Voluntary carbon market
A market in which buyers purchase carbon credits outside a direct legal compliance obligation.
Example
Businesses and individuals may participate for different stated purposes.
The catch
Voluntary participation does not remove the need for rigorous standards.
In more depth
Voluntary carbon market, explained.
The voluntary carbon market has no single regulator, and its integrity rests on the crediting programmes that issue units and on the claims buyers make. The ICVCM assesses programmes and credit types against its Core Carbon Principles and labels those that pass, giving buyers a common quality threshold.
Quality varies widely by project type, and studies have found over-crediting in some categories. That has led some buyers to make a contribution claim, describing support for climate action without saying their own emissions were cancelled. EU rules ban claims, based on offsetting, that a product has a neutral, reduced or positive impact on emissions. Each carbon credit should be traceable to a registry entry showing its project, vintage and retirement.