The voluntary carbon market (VCM) has entered a definitive phase of price discovery, where the financial distance between high- and low-integrity credits is expanding. According to ‘The State of Quality and Pricing in the VCM: 2026’, a joint report by Calyx Global and ClearBlue Markets, the market is finally rewarding projects that provide robust evidence of environmental impact.
Close-up of newly planted tree seedlings in a tropical forest, with project managers in the background monitoring growth. AI generated picture.
In 2025, the market saw a sharp correction in how risk is priced. Credits categorised in the highest integrity tiers now trade at nearly 50% higher than those at the bottom of the scale. This represents a structural departure from previous years, when low-quality offsets frequently commanded prices similar to their high-performance counterparts.
While price signals have sharpened, the integrity gap persists. The report notes that while the quality of retired credits (those actually used by companies to meet green goals) has shown clear improvement, the average quality of new issuances has only risen marginally. This suggests a market where savvy buyers are ‘skimming the top’ for high-integrity assets, even as a legacy supply of lower-rated projects—particularly in hydropower and older REDD initiatives—continues to saturate the broader market.
The correlation between price and integrity varies significantly across sectors:
- Nature-based solutions: These show the most mature alignment, likely due to prolonged public scrutiny and improved buyer due diligence.
- Household & community projects: Categories such as clean cookstoves are seeing a widening price spread as quality differences become more transparent.
- Super pollutants: Methane and industrial gas projects currently show weak price differentiation, indicating a lack of market sophistication regarding these specific mitigation types.
A key finding of the report challenges the industry's bias toward carbon removal. Despite the common assumption that removals are inherently superior, data from over 1,000 projects indicates that the distribution of integrity is remarkably similar between removal and avoidance categories. Currently, the market appears to be ‘rewarding project labels rather than underlying climate performance’, as removal credits continue to fetch premium prices regardless of their specific quality scores.
The Core Carbon Principles (CCP), established by the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market, are beginning to influence the bottom line. CCP-labelled credits are starting to attract modest premiums, though the report’s authors warn that a label is not a substitute for rigorous due diligence.
To instil long-term confidence, the report advocates for immediate reforms, including the acceleration of updated REDD methodologies and the elimination of non-additional renewable energy credits. The momentum towards high-integrity standards provides a clear pathway for the market to solidify its recovery and build lasting investor confidence.
Read more: Supply squeeze ahead: EU carbon prices projected to surge 40% in 2026
The 2026 data confirms that the integrity gap is not only a reputational risk, but a financial one. As the market pivots away from low-quality legacy offsets and begins to command a 50% premium for high-tier units, the era of rewarding project labels over performance is ending. This market correction validates the Green Earth approach. As a publicly listed company on Euronext, we don’t just bridge the integrity gap; we close it by developing large-scale restoration projects that deliver the transparency and community-driven rigour that today’s investors demand. The flight to quality is here, and we are providing the destination.
