Carbon Credit Trading Statistics 2026: Prices, Volume and Revenue

Carbon pricing raised more than $107 billion in 2025, up from below $30 billion in 2016, according to the World Bank’s State and Trends of Carbon Pricing 2026. There are now 87 carbon pricing policies globally, and just over 29% of global greenhouse gas emissions are covered by direct carbon pricing. These carbon credit trading statistics start with the compliance market, where governments cap emissions and sell or tax the right to emit.

The voluntary market, where companies buy offset credits by choice, moved the other way. Transaction volumes fell by 25% in 2024, while credit prices declined by only 5.5%, Ecosystem Marketplace reported. Both markets are tracked below, along with the on-chain tokens built on voluntary credits.

Key Takeaways

• ETS revenues reached a record $80 billion in 2025, and 41 emissions trading systems are now in force worldwide, per the International Carbon Action Partnership.
• RGGI allowances sold at a clearing price of $37.65 in the 73rd auction in September 2026, up from $19.63 in the 68th auction in June 2025.
• The California and Québec joint auction settled at $32.48 in August 2026, after a February 2026 settlement price of $27.94, equal to the $27.94 auction reserve price.
• Carbon credit retirements reached 98 million in the first half of 2026, while issuances fell to just under 100 million.
• Removal credits were 381% more expensive than emissions reduction credits in 2024, up from 245% in 2023.
• China’s national carbon market recorded a cumulative trading volume of 961 million tonnes by the end of August 2026.

Editor’s Choice

• EU ETS revenue in 2025: More than €43 billion, per the European Commission.
• EU ETS auction revenue since 2013: Over €258 billion.
• China ETS trading volume in 2025: 235 million tonnes, up 24% year on year.
• RGGI Auction 73 proceeds: $1.08 billion for states to reinvest.
• CORSIA participation: 130 states as of 1 January 2026.
• Average carbon price: Nearly $21/tCO2e, per the World Bank.

Carbon Credit Trading Statistics: Global Market Size

• Carbon pricing revenues have tripled over the past decade, rising from below $30 billion in 2016 to more than $107 billion in 2025.
• There are now 87 carbon pricing policies globally, increasing by seven since last year.
• Direct carbon prices have grown 7% since last year’s edition and have doubled over the last decade.
• Coverage would increase to around one-third of global emissions if instruments currently under development are implemented in several more major emerging economies.
• The 41 emissions trading systems in force cover 26% of global greenhouse gas emissions, across jurisdictions that represent 63% of global GDP.
• Three new national-level systems launch in 2026, in Japan, India, and Vietnam.
• An ETS is now in place in 14 of the G20 nations.

Source: World Bank State and Trends of Carbon Pricing 2026, ICAP Status Report 2026

About This Data

• Compiled from 24 sources: 17 government, regulator and official body publications, and 7 industry, research and academic reports.
• Sources were published between October 2024 and September 2026; auction prices use official results, not price tickers.
• Figures are reviewed on a rolling basis and updated when sources publish new editions.

The World Bank count includes carbon taxes, so its coverage figure exceeds ICAP’s ETS-only share. Investor demand for climate-linked assets shows up in our ESG investing statistics.

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RGGI Allowance Auction Prices

• RGGI sold 28,537,847 CO2 allowances at a clearing price of $37.65 in its 73rd auction.
• Bids in Auction 73 ranged from $2.69 to $190 per allowance, and the ratio of bids to initial supply was 2.6x.
• The 72nd auction, in June 2026, cleared at $35, with bids ranging from $2.69 to $200 per allowance.
• The first auction of 2026 cleared at $24.99, and 7,853,278 of its 26,088,154 allowances sold were CCR allowances.
• The final auction of 2025 cleared at $26.73, with bids from $2.62 to $52.64.
• Auction 73’s $37.65 clearing price was about 1.9 times the $19.63 of June 2025.

Auctions 71 and 73 both sold Cost Containment Reserve (CCR) allowances on top of their initial offerings.

Recent Developments

• September 16, 2026: China reported 3,680 key emitters from the power generation, steel, cement, and aluminum smelting sectors in its national carbon market, covering more than 65% of the national total of carbon dioxide emissions.
• September 16, 2026: China’s voluntary emissions reduction market had 41 registered projects, with a cumulative trading volume of 21.71 million tonnes and a transaction value of 1.74 billion yuan.
• September 11, 2026: RGGI’s eleven participating states reported Auction 73 results, including a supply of 5,740,000 allowances from Virginia, which resumed RGGI participation on July 1, 2026.
• August 19, 2026: The California and Québec joint auction sold 49,016,180 current allowances, with qualified bids at 1.31 times the allowances available.
• July 27, 2026: One-fifth of all credits issued during the first half of 2026 carried the ICVCM Core Carbon Principles (CCP) label, the highest share on record, Climate Focus reported.

RGGI Auction Volume and Proceeds

• Auction 73 sold 28,537,847 allowances, including 1,148,000 CCR allowances, the largest volume in the six auctions charted below.
• Total cumulative proceeds across all RGGI auctions reached $12,493,971,043.53, and Auction 73 drew 65 bidders.
• The second auction of 2026 raised $642 million from 18,349,699 allowances.
• The first auction of 2026 generated $652 million for states to reinvest.
• The final auction of 2025 generated $407 million from 15,230,235 allowances.
• Auction 69 generated $337.7 million from 15,177,783 allowances.
• Auction 68 generated $299.2 million from 15,244,479 allowances.
• RGGI says auction proceeds have directly benefited over 8 million households and 400,000 businesses in the region to date.

California-Québec Cap-and-Invest Auction Statistics

• Current allowances settled at $32.48 and 2029 advance allowances at $32.75 in the joint auction held on August 19, 2026.
• Compliance entities bought 77.84% of current auction allowances and 78.76% of advance auction allowances.
• Qualified bids were 1.31 times the current allowances available for sale and 1.86 times the advance allowances.
• Current allowances settled at $27.94 on February 18, 2026, the same as the $27.94 auction reserve price.
• Current allowances settled at $28.81 in the joint auction held on May 20, 2026.
• The current-auction settlement price rose about 12.7% from May to August 2026.
• In August 2025, current allowances settled at $28.76 against a $25.87 reserve price.

The current auction settlement price reached $32.48 by the August 2026 auction. The table below breaks each of those five auctions into the reserve price and the volume of current allowances sold.

Source: California Air Resources Board auction summary results reports, 2025 and 2026

The two programs moved apart. RGGI prices nearly doubled between June 2025 and September 2026, while California and Québec traded close to their floor until the August 2026 auction.

EU Emissions Trading System Revenue and Emissions

• From 2013 to the end of 2025, EU ETS auctions raised over €258 billion in revenue.
• EU ETS emissions from power and industry installations are around 50% below 2005 levels, and the system is on track for the 2030 target of -62%.
• Shipping companies surrendered allowances for more than 99% of their relevant surrendering requirements by the 30 September deadline.

Source: European Commission, 2025 Carbon Market Report and ETS revenue data

For green-project financing outside carbon markets, see our green bond market data.

China National Carbon Market Statistics

• The trading volume of carbon emission quotas reached 235 million tonnes in 2025, an increase of 24% year on year, with turnover of 14.63 billion yuan (about $2.08 billion).
• The market operated for 243 trading days in 2025.
• Total turnover reached 65.7 billion yuan (about $9.71 billion) by the end of August 2026.
• In 2025, 3,378 key emitters were included in quota management, including 2,087 from power generation.
• Preparatory work is underway to bring petrochemicals, chemicals, papermaking and civil aviation into the market.
• By the end of December 2025, 33 voluntary emission reduction projects had been registered, and certified voluntary emission reductions trading reached nearly 9.22 million tonnes.

Power generation, the sector with the most covered emitters, is also the focus of our blockchain energy trading statistics.

Source: State Council Information Office, citing the Ministry of Ecology and Environment (January 2026) and the China Carbon Market Conference 2026 report (September 2026)

Its 2025 turnover of 14.63 billion yuan across 235 million tonnes works out to roughly 62 yuan a tonne.

Voluntary Carbon Market Statistics

• Voluntary carbon market transaction volumes fell by 25% in 2024, while credit prices declined by only 5.5%.
• 182 million tons of credits were retired in 2024 from the ten largest standards.
• 2024 posted the lowest transaction volume since 2018, but market value is 1.9x higher than 2018.
• There was a 217% premium for credits with vintage from the last five years, compared to a 53% premium in 2023.
• The average price of Landfill Gas credits increased by 35% from the first half to the second half of 2024 following ICVCM approval, with 3.1 million credits traded.

Key finding: Credits representing emissions removals were 381% more expensive than emissions reduction credits in 2024, up from 245% in 2023, per Ecosystem Marketplace. Buyers are paying for durability and recency rather than volume, which is why prices held up better than traded tonnes in a shrinking market.

These 2024 figures are more than 12 months old. Carbon tokens sit within the wider tokenized commodities market.

Carbon Credit Issuance and Retirement Trends

• Carbon credit issuances fell 9% from 2024 to 2025, while retirements held firm at 174 million tonnes, according to Climate Focus.
• The World Bank reports a different figure: overall carbon credit issuances rose 8% from 2024 to 2025.
• Carbon credit retirements reached 98 million in the first half of 2026, while issuances fell to just under 100 million.
• Household device activities, namely cookstoves and domestic biogas, became the largest source of newly issued carbon credits for the first time.
• Issuances from nature-based activities declined by one-third in the first half of 2026.

Source: Climate Focus, Carbon Markets 2025 Review and Carbon Markets 2026 H1 Review

The two trackers report different 2025 issuance figures, so both are shown separately; Climate Focus reports retirements holding firm.

CCP-Labelled and High-Integrity Carbon Credits

• One-fifth of all credits issued during the first half of 2026 carried the ICVCM Core Carbon Principles (CCP) label, the highest share on record.
• In August 2025, the Integrity Council approved three biochar and two Improved Forest Management (IFM) methodologies to use its CCP label.
• Twenty-five projects have been registered under Isometric Biochar Production and Storage, with 500,000 credits expected to be issued in 2026.
• Three projects have been registered under VM0044, with 249,000 credits expected to be issued annually.
• IFM represents approximately 4% of the voluntary carbon market.
• In 2024, Landfill Gas credits traded 3.1 million units, a 149% increase in volume from 2023.

Source: Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market, August 2025

Article 6 and Paris Agreement Carbon Credit Statistics

• By the end of June 2026, 112 bilateral agreements were in place, approximately 63 million Mitigation Outcomes had been issued, and 28 million ITMOs had been transferred between participating countries.
• The first Article 6.4 methodology was approved in 2025.
• On 26 February 2026, a UN body approved the first credits to be issued under the UN carbon market established by the Paris Agreement, from a clean-cooking project in Myanmar.
• The project is coordinated with authorized participants from the Republic of Korea.
• Credited reductions are roughly 40% lower than under the Clean Development Mechanism.

Source: Climate Focus, UNFCCC

Why it matters: The first Paris Agreement Crediting Mechanism credits came from a Myanmar cookstove project, with credited reductions roughly 40% lower than under the older CDM rules, according to UNFCCC. For that project, the adjustment means fewer credits issued than the older CDM rules would have produced.

CORSIA Aviation Carbon Offset Demand

• CORSIA’s First Phase (2024 to 2026) began with 126 ICAO Member States, and 130 States were participating as of 1 January 2026.
• ICAO set 85% of 2019 emissions as CORSIA’s baseline from 2024 until the end of the scheme in 2035.
• The official offsetting requirement for 2024 published by ICAO is 55.6 Mt, with a sector growth factor of 15.4%.
• IATA estimates 2025 offsetting requirements between 58.8 Mt and 81.5 Mt, with a mid-value of 70.2 Mt.
• Demand for CORSIA-eligible emissions units in the entire First Phase is expected to lie between 170 and 236 million units.
• Supply of CORSIA-eligible units is nearing 40 Mt towards the First Phase.

Airlines need several times more eligible units than the market holds. The World Bank notes that carbon credit prices declined slightly across 2025, but projects eligible for use by international airlines continued to have a price premium.

Tokenized Carbon Credit Statistics

• KlimaDAO’s market capitalization stood at around $1.2 billion in November 2021, then declined to approximately $0.2 billion by May 2022.
• As of May 2024, BCT made up 87.16% of the KlimaDAO treasury, worth $9,327,627.99 at $0.62 per tonne.
• USDC made up 10.41% of the treasury, worth $1,114,409.30.
• The KlimaDAO treasury’s median holding of BCT is 91.02%, and the top 10 accounts hold 99.34% of BCT.

This data is more than 12 months old, and this article found no current primary figure for on-chain carbon totals. Tokenized carbon is one segment of the wider asset tokenization market.

Worth noting: KlimaDAO’s treasury was valued mostly in BCT at $0.62 per tonne in May 2024, according to the Frontiers in Blockchain study. That is a fraction of the compliance prices above.

Concentrated protocol treasuries are common, as the DAO treasury holdings data shows.

Conclusion

Carbon pricing raised more than $107 billion for public budgets in the World Bank’s latest count. Auction prices in the RGGI and California and Québec programs rose in the most recent rounds. The voluntary market is shrinking in volume, but buyers are paying more for removals, recent vintages and CCP-labelled credits.

Climate Focus forecasts around 200 million credits to be issued this year, the lowest annual issuance since 2019. Article 6 transfers and CORSIA demand are the swing factors to watch, because both draw on the same limited pool of high-integrity credits.