director of Valor Carbon Central Asia, Nurzhan Aspandiyar, said, Trend reports.
He made the remark at the “Oil and Gas of Turkmenistan - 2025” conference in Ashgabat.
According to him, the global carbon market remains highly geographically concentrated, with Central Asia and a number of other regions remaining underrepresented despite their high potential for supplying carbon credits.
“This region is very interesting to us because carbon markets have one peculiarity. Over the past 20 years, the supply of carbon credits has been extremely geographically concentrated. We see a huge gap between what the region is capable of providing and what has actually been realized,” Aspandiyar noted.
He explained that each carbon unit represents one ton of carbon that either did not enter the atmosphere or was removed from it. Companies and countries purchase these credits to offset their own emissions and achieve carbon neutrality (“Net Zero”) goals.
“Today, Turkmenistan has a unique opportunity to become a new exporter of this new type of raw material - carbon credits,” the director of Valor Carbon emphasized.
The official noted that Japan, Singapore, Switzerland, Sweden, and South Korea are currently among the most active buyers of carbon credits. According to him, new international agreements, including the ratification of Article 6.2 of the Paris Agreement at COP29 in Baku, allow for the official use of carbon unit interchangeability between voluntary and regulated systems, which opens up additional investment opportunities in Central Asia.