Today is Monday, 27 May 2024.
The World Bank released last week its annual “State and Trends of Carbon Pricing 2024” report.
It is important to remember that it was exactly at the request of the World Bank, triggered in 2022 by the International Swaps and Derivatives Association and the Government of Paraguay, that UNIDROIT established a working group to discuss the legal nature of carbon credits, something extremely important in cross-border trading and voluntary carbon markets.
According to the World Bank press release, in 2023 carbon pricing revenues reached a record $104 billion.
Over half of the collected revenue was used to fund climate and nature-related programs, which is positive news.
But much more is needed, considering all the suffering that is currently seen around the world, related to climate catastrophes.
In addition to the fact that around 75% of global emissions have not yet been reached by these efforts, almost 20 years since the World Bank started tracking carbon markets (and we from Carbon Credit Markets posted its first article … 15 December 2004, as per the image included in this post).
There are currently 75 carbon pricing instruments in operation worldwide, with recent efforts in Australia, Hungary, Slovenia, Taiwan, China, and sub-national schemes in Mexico.
Report findings show large middle-income countries such as Brazil, India, Chile, Colombia, and Türkiye moving forward in their domestic carbon pricing schemes.
Countries such as China, Vietnam, Thailand and Singapore are also improving their carbon legislation and markets, like we have been reporting.
Despite these recent positive trends, higher pricing and wider coverage are going to be essential to really unlock the potential of carbon markets. From the executive summary, the following two quotes:
Prices declined across most project categories, except for carbon removal projects, signalling interest in this category.
Prices were more resilient in over-the-counter transactions, which allow buyers to pursue specific purchasing strategies.
Regarding the integrity of carbon credits, they still remain a critical concern for the market (*).
“This report can help expand the knowledge base for policymakers to understand what is working and why both coverage and pricing need to go up for emissions to go down.” said Axel van Trotsenburg, World Bank Senior Managing Director.
The EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism is also mentioned as “encouraging governments to consider carbon pricing for sectors such iron and steel, aluminum, cement, fertilizers, and electricity”, in spite of all concerns around it from a WTO perspective.
Click at the image below for the press release and here for the 76-pages report itself. Of special interest maybe page 25, were you have “Figure 7: Prices and coverage across ETSs and carbon taxes, as of April 1, 2024”.
(*) Carbon Credit Markets is working on products and services to support the integrity assessment of carbon credits, both engineering and NBS. In the coming months, a marketplace with solutions will be available. If interested in offering with us something with that same objective - documentation, due diligence, audit, compliance - please email contact@damasceno.org with the Subject “Integrity Marketplace”. Given that we have readers all over the World, all jurisdictions are very welcomed.
