JPMorgan acquires carbon offset firm ClimateCare

NEW YORK/LONDON (Reuters) - JPMorgan (JPM.N: Quote, Profile, Research) has acquired the carbon offsetting company ClimateCare, the U.S. investment bank said on Wednesday.

"We are joining forces to invest in quality, large-scale projects to reduce carbon emissions," a spokeswoman for the bank said. "ClimateCare will be integrated into JPMorgan's existing Environmental Markets Group."

The bank said it made the acquisition through its investment bank and that its environmental markets group would initially operate under the JPMorgan and ClimateCare brand names.

It said the terms of the transaction were not disclosed and that a second-quarter closing was expected.

The Kyoto Protocol on global warming allows companies and countries in the West to meet domestic greenhouse gas emissions limits from 2008-12 by buying carbon offsets from developing and former communist nations.

In addition there is a growing trend for individuals and companies to seek voluntarily to offset their carbon emissions, for example when they take high carbon-emitting flights around the world.

ClimateCare is an example of a company which hunts emissions-cutting projects to generate these offsets to sell.

(Reporting by the New York Equities Desk and Gerard Wynn in London; editing by Chris Johnson)