by John O’Brien and Mio Goble
While the voluntary carbon market has come under strain in recent years, primarily due to its self-regulating nature and the ability in the past of unethical actors to game the system, recently there are signs of improvements. Without adequate levels of integrity, the voluntary carbon market will struggle and continue to face challenges.
There are now clear benchmarks to define what constitutes a “high-integrity” credit which should help to overcome greenwashing concerns and which makes it easier for companies who want to do the right thing to purchase voluntary carbon credits.
Bodies like the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market (ICVCM) are setting clearer benchmarks through the Core Carbon Principles (CCPs), helping define what ‘good carbon credits’ look like in practice. See here. The ICVCM claims code of practice which provides updated, stricter guidance on how companies can legitimately use carbon credits in their corporate climate change mitigation claims, and it requires them to first internalize emissions reductions.
It is clear there have been major problems with the voluntary carbon market in the past. For example, it makes absolutely no sense that an Improved Cookstoves project, applying the fRNB (fraction of non renewable biomass) number of a non ICVCM CCP approved methodology generates 4-5 times as many carbon credits as one that does not use such a methodology. They are the same project and so such a wild level of divergence should simply not exist.
And the voluntary carbon market is responding.
Recent insights from Sylvera’s Q1 2026 Carbon Data Snapshot shows that CCP-labelled credits have grown from less than 3% of the market in 2023 to around 18% in 2026, alongside a clear price premium for what is considered ‘higher-quality credits’.
What does this mean?
It means that this is a step in the right direction but it is not enough. Take the improved cookstove project category, for example. If one was to obtain a small premium for using an ICVCM approved methodology and receive an 18% price premium but 4 times less the number of carbon credits, it still is not enough to make up for the loss in revenue. What needs to happen is that more and more buyers need to simply state that they only wish to purchase ICVCM CCP-labelled projects.
Project categories such as new large-scale grid-connected renewable energy projects, which are very often cost-competitive with fossil fuels and sometimes even cheaper, do not qualify for ICVCM CCP labelling. As a result prices for this type of project have fallen dramatically.
As time moves on, we expect the move towards integrity to continue. We see wider adoption of ICVCM CCP principles by more and more countries. And we see a move towards those types of projects where there are no or fewer concerns with additionality or with over crediting, and we see improved quality control that makes it harder for companies to game the system.