High integrity voluntary carbon markets in the UK: An Assessment

In June 2026 we published a report funded by a consortium of impact investors. The brief was to explore the current state of the UK market in nature-based voluntary carbon and explore indicators of its potential growth.

With thanks to Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, The Church of England Social Impact Investment Programme, Unity Trust Bank and The University of Edinburgh for their kind support.

Also thanks also to Ezri Carlebach for his editorial direction and support plus Emma Farthing at Quarterpenny Consulting and Dr Stephanie Wray for providing quality assurance and technical advice.

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Key findings

We identify twelve key factors which will affect the market, or are already having an impact on it, from the evolving policy landscape for climate and nature markets – to interventions by BSi, ICVCM and SBTi – to industry initiatives.

UK standards and codes

The report focuses on specific standards and habitat codes, but also highlights other key actors seeking to innovate, including through the provision of the critical market infrastructure that underpins success.

The market potential

We develop three scenarios for market growth. It is a nascent market, with an associated lack of historical trading data - and so a challenging task. We modelled existing data together with the potential impact of the twelve key drivers.

In an upside scenario, the potential scale of the market is approximately the same as the UK's forecast residual emissions by 2050.