The year 2023 marks a pivotal moment in the volatile journey of the carbon credit market. Once hailed as a cornerstone of corporate climate action, voluntary carbon markets are now grappling with a crisis of confidence and a significant downturn in price and demand.
A Rapid Rise and Troubling Slowdown
Voluntary carbon markets (VCMs), a key tool in the global fight against climate change, experienced exponential growth from 2019 to 2021.
As seen above, VCM credits jumped by 86% in 2021 compared to 2019 level. This surge was fueled by escalating corporate net-zero commitments and optimistic forecasts about the market’s potential size.
For instance, Citibank committed to reach net zero emissions by 2050, while using carbon credits to tackle unavoidable emissions. One of the world’s largest biopharmaceutical companies, Pfizer, also pledged to achieve net zero emissions by 2040. The US’ biggest utility, Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E), also aimed at hitting net zero by 2040 while reducing Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 50% from 2015 levels by 2030.
However, 2022 witnessed a stark slowdown in the VCM’s growth, a trend that continued into 2023. Various factors, including the increasing complexity of market mechanisms and the role of carbon credits in broader sustainability strategies, have contributed to this decline.
The Offset Decline: An Erosion of Confidence
Several high-profile corporations, such as Shell, Nestlé, EasyJet, and Fortescue Metals Group, have recently retreated from carbon offset schemes. This withdrawal stems partly from growing skepticism about the effectiveness of these projects, with concerns about their actual climate benefits and accusations of greenwashing.
- Shell: The MIT Technology Review reported that corporations, including Shell, announced they were backing away from offsets or the claims of carbon neutrality that relied upon them. This shift reflects a broader trend of companies moving away from credits that simply claim to prevent emissions, particularly in light of increasing awareness about the challenges in proving the actual environmental impact of these projects.
- Nestlé: Reuters detailed Nestlé’s decision to move away from investing in carbon offsets for its brands, such as KitKat, to focus more on programs and practices that help reduce greenhouse gas emissions within their own supply chain and operations. This change is part of their strategy to reach their net-zero ambitions, indicating a shift from offsetting to direct emission reductions.
- EasyJet: According to the MIT Technology Review, EasyJet was mentioned as another corporation that had decided to wind down its offsetting program. Instead, EasyJet is now focusing on cutting emissions from its operations, signaling a shift in strategy towards more direct measures of reducing environmental impact.
A significant decrease in demand for offsets was observed, with estimates suggesting a 25% decline from 2021 levels by the end of 2023.
Carbon Price Collapse
The downturn in demand has had a dramatic effect on prices. The Xpansiv market CBL, the world’s largest spot carbon exchange, saw prices of carbon offsets fall by over 80% in an 18-20 month period.
- Note: You can view the daily price changes and charts of carbon prices right here.
This price decline reflects the broader challenges facing the voluntary carbon market, including questions about the actual environmental impact of the credits and the integrity of projects claiming to offset emissions.
While the VCM prices have been hit, the decline in NGEO (Nature-Based Global Emissions Offsets) prices stands out due to the premium they were trading at over the other offsets last year. With increasing scrutiny on forestry projects, NGEO prices sharply dropped from around $15 in June 2022 to $1 in June this year.
It even declined to below $1 at the time of writing.
One major reason for the downward trend of NGEOs was the tough macroeconomic environment, causing stagnation in demand in 2022. Moreover, the poor outcome for the VCM at COP27, which carries over at the recent COP28, further casted doubts on how carbon offsets fit in corporate net zero plans.
Mark Kenber, VCMI’s Executive Director, commented that though there are many encouraging developments on carbon markets at COP28, agreements “fell short of the mark”. He further stated that:
“For the market to fully develop in the next two years, policymakers can draw on the foundational work of the VCMI and IC-VCM, developing high-integrity VCM and Article 6 markets that deliver the finance that makes ambitious global action possible.”
Over in compliance markets, the EU carbon prices have broken records in February this year, surging past 100 euros. But the EU allowance prices also dipped back to its low levels this month at 78 euros, close to its November 2022 average price.
The region, which has the largest carbon market EU ETS, plans to phase out its free carbon allowances while gradually phasing in its newly introduced carbon tax, known as the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism. CBAM will ensure that companies operating inside and outside the bloc remain on the same page in terms of carbon pricing and environmental impact.
Following the EU footsteps, the UK is also set to launch its own CBAM version. It aims to ensure that imported goods from carbon-intensive industries like iron, steel, and cement face fair carbon prices.
A couple of African nations are also gearing up to participate in the carbon arena. New carbon credit exchanges are created in Zimbabwe and Tanzania while Zambia and Kenya have plans to do the same.
Several countries in Asia are also joining the carbon market bandwagon. Indonesia had launched a carbon credit trading market through IDX as part of its 2060 net zero goal. Japan’s first exchange-based carbon market opened in October this year.
Amid all these, the future of carbon markets now stands at a critical juncture. They face the challenge of regaining credibility and functionality amidst growing scrutiny and regulatory changes. How these markets evolve in response to these challenges will significantly impact their role in global climate strategies.
The Inflection Point: What’s Next for Carbon Prices and Trading?
Not all carbon news is grim here in 2023.
On Dec 13th, 2023, Xpansiv’s CBL spot exchange hit a daily trading volume record of 2.13 million tons of carbon credits, signalling robust corporate engagement in carbon offset markets. This surge aligns with the final day of COP28, reflecting an uptick in year-end corporate purchases for sustainability goals.
New transparency requirements in the U.S., Europe, Australia, and California are driving this demand, pushing companies to disclose more about their carbon offset activities.
Allister Furey, CEO and co-founder of Sylvera, noted the fact that regulators are now seeing the critical role of carbon credits in financing the net zero transition. He further said that:
“Disclosures at every step of the carbon journey and for all involved stakeholders will become increasingly important. From the SEC’s coming climate disclosure rules to California’s AB1305, there are significant incoming regulations which should dramatically improve data availability in net zero–and we will begin to see the price of carbon ripple throughout value chains, slowly but surely.”
Since 2020, CBL has traded over 300 million tons, dominating over 95% of the global spot exchange-traded carbon offsets. The record day underscores a heightened market activity during the UN’s COP event.
Meanwhile, the Compliance Credits market has not only attracted immense investment dollars – especially in carbon capture projects – but countries like Canada and the UK are setting higher and higher compliance prices.
NASDAQ Enters the Carbon Credit Market Arena
The NASDAQ Exchange, recognizing the growing importance and potential of the carbon credits market, has recently launched an innovative technology to revolutionize the industry. This new system, aimed at digitizing the issuance, settlement, and custody of carbon credits, is set to enhance the scalability of this nascent market.
Nasdaq’s approach uses smart contracts for secure transactions and promises to bring much-needed standardization and liquidity to attract diverse investors.
Moreover, Nasdaq’s collaboration with Climate Impact X (CIX) marks a significant stride towards developing the global carbon market. This partnership will power CIX’s spot exchange for quality carbon credits, intending to improve price transparency and liquidity in the voluntary carbon credit market.
Addressing the inefficiencies and inconsistencies in the market, this move by Nasdaq and CIX is poised to create a more resilient and scalable trading environment, demonstrating Nasdaq’s commitment to pioneering market transformations in the carbon credit sector.
It’s clear that change is in the air. Companies are not just looking to buy credits; they’re looking to buy credibility and real impact. And as the market matures, it’s becoming more about quality than quantity.
The post Carbon Prices and Voluntary Carbon Markets Faced Major Declines in 2023, What’s Next for 2024? appeared first on Carbon Credits.
The accounting differences that decide whether your nature investment shows up in inventory, in BVCM, or nowhere at all.
The question reaches a procurement team about three weeks before the next sustainability committee meeting. Someone has read about insetting. Someone else has just signed off on an offset purchase. The CSO wants to know if the two are interchangeable. The answer is no, and the GHG Protocol Land Sector and Removals Standard is the reason why.
This article walks through what each term means at audit-grade specificity, what the standards actually say about how each gets counted, and how to decide which tool fits which target. The insetting vs offsetting question is one of the most-searched in corporate climate strategy, and one of the most poorly answered. By the end of this piece, you should be able to brief a committee on the difference without notes.
The two definitions, in plain English
Offsetting means buying carbon credits generated outside your value chain and retiring them against your residual emissions. The reduction happens somewhere else, financed by you, and the credit is the receipt.
Insetting means investing in emission reductions or removals inside your own value chain, typically with suppliers, where the reduction is directly linked to the products and services you buy. The reduction happens inside the boundary of your Scope 3 inventory, and the accounting treatment is fundamentally different.
The shorthand from the University of Oxford’s Nature-based Insetting Initiative is useful: insetting is what you do with the supply chain you have; offsetting is what you do with the supply chain you do not have.
What the GHG Protocol Land Sector Standard actually says
The GHG Protocol Land Sector and Removals Standard, finalised in 2024 after a multi-year pilot, sets the rules for how land-based emission reductions and removals enter corporate inventories. The Standard distinguishes between inventory accounting (Scope 1, 2, and 3) and project or intervention accounting (a separate methodology for crediting).
For insetting, the practical implication is that supplier-level interventions, when properly measured and attributed, can reduce your Scope 3 category 1 (purchased goods and services) emissions in your inventory. The reduction is not a credit retired against the inventory; it is a lower inventory number, period.
For offsetting, the credit is retired separately. It can be reported as a contribution toward a net-zero claim under the SBTi Beyond Value Chain Mitigation framework or as part of a VCMI Carbon Integrity claim, but it does not lower the inventory number.
A practical consequence: if your Science Based Target requires a 50% absolute reduction in Scope 3 emissions by 2030, insetting moves you toward the target. Offsetting does not. This single point of difference reshapes the procurement decision.
When insetting counts toward Scope 3 (and when it does not)
Insetting counts toward Scope 3 only when several conditions are met:
- The intervention must occur with an entity in your value chain.
- The emissions reduction or removal must be measured against a defensible baseline.
- The reduction must be attributed to your share of that supplier’s output, not double-counted with other buyers.
- It must follow the inventory accounting rules in the GHG Protocol Land Sector Standard, not the project accounting rules used to generate credits.
The most common failure mode is double counting. If your supplier sells the same reduction as a credit on the voluntary market and also reports it to you as a Scope 3 reduction, the math breaks. The Standard requires you to address this risk, typically by purchasing and retiring the supplier-issued credit as part of your inventory or by contractual provisions that prevent the supplier from selling the reduction twice.
When insetting does not count toward Scope 3: when the intervention sits with a supplier you do not buy from, when the baseline is not defensible, when the attribution is unclear, or when the documentation does not survive audit. Those cases default to Beyond Value Chain Mitigation, which is still useful but operates on a different ledger.
The procurement and supplier engagement question
Insetting is harder than offsetting. That is the unfashionable truth most buyers eventually confront. Offsetting is a transaction; insetting is a relationship.
To run an insetting program, you need supplier mapping precise enough to know which farms or facilities sit at which Scope 3 boundary. You need an engagement model that gets suppliers to participate, which usually requires multi-year commitments and shared economics. You need an MRV architecture that measures the right things and produces audit-ready documentation. And you need a contractual structure that prevents double counting and protects both sides.
The trade-off you receive in return is significant. Reductions count against your inventory rather than your residual. Supplier relationships deepen, which protects sourcing continuity. Yield and quality improvements often follow regenerative interventions, which reduces your input cost over time. And the regulatory file, under CSRD, CSDDD, EUDR, and the SBTi FLAG Guidance, is materially stronger.
Choosing the right tool for the right target
A practical decision rule. If your target is a science-based Scope 3 reduction and you operate in a FLAG sector or source FLAG commodities, insetting is the structurally correct tool. If your target is a net-zero claim that includes neutralising hard-to-abate residual emissions outside your value chain, BVCM via high-integrity offsets is the structurally correct tool. Most companies with material Scope 3 exposure need both, in different proportions, sequenced over time.
The sequencing matters. Insetting takes longer to stand up but produces a permanent reduction in the inventory. Offsetting can be transacted faster but does not change the inventory and now sits under tighter claim restrictions. Treat them as complementary tools with different jobs, not as substitutes. The Accountability Framework Initiative and the IUCN Global Standard for Nature-based Solutions both provide useful guardrails for the insetting side, with biodiversity, human rights, and benefit-sharing requirements that go beyond carbon math.
If you are mapping a Scope 3 reduction roadmap and need to scope which interventions count toward your inventory versus which sit in Beyond Value Chain Mitigation, the carbon and sustainability experts at Carbon Credit Capital can help you structure a nature-based supply chain investment program that fits your FLAG exposure, your target architecture, and your audit horizon. Schedule a consultation.
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