AAE released its April 2025 report critiquing major voluntary carbon standards for lacking strong safeguards to protect Indigenous rights, land tenure, and gender equity. It calls for a rights-based approach to ensure carbon markets benefit people as well as the planet, and prevent harm to vulnerable communities.
MSCI released its Understanding Carbon Markets guide in December 2024. It explains how compliance and voluntary carbon markets work, the role of high-quality carbon credits, and how investors and companies use them to meet climate goals. It aims to equip stakeholders to engage effectively with carbon markets and drive global decarbonization.
This report, published in March 2025 by AlliedOffsets, projects steady growth for the voluntary carbon market. It expects retirements to reach one billion tons and market value to hit $40 billion by 2040. However, it predicts low prices until 2032, followed by rising demand and higher prices driven by improved credit quality and market shifts.
Published in January 2025 by UNEP, the Annual Report 2024 outlines key environmental efforts, including developments in the voluntary carbon market. At COP29, nations agreed on international carbon market standards, boosting transparency and credibility. UNEP also supported forest-based carbon trading under UN-REDD, aiding countries in accessing finance. The report covers nature conservation, NDCs, plastics, gender, and plastic pollution, emphasising global collaboration for sustainability.
Abatable published a report, considering the future of the voluntary carbon market, in February 2025. It finds that the VCM is shifting towards integrity, compliance and long-term funding, with airlines driving demand through CORSIA. Integrity now seems to define market value as companies move away from “carbon neutral” claims. This means high-quality credits are in demand and also a growing divide between low- and high-integrity credits.
An open-source template that sets a baseline for the essential information project developers need to move through buyers’ procurement pipelines.
Sylvera, the carbon data provider, reviewed the state of carbon credits in 2024. Published in January 2025, this report highlighted the differing perspectives of market participants during the previous year. Some players were excited by Article 6 progress and new methodological approvals from the ICVCM. Others remained unconfident both in credit quality and in the likelihood of future demand. However, it concludes that the carbon markets are going through a gradual but significant time of change.
In January 2025, AlliedOffsets reviewed the trends observed in the voluntary carbon market over the past twelve months. It reported rising interest in engineered removal credits and more offtakes of nature-based solutions. It also found there has been a 33% drop in low-quality credit retirements since 2020.
Pachama published a review of the carbon markets in December 2024. Looking back at the previous 12 months, this report discusses the debate over using carbon credits for Scope 3 emission mitigation, the scientific evidence on the importance of conserving forests, the rush for removals and the emergence of tech for risk mitigation.
This website, Carbon Paradox, launched in December 2024. It addresses 24 paradoxes of carbon markets and considers the nuanced issues that could prevent or enable its scaling. Making interesting reading for all market stakeholders, the website covers topics including baselines, additionality, perfection and standards.