PhD Defence by Mia Blatancic: Carbon as a currency: Strategic use of carbon trade to spur innovation in nascent markets

Mia Blatancic will defend her PhD project "Carbon as a currency Strategic use of carbon trade to spur Innovation in nascent markets".

Summary

This thesis explores how carbon market participants turn carbon trade into a mechanism for venture financing. We examine this by studying the dynamics between suppliers, buyers, and intermediaries as they engage in forward purchase agreements.

Through three in-depth case studies, we identify two strategic plays. Deficiency and generativity - that illustrate how actors co-create financial structures to address market gaps and enable broader participation.

• Through Deficiency play, buyers help address technological, institutional, and market gaps by adapting their complementary capabilities - such as verification expertise, digital infrastructure, or brand credibility - to support the supplier.
• Through Generativity play, actors make financial and contractual innovations publicly available to lower entry barriers, encourage replication, and accelerate ecosystem development.

Across both plays, forward trade emerges as a mechanism that substitutes for traditional innovation pathways by leveraging symbolic capital, strategic signaling, and collaborative infrastructure.

By examining how early buyers communicate about their commitments, the thesis offers a novel lens on carbon-based revenue as a strategic, rather than purely environmental, investment. These findings contribute to research on entrepreneurial finance and innovation in nascent markets, while offering practical guidance for those developing and commercializing climate technologies.

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Master of ceremony

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