The Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) was a voluntary, legally binding greenhouse gas reduction and trading system for emission sources and offset projects in North America and Brazil.

Richard Sandor, creator of the Sustainable Performance Group, founded the exchange and has been a spokesman for it.

The exchange traded in emissions of six gases: carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, sulfur hexafluoride, perfluorocarbons and hydrofluorocarbons.

The Valley Wood Carbon Sequestration Project, the first such project to be verified through the Chicago Climate Exchange, was the recipient of offset funding generated through a unique partnership, developed in 2008 by Verus Carbon Neutral, that brought together 17 merchants of Atlanta's Virginia-Highland shopping and dining neighborhood retail district to establish the first Carbon Neutral Zone in the United States.

[5][6] IntercontinentalExchange (NYSE: ICE), a leading operator of regulated global futures exchanges, clearing houses and over-the-counter (OTC) markets, agreed to acquire Climate Exchange plc in January 2009,[7] the acquisition was completed in July 2010[8] and was followed by an announcement that half of the company's Chicago-based workforce would be laid off due to inactivity in the U.S. carbon markets.