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The Voluntary Carbon Market (VCM) is changing. That was the resounding message from our recent webinar, The State of Quality and Pricing in the VCM: 2026, hosted by ClearBlue Markets and Calyx Global.
Moderated by ClearBlue Markets’ Michael Berends with a panel formed by ClearBlue's Nico Curtis, Calyx Global’s Donna Lee, and the Environmental Defense Fund/ICVCM’s Pedro Barata, discussion unpacked a year defined by a massive shift in market logic as outlined in ClearBlue and Calyx’s recent 2026 State of the Voluntary Carbon Market report. While the market still faces significant challenges regarding supply integrity, the data confirms that 2025 was the year rational price discovery finally took hold.
Here are the key takeaways from the session, including insights from the audience Q&A.
The Script Has Flipped: The 46% Premium
For years, the VCM suffered from a disconnect where charisma trumped quality. As Nico Curtis, ClearBlue’s VCM Market Analyst, highlighted during the pricing analysis, the market previously operated on misinformation, where low-quality credits often fetched higher prices than high-quality ones in 2022.
That era is coming to a close.
According to the report presented during the webinar, Tier 1 (high-quality) credits now command a 46% price premium over Tier 3 (lower-quality) credits. This shift proves that buyers are finally using evidence over anecdotes to mark their balance sheets, actively penalizing low-quality credits while rewarding high-integrity ones.
The Dartboard Problem: Why Buyers Are Spooked
While pricing behavior has improved, the quality of the credits available in the market remains a major hurdle. Donna Lee presented a stark reality: despite improvements, the average greenhouse gas (GHG) integrity score for issuances in 2025 moved largely sideways, stalling at just 4.1/10.
She argues that the market has broken the 80/20 rule. Instead of 80% of the market being reliable, the ratio is flipped, with low-quality credits now making up the vast majority of the "dart board." As a result, buyers have stopped throwing darts entirely, viewing the risk of accidentally selecting a low-integrity credit as too high to justify participation
The market is currently weighed down by a dark underbelly of legacy credits, specifically older REDD and renewable energy projects, that continue to issue large volumes despite known over-crediting risks.
A Roadmap to 9/10
The webinar wasn’t just about the problem; it offered a solution. Calyx Global presented a 5-point technical roadmap that, if adopted in 2026, could theoretically lift market issuance quality from a 4.1/10 to a 9/10:
- Accelerate the transition to “new” REDD credits. Newer REDD methodologies should substantially diminish the risk of over-crediting, but progress implementing them has been slow.
- Immediately avoid non-additional renewable energy credits. Buyers should look only for the rare circumstances where carbon finance truly makes or breaks a project.
- Implement the new “cookstove cookbook” for high quality. If new integrity guardrails from the The Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market (ICVCM) and Clean Cooking Alliance (CCA) were adopted at scale, cookstoves could shift from being a trust liability to a higher integrity category.
- Scrutinize monoculture plantation projects. The rush to buy removals has resulted in the proliferation of non-additional afforestation/reforestation credits. Commercial plantations, particularly monocultures, should justify clearly why carbon finance is critical to be viable.
- Use more credible baselines for improved forest management projects. Calyx sees substantial baseline overestimation in over half of the IFM projects we have rated. The wish is for IFM baselines to better reflect the likely harvest in the absence of a carbon project.
Myth-Busting: Removals vs. Avoidance
The panel tackled one of the market's most persistent myths: that removals are inherently higher quality than avoidance.
The report data shows that GHG integrity distribution is nearly identical across both categories. Yet, the market continues to price removal credits significantly higher. As Pedro Barata noted, this is often driven by fads, warning that buyers are fixated on charisma rather than the verified impact of the credit.
The Super Pollutant Opportunity
Nico Curtis pointed out a unique anomaly in the 2025 data regarding super pollutants (e.g., methane, landfill gas). This is the only sector where pricing is currently inverted, with lower-quality (Tier 2) credits trading at higher prices than high-quality (Tier 1) ones.
For savvy buyers, this represents a nascent opportunity. Because these project types are often less charismatic and misunderstood, high-integrity assets are currently undervalued, offering a chance to acquire high-impact credits at a discount.
Highlights from the Q&A: Zombie Credits, Regulation, and Independence
The audience Q&A session opened up a deeper dialogue on the structural issues facing the market.
What to do with "Zombie Credits"? A recurring question was how to handle the backlog of low-quality legacy credits that refuse to disappear. Pedro Barata argued against simply retiring them cheaply, as this drags down market confidence. He floated the concept of a "bad bank" mechanism to mop up supply, though he acknowledged the difficulty in funding such an initiative.
Both Pedro and Donna agreed that until such a mechanism exists, "transparency is the best disinfectant". They urged registries and the ICVCM to "call out" buyers who retire these credits to clean up their balance sheets cheaply.
Does Government Regulation Mean Higher Quality? The panel engaged in a lively debate regarding the alignment of the VCM with the Paris Agreement and government-regulated markets like Article 6. Pedro Barata observed that while the voluntary market will inevitably converge with Article 6 standards, buyers should not assume that government backing is a proxy for quality. He pointed to the UN's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) as a historical example where regulation failed to prevent the issuance of low-quality credits, noting that just because a credit is government-mandated does not guarantee its integrity.
Donna Lee argued that the voluntary market actually possesses a unique strength often missing in compliance markets: intense public scrutiny. She noted that while regulatory markets often operate quietly once rules are set, the VCM is constantly tried in the "court of public opinion" by academics and journalists. This external pressure forces a level of rigor and accountability that bureaucratic systems sometimes lack.
The Importance of Rating Independence Finally, the panel addressed the rapid rise of rating agencies. While discussing the challenges of standardization, the speakers emphasized that a rating agency's business model is a critical indicator of trust. Donna Lee highlighted that Calyx Global does not accept payments from project developers for ratings, a decision made specifically to ensure their ability to rate projects independently.
Michael Berends reinforced this point, advising buyers to exercise extreme caution regarding ratings paid for by project developers. He noted that the source of payment is a key differentiator in integrity, implying that independence from developer influence is essential for an objective assessment.
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Missed the webinar? You can watch the full recording to see the deep-dive charts on specific project types and hear the full Q&A session.
Download the Full Report: The State of Quality and Pricing in the VCM: 2026