Corresponding Adjustments: How Carbon Credits Get Priced

By Commertize Desk · Published 29 October 2026

In its State of the Voluntary Carbon Market 2025 report, Ecosystem Marketplace put 2024 voluntary carbon transactions at roughly 84 million tonnes, worth about $535 million. That works out to an average of around $6 a tonne. The average hides a split. Credits with a documented corresponding adjustment, meaning the host country removes the tonne from its own national climate accounts, are starting to trade as a different instrument from credits without one. For a project sponsor or a corporate buyer, that attribute now affects what the credit is worth, who can buy it, and how easily it can be resold.

What the dataset shows

Total volume is not the main story in the 2024 numbers. The bigger change is that buyers have moved toward credits whose quality can be checked. Removal credits, credits with recent vintages and credits carrying third-party quality labels sold at clear premiums to the market average, while large pools of older avoidance credits stayed unsold. Buyers are paying for attributes they can verify, not for tonnes as such.

A corresponding adjustment is the attribute that matters most here, because it is the only one tied to national climate accounts rather than to how a project was designed. Article 6 of the Paris Agreement lets countries transfer mitigation outcomes to each other. To stop two countries counting the same reduction, the host country has to apply a corresponding adjustment to its emissions balance. A credit without one can still be a real tonne. It just cannot be used by anyone whose claim relies on the host country not also counting it.

Where the demand for adjusted credits comes from

Two primary sources set the demand side.

The first is aviation. Under the International Civil Aviation Organization's CORSIA scheme, units used for the first phase (2024 through 2026) must come with a host-country letter of authorization and a corresponding adjustment. This compliance demand cannot use unadjusted credits at all. As a result, the supply that qualifies is a small fraction of the total registry stock.

The second is the Paris Agreement crediting mechanism itself. At COP29 in Baku in November 2024, parties adopted the Article 6.4 Supervisory Body's standards on methodologies and removals. That made the UN-supervised mechanism operational and created a supply of credits that are authorized from the moment they are issued.

On the voluntary side, the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market began approving methodologies under its Core Carbon Principles in 2024. The CCP label covers quality: additionality, permanence and robust quantification. It does not require a corresponding adjustment, but it records whether a credit has one. So a buyer can now see two separate questions on one record: is this a good tonne, and is it an exclusive tonne?

Why the attribute is a pricing variable

Think of a carbon credit as a bundle of rights. A corresponding adjustment adds exclusivity: the buyer's claim does not overlap with the host country's. Exclusivity is worth money for three reasons.

It widens the buyer pool. An adjusted credit can serve compliance buyers, sovereign buyers and voluntary buyers. An unadjusted one serves only voluntary buyers who accept a contribution-style claim. More eligible buyers usually means more bids and a narrower bid-ask spread.

It improves exit liquidity. A holder of an adjusted credit can sell into several demand pools. A holder of an unadjusted credit is relying on one. For anyone holding carbon as inventory rather than retiring it straight away, that difference shows up directly in how the position can be marked.

It is binary and documented. Additionality and permanence are judgement calls. Authorization is a sovereign letter, and the adjustment is reported in the host country's transparency filings. Because it is a fact rather than an opinion, it is one of the few carbon attributes that can be checked against a primary record.

Where the data breaks down

The weak point is the record, not the credit. A letter of authorization is issued by a ministry. The adjustment is reported later in a biennial transparency report. The credit itself sits in a registry that may not reference either document in a machine-readable form. Between authorization and reporting, the buyer is relying on a promise. There is also an open question about what happens to a credit's status if a host country revokes or amends an authorization before reporting it.

For an institutional holder, this is the same problem that applies to any physical or off-chain asset: a claim is only as good as the evidence attached to it. The method set out in our explainer on proof of reserve for real-world assets applies here. Attach the primary evidence to the unit itself: the issuance record, the letter of authorization, the transparency-report reference and the retirement status. Make all of it queryable rather than leaving it in a PDF. Once the evidence travels with the credit, a buyer can price exclusivity without having to re-run diligence at every trade.

What this means for sponsors and buyers

For a project sponsor, getting authorization early is a capital-raising decision as well as a policy one. A project that can show a host-country letter at the forward-sale stage is selling into compliance and sovereign demand, not just the voluntary market's average, and a forward buyer will reflect that in the price and size of a prepayment.

For a corporate buyer, a portfolio that mixes adjusted and unadjusted credits should be split along that line, priced separately and disclosed separately. Treating them as one inventory line overstates the liquidity of the unadjusted part and understates the value of the adjusted part.

For intermediaries and venues, the attribute has to be visible at the unit level, not the project level. Two credits from the same project and vintage can have different authorization status if the host country authorized only part of the issuance. A venue that lists them as interchangeable is hiding the variable buyers are paying for.

Reading the next data release

When the next annual market dataset comes out, the useful question is not whether the total grew. It is how wide the gap is between authorized and unauthorized credits of the same vintage and project type, and whether that gap is narrowing as more supply arrives through the Article 6.4 mechanism. If the gap holds, corresponding adjustments have become a lasting price tier. If it narrows, supply has caught up. Either way, a sponsor should set its authorization strategy before going to forward buyers, not after.

These are parts of digital capital markets where a credit's documentation decides its price as much as the underlying tonne does.

What to do next

If you have a carbon credit portfolio or project you are considering bringing to market, start at Commertize's asset tokenization intake.

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