Five megatrends

The Voluntary Carbon Market is one way of implementing carbon pricing in corporate operations. Its unit of account is the carbon credit, a transferable certificate that proves that a participant has achieved a surplus emission reduction or carbon removal equivalent to 1 ton of carbon dioxide, but has transferred the right to make green claims to another market participant in exchange for financial compensation. The players – whether they are standard owners, project developers, certifiers, green investors, or credit buyers – all enter the market voluntarily, so their activities go beyond regulations and national commitments, i.e., they achieve additional results in climate action. The Voluntary Carbon Market has been in existence for 20 years, but a breakthrough has not yet occurred due to structural problems. Factors hindering the full development of the carbon market: 

1. Credibility issues. By 2022, the carbon market had fallen into a credibility crisis due to the frequent lack of permanent impact and additionality, the leakage of results, and the resulting "overcrediting" that exceeded actual climate protection results. Moving forward will require overcoming the stigma of "farewell tickets," which has become a widespread narrative, so it will not be an easy task. 

1. Fragmented markets. One of the biggest shortcomings of the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement is that it did not bring into force Article 6, which would have served to create a new unified carbon market. The result has been the complete fragmentation of the voluntary carbon market: a large number of independent carbon standards and a plethora of different carbon products have been created, making the market opaque, so it is no wonder that many are staying away from it.  

1. Lack of demand. This is largely a consequence of the first two reasons, but not exclusively. The forced emission reduction policy has clearly run out of steam, and sustainability as a buzzword has become meaningless. As a result, in 2025, the US withdrew from the Paris Climate Agreement, successfully blocked the Nairobi process, and the EU, caught in a growth trap, also backed down on the Omnibus Regulation. 

The situation is not rosy, with the Voluntary Carbon Market and carbon prices flattening for years. However, market players are already looking for a way out of this drifting situation, and the signs of their efforts are now clearly visible. The transformation is centered around five trends that will fundamentally change the Voluntary Carbon Market by 2030. 

Offsetting becomes legitimate 

The cornerstone of market development is that offsetting becomes a legitimate tool, which requires a supply of high-quality carbon credits and demand generation. Both are influenced by major international standard-setters, who steer the market with their recommendations. In response to the lack of credibility, the supply side has embarked on a vigorous quality assurance program, resulting in the emergence of the Core Carbon Principles (CCP) as a basic quality criterion. The market expects the rapid spread of CCP-certified carbon credits: the first such certificates appeared in 2025, and their share is expected to be around 15 percent in 2026 , while by 2030, high-integrity carbon credits could account for up to half of annual carbon credit emissions. 

The demand side is most influenced by the Science Based Target initiatives (SBTi) corporate net zero emissions recommendation package, which is now voluntarily followed by nearly ten thousand large companies. The latest recommendation for the standard was published in 2025 (SBTi v2.0), which contains important new elements. On the one hand, detailed reporting and reduction targets are mandatory for Scope 3 emissions exceeding 40% of total corporate emissions. On the other hand, for objective efficiency reasons, it accepts that net zero must be achieved at the ecosystem level by the target date. This means that offsetting residual emissions with high-integrity carbon credits has become integral part of the corporate decarbonization strategy and is therefore methodologically legitimate. 

Emissions reduction is replaced by carbon removal 

The failure of enforced emissions reduction has increased the importance of climate adaptation and carbon removal. The latter megatrend consists of carbon removal credits (CDRs) gradually replacing certificates from emissions reduction projects, which traditionally accounted for the vast majority of supply but are perceived as being of lower quality. The rapid spread of CDRs is thus completely transforming the supply side, solving the credibility problem of the emissions reduction products currently dominating the market.  

The concept of carbon removal can be grouped into two basic methodologies: technology-driven carbon removal and nature-based carbon farming. The former involves removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere using technology and storing it safely and permanently in rocks, oceans, or even durable products. The latter involves increasing photosynthetic and carbon dioxide sequestration capacity, i.e., nature-based carbon sequestration solutions related to agriculture, forestry, and water management. Transaction volumes also support this growth: CDR offset transactions will account for 10-12 percent of the market by 2026, and are expected to grow to over 30 percent by 2030. Last year's new edition of the SBTi states that net zero targets can only be offset with removal credits. 

Pre-financing replaces post-financing 

The Voluntary Carbon Market has traditionally promised postfinancing to the owner of the green project to be implemented. The problem with this is that it is often difficult to prove the additional effect, i.e. whether the investor decided to launch the project because of the uncertain carbon market monetization in the future, which can lead to a lack of confidence in the additionality of the project. If, instead of looking for occasional buyers for ready-made carbon credits who are willing to provide post-financing for the project to cover their prompt compensation needs for a given year, we reverse the logical order, then everything falls into place. In such cases, we start from the strategic needs of the credit buyer, who in return partially prefinances the future green projects selected for compensation purposes. The additional effect is also automatically ensured, as the project will only start if there is sufficient commitment from credit buyers to generate profitability. These are called offtake agreements, which have become the main driver of the market: by 2025, they had already exceeded 100 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent per year, which is nearly half of the total volume of the traditional Voluntary Carbon Market, and by 2030, they will become almost dominant. 

Forward offtake agreements always assume a long-term decarbonization strategy on the part of the credit-purchasing company. They represent a transition to a long-term strategic partnership, meaning they are based on joint investment in climate protection activities with partners capable of achieving a negative carbon footprint. In this way, two (or more) companies achieve net zero status in symbiosis. At the end of last year, the audited legal and accounting framework for forward offtake agreements was published, which is a huge step forward. 

Responsibility for the supply chain comes into focus 

Another characteristic megatrend is that the focus of corporate decarbonization strategies will shift to Scope 3 over time. Since 70-90 percent of companies’ total carbon footprint is often generated in the value chain, the company must take responsibility for the emissions of the entire ecosystem. Traditional offsetting is transforming into insetting, acooperation within the value chain focusing on joint decarbonization, and targets are now being pursued at this level. Insetting is a change in decarbonization strategy whereby the desired result is achieved jointly by value chain participants through joint emissions reduction and/or joint interventions for increasing carbon removal. 

Members of the supply chain are therefore cooperating in the long term, and more and more frameworks are being created to support this. Their common features are action focus, co-funding, co-claiming of results, and a preference for market-based accounting. Attracting insetting projects represents a great opportunity for the Voluntary Carbon Market, as up to one-third of global Scope 3 decarbonization could be achieved with carbon credits in the future. 

The regulator enters the market 

For a long time, the Voluntary Carbon Market operated on the basis of civil law, without specific regulations, relying on participants' voluntary compliance with integrity rules. This gave it the innovation advantage of flexibility, but the lack of legal accountability also led to a crisis of confidence. Experts see the future in methodological and legislative legitimacy, with the EU leading the way. At the end of 2025, three significant steps forward were taken, with the EU beginning the harmonization of the Voluntary Carbon Market and, at the same time, its legal legitimacy: 

1. Fit for 90. This is a climate protection itinerary written for 2040, on the basis of which the EU requires member states to achieve a 90 percent reduction in net greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions compared to 1990 levels by the target date. The supplementary 5% rule allows any EU member state to supplement at least 85% of its GHG reductions achieved domestically with internatuional carbon transfers (ITMO). Since it is always most expensive to achieve the last few percent, it may be more economical to purchase the remaining compensation elsewhere than to squeeze the domestic economy to the maximum, and it is just as good from a climate protection point of view, as the problem is global. The new rule will certainly stimulate the carbon market, as the EU's net emissions in 1990 were approximately 5Gt of carbon dioxide equivalent, so 5 percent of this could theoretically generate up to 250 million tons of additional demand for quality carbon credits per year. To put this into perspective, the entire global Voluntary Carbon Market had a turnover of approximately this amount in 2024, so this move by the EU could potentially double demand in the long term in a market that is fundamentally undersupplied. 

1. Carbon Removal Credit Framework (CRCF). The EU has adopted a unique set of transparency rules for Voluntary Carbon Market certification systems, with the recent implementing regulation already containing complex quality requirements and regulating the work of certification bodies. The essence of the regulation is that the EU legally legitimizes emissions offsetting with carbon credits covered by the regulation. This is a huge opportunity for the carbon market, but the regulation does not apply to all carbon credits, which also allows the EU to set the direction for project development. The EU still does not legitimize carbon credits from emissions avoidance or reduction projects; legal legitimacy only applies to permanent carbon dioxide removals and carbon farming projects. 

1. Bioeconomy strategy. With the publication of this strategy, the EU plans to shift the provision and production of food, biofuels, energy, and related services from a system dominated by fossil fuels to one based on renewable, primarily biological resources, thereby involving everything from agriculture and fishing to biotechnology in the fight against the use of fossil fuels. The measures cover several areas, through which the EU supports the launch of the carbon market. On the one hand, the EU is launching an EU Buyers' Club for companies that opt for offsetting in order to kick-start the credit buyer market. On the other hand, it is also creating an EU Carbon Farming Database to provide methodological assistance to carbon market project developers in setting baselines and effective monitoring. Finally, as part of the strategy, it paves the way for the spread of building materials in the construction industry that store biogenic carbon dioxide in the end product for the long term (at least 35 years). 

In conclusion, we can say that the new carbon market megatrends are transforming the basic product (carbon removal), changing the way it is traded (forward offtake agreements), emphasize a strategic approach to corporate value chain decarbonization (insetting), and legitimize offsetting both methodologically and legally in order to generate demand. These changes may finally bring about the long-awaited breakthrough in the Voluntary Carbon Market, but not for all players: only those who understand the new buzzwords and focus on the megatrends will remain standing.