Monitoring the development of carbon markets in Indonesia and globally — rules, prices, integrity, supply, demand and the multilateral process.
The Outlook is our periodic reading of where the carbon market is going rather than where it has been: which rules are likely to bind, which asset classes will clear, and what a project or a portfolio has to demonstrate to be financeable when they do.
It is published as an occasional assessment rather than on a fixed cycle — written when the evidence in these six classifications shifts enough to change a conclusion, not to fill a calendar slot.
The current assessment →The defining change of this cycle is who now polices integrity. A US commodities regulator has opened a broad probe into the voluntary market, California’s disclosure rules are entering implementation, and a statutory carbon budget has been used to refuse an airport expansion outright.
Voluntary guidance set the terms for a decade. Securities law, disclosure regulation and national carbon budgets are setting them now — which raises the cost of a weak methodology from reputational to legal.
The decarbonisation market is projected at USD 2.1 trillion in 2026, rising to USD 4.2 trillion by 2033. Article 6 infrastructure, by contrast, is still being funded: the Least Developed Countries Group has had to ask for steady money to build it.
Methodology revision continues underneath — blue carbon among them — while removals attract public demonstration funding in Tokyo and elsewhere. The architecture is being assembled while the market transacts on it.
Indonesia’s position rests on nature-based assets it already holds and emitting assets it needs to retire. Forest and peat carbon is the supply story; transition credits from early coal retirement are the liability story, and both are priced against the same NDC.
What determines value is not resource but assurance: independent pre-issuance assessment, portfolio structure to spread delivery risk, and accounting that survives an Article 6 authorisation. That is where the Climate Collective and Landscape Carbon concentrate.
The market’s constraint has moved from supply to admissibility. There is no shortage of tonnes; there is a shortage of tonnes a regulated buyer can put on a balance sheet and defend.
Three things now decide that. The first is authorisation: whether the host country will issue a corresponding adjustment under Article 6, which turns a domestic reduction into a transferable unit and removes it from the host’s own NDC accounting. Countries with tight targets are increasingly unwilling to do so, and a project without authorisation is confined to the voluntary market at voluntary prices.
The second is assurance, and it has changed character. For a decade integrity was policed by standard-setters and rating agencies — reputational instruments. It is now being policed by securities and commodities regulators, disclosure law, and statutory carbon budgets. A weak methodology used to cost a buyer credibility; it is starting to cost them a filing.
The third is delivery. A single project carries concentrated exposure to one regulatory change, one methodology revision, one fire season, one community dispute. A portfolio spread across project types and geographies smooths the outliers, which is why offtake at scale is moving toward portfolios and insurance wrappers rather than bilateral deals on single sites.
For Indonesia the implication is specific. The resource is not the binding constraint and has not been for some time: forest and peat carbon, blue carbon, and now transition credits from early coal retirement are all available in volume. What is scarce is the documentation chain — measurement that survives third-party assessment, tenure that survives scrutiny, and authorisation that survives the NDC arithmetic. Projects that build that chain first will clear at compliance prices; projects that build the asset first and the paperwork later will not clear at all.
We publish this as an occasional assessment rather than a quarterly note because the conclusions only change when the evidence does. The six classifications below are the record that assessment is drawn from.
The provision allowing countries to transfer mitigation outcomes between them, with accounting that avoids double counting. It is the legal basis on which national compliance markets and the current generation of transaction rules are being built.
The daily round-up for 4 to 6 September: the UN Least Developed Countries Group adopted a declaration pushing major emitters to raise ambition and calling for steady funding toward Article 6 operational infrastructure; a crediting programme opened consultation on a major revision to its tidal wetland and seagrass methodology; the Tokyo Metropolitan Government selected three startups for carbon removal demonstration; European carbon allowances posted a 1.8 percent weekly gain; and the IMO’s net zero shipping rules survived talks intact.
Indonesia’s submitted NDC as filed, which sets the national target any domestically issued unit is measured against and determines what can be authorised for international transfer.
No updates logged for this edition.
No updates logged for this edition.
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Prospective members must have their projects assessed by an internationally reputable carbon project assessor or rating agency before credits are offered. The portfolio structure spreads delivery risk across project types and geographies rather than concentrating it in one site.
No updates logged for this edition.
A scoping study, commissioned by the government of the United Kingdom, on using transition credits to move captive off-grid coal plants to renewables — a carbon asset class generated by retiring an emitting asset early rather than by avoiding new emissions.
Development of forest carbon and other ecosystem service assets on one side, and measurement of emission exposure and reduction pathways on the other. Both sides of the balance sheet are priced in the same framework.
The decarbonisation market is projected at USD 2.1 trillion in 2026 and USD 4.2 trillion by 2033, a 10.5 percent compound growth rate driven by tighter regulation and corporate net-zero commitments. California’s SB 253 and SB 261 implementing regulations closed for comment on 11 August.
No updates logged for this edition.
Governments, companies and investors met in Wuhan from 15 to 17 September on market expansion, climate finance and the integration of regulated and voluntary systems. The week also carried China’s potential bid to host COP33 in 2028.
With Antalya about sixty days away, the presidency’s agenda has narrowed to three measurable targets and the Climate Implementation Bridge — machinery to turn NDC priorities into investable portfolios rather than a new finance number.
No updates logged for this edition.
Carbon Market 360 follows the development of carbon markets in Indonesia and globally: the rules that govern units, the prices they trade at, the assurance that makes them credible, the projects that supply them, the buyers that retire them, and the multilateral process that authorises transfer between countries.
Entries are updates rather than news items — a rule change, a price move, a methodology revision, a mandate. Each carries its source, its date and a link to the primary record. Where a classification has nothing sourced in the period, it publishes empty rather than being filled.
Our own work on these markets sits under Landscape Carbon and the Landscape Climate Collective; the daily news feed across all sustainability topics is the Daily Monitor.
A working register of the instruments that govern carbon pricing and trading — the two laws, the presidential umbrella, the sectoral ministerial regulations, the exchange rules, and Article 6 — with what each requires and what it means for a project developer. Current to Perpres 110/2025, which replaced the 2021 framework and reopened international sales.
What a carbon market is, why an instrument that abates nothing itself is strategic — it decides where the reductions happen, and moves capital to the cheapest real abatement — and how far Indonesia has got in building one.