Voluntary carbon market

The voluntary carbon market is the space where companies, organisations and individuals voluntarily buy and sell carbon credits, outside any legal obligation. Each credit represents one tonne of CO2 equivalent reduced, avoided or removed from the atmosphere by a project, and is typically used for the offsetting of residual emissions that an organisation cannot eliminate by other means.

Difference from compliance markets

It should be distinguished from compliance markets, such as the emissions trading market (ETS), where participation is mandatory for regulated installations and allowances are allocated or auctioned under an emissions cap set by the authority. In the voluntary market, by contrast, demand comes from companies' own commitments (climate targets, neutrality strategies, customer and investor expectations) rather than from a rule requiring the surrender of allowances.

How it works

The projects that generate credits range from reforestation and forest conservation to landfill methane capture, clean cookstoves or renewable energy. These projects are developed, measured and verified against independent standards, which issue the credits in public registries to prevent double counting. The two reference standards are the Verified Carbon Standard (VCS), run by Verra, and the Gold Standard.

Integrity: supply and demand

After years of disorderly growth, the market has built integrity frameworks operating on two sides:

• On the supply side, the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market (ICVCM) has published the Core Carbon Principles, a set of principles for identifying high-quality credits.
• On the demand side, the Voluntary Carbon Markets Integrity Initiative (VCMI) has published the Claims Code of Practice, which guides how companies can rigorously communicate the use of credits.

The aim of both is to raise the quality of the market and reduce the risk of greenwashing, ensuring that credits represent a real climate benefit.

Criticism and caveats

The voluntary market has faced significant criticism over the quality of some credits, particularly around additionality (whether the reduction would have happened anyway without the project), permanence (whether stored carbon could later be released) and the accuracy of baselines. The general recommendation is therefore clear: buying credits should come after, not instead of, a serious effort to cut your own emissions. Offsetting without reducing is not a credible climate strategy.

In this sense, voluntary-market credits complement, but do not replace, other levers such as directly managed carbon sinks or value-chain reductions.

Reduce first, offset second with Manglai

Responsible use of the voluntary market starts with understanding your footprint. Manglai helps you measure and cut your emissions so that offsetting is limited to what is genuinely unavoidable and communicated with rigour. Discover how Manglai can help you structure your climate strategy.