The week between Christmas and New Year is when carbon markets take stock, and this year the stock-taking came with a milestone. Voluntary carbon market retirements grew year-on-year in 2025 and the market's total value surpassed $10 billion for the first time, according to analysts cited in Carbon Pulse's January 2 issue, the only CP Daily of this holiday week. After two years of reputational repair, the market ended 2025 larger than it started, and the first trading session of 2026 opened with European carbon prices surging and speculative positions near record highs. It was a fitting close to the year the market stopped apologising and started building.
The Rules Got Real
Two years after Article 6 became technically operational, 2025 was the year it became administratively real. At COP30 in Belém, parties affirmed the existing decisions rather than reopening them, moved nearly $30 million from the old CDM to the new Paris Agreement Crediting Mechanism, and set the CDM on course to close at the end of 2026. The private sector's reaction, captured in post-COP briefings, was relief: stability, not perfection, is what capital needed. Weeks later, the EU's 2040 deal allowed up to 5% of its 90% reduction target to be met with international credits, with analysts estimating potential demand in the hundreds of millions of tonnes. Demand that had been theoretical for years acquired a number and a jurisdiction.
Integrity Became the Product
If 2023-24 were the years of reputational damage, 2025 was the year the market started pricing integrity instead of promising it. This page's September 1, 2025 post read a 56% premium for high-quality credits as a repricing, not a trend, and the year's final weeks bore that out: Verra requested the replacement of millions of Chinese forestry credits, launched a review of a major Amazon REDD project, and overhauled its core standard with insurance provisions and stronger safeguards. Buyers responded by paying up for the first credits under revised, CCP-labelled methodologies. The message of the year is that quality is no longer a marketing layer. It is the asset.
The Centre of Gravity Moved
Perhaps the most underreported shift of 2025 was geographic. While Europe argued about targets, Asia built: Thailand approved a climate bill with carbon taxes and trading, Nepal cleared its carbon trading regulation, Japan's institutions positioned for GX-ETS compliance, and Indonesia's own exchange saw activity rebound late in the year. The Singapore-led coalition principles covered in this page's November 11, 2025 post showed governments converging on integrity-first frameworks for corporate credit use. The holiday week's ticker carried the same theme into the new year: Bhutan laid out a seller-led Article 6 strategy with tight control over authorisation and pricing, Gabon put forests and Article 6 at the core of its updated climate pledge, El Salvador signalled carbon market interest in its new NDC, and the Tokyo Stock Exchange prepared an OTC settlement service for domestic credits. The demand side of the next decade is being shaped as much in Jakarta, Thimphu and Tokyo as in Brussels.
What 2026 Asks of Us
Three questions carry into the new year. Can Article 6 convert affirmed rules into authorised, transacted supply at scale? Will integrity enforcement keep pace with the premium, or will questionable credits find new hiding places? And can supply-rich countries, Indonesia foremost among them, turn natural advantage into credible, investable pipelines before the demand wave arrives? The year ahead will be decided less in negotiating halls than in registries, methodologies and project documents. That is where this page will keep its focus.
