Peru’s carbon market should be self-sustaining instead of relying excessively on foreign aid, without necessarily replacing international funds, officials and institutional partners told Carbon Pulse this week at the Peru Carbon Forum in Lima.

An afforestation project in eastern Colombia has completed its first verified issuance after seven years under development, with backers aiming to expand the planted area and bring additional volumes to market.

Seaweed-based carbon removal (CDR) could be far less effective than some global models suggest, as iron limitation and competition with phytoplankton reduce both cultivation potential and net ocean carbon uptake, according to a new modelling study.

Most of the ministers of the Brazilian Supreme Federal Court (STF) voted to strike down the mandate for insurance companies to invest in carbon credits.

Indonesia’s mangrove financing has grown more complex, backed by public budgets, international partnerships, and market mechanisms, but scaling up will depend on making projects transaction ready, a report said.

Survivability - Indonesian developer Fairatmos has signed an MoU with conservation group Yayasan Konservasi Pesisir Indonesia to strengthen mangrove restoration and blue carbon development in the country, it announced. The partnership will focus on smart nursery development, joint research and academic publications, and exploring future blue carbon project opportunities. The organisations said the tie-up aims to improve long-term tree survivability and support science-based, scalable coastal restoration efforts.

A US oil major this week retired an estimated $250 million in avoided deforestation credits generated as a byproduct of one of the largest oil discoveries in decades, a project that has since sparked a multi-billion dollar legal battle.

Carbon market standard Verra will decide whether to permanently integrate insurance- and fund-based alternatives to traditional buffer pools post-pilot, depending in part on whether credits issued under the approaches can qualify for integrity labels such as the Core Carbon Principles (CCP), according to a programme manager.

The non-profit in charge of Peru’s 25-year-old Cordillera Azul National Park (PNCAZ) turned to carbon finance over a decade ago to sustain its operations, creating a REDD+ mega-project – but following a turbulent few years beset with baseline challenges, methodology questions, and litigation surrounding free, prior, and informed consent (FPIC) from Indigenous communities, it is mulling its next steps.

OAE effectiveness - A new modelling study published in Biogeosciences found that ocean alkalinity enhancement (OAE) could reduce atmospheric CO2 by 73-130 ppm by 2500 across 1.5C, 2C, and 3C warming stabilisation scenarios, while lowering global surface air temperature by about 0.14-0.17C per century, but said its effectiveness depends heavily on how removal efficiency is measured. The study, which used a fully coupled Earth system model from 1861-2500, found gross ocean carbon capture efficiency remained close to the theoretical maximum, while net ocean capture and atmospheric CO2-reduction efficiencies declined over time because of carbon cycle feedbacks from the ocean and land biosphere. The authors said OAE could mitigate ocean acidification at the surface and in the interior ocean, but most long-term pH benefits came from atmospheric CO2 drawdown rather than direct chemical effects from added alkalinity, concluding that rapid emissions reductions remain the most effective way to meet Paris Agreement goals and limit ocean acidification.

Bolivia’s executive branch aims to present an overarching climate finance bill to the country’s national assembly by July – establishing the basis for both voluntary and compliance markets, among other instruments, a top official told Carbon Pulse at the Peru Carbon Forum this week.

Marine carbon removal (mCDR) credits are entering the voluntary carbon market (VCM) before key questions on monitoring, ecological risk, and governance have been resolved, according to a new preprint study.

A new guide released on Thursday by a New York-based advisory firm set out criteria for buyers sourcing agricultural residues for biomass-based carbon removals (CDR), citing the need for safeguards around soil health, livelihoods, and credit integrity.

A Canada-headquartered carbon project financier expects its Vietnam household devices programme to secure an governmental Article 6 Letter of Authorisation (LOA) before year-end, potentially positioning the initiative among the first projects approved under the Southeast Asian country’s new international carbon trading framework.

Over 25% of carbon credits retired so far this year in the voluntary market (VCM) have come from Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), where REDD+ units still dominate supply.

A UK-based data centre developer has launched what it described as the world’s first integrated carbon removal platform tailored to the data centre sector, seeking to bundle biochar production, credit generation, certification, monitoring, and financing into a single infrastructure-grade offering aimed at hyperscalers and institutional buyers.

Carbon buyers should assess projects based on quality, local fit, and delivery timelines rather than defaulting to dominant registries, a senior representative at a Colombian nature-based project developer told Carbon Pulse.

Quality control - Ratings agency Calyx Global announced the companies which are retiring the highest quality credits on average in research published on Thursday. The top three large buyers (>100,000 credits retired) by average rating of credits retired, all with a BBB or higher average in 2025, were Salesforce, Autodesk, and Ernst & Young. The top overall retirees (>500 credits) retired in 2025 by average rating of credits, all with a AA or higher average rating per Calyx Global data were Williams College, Gatwick Airport, Vetter Pharma, and StepStone Group. The retirement data is based on four registries: ACR, CAR, Gold, VCS.

A clean cooking project developer operating in multiple Latin American countries has already obtained one Article 6 Letter of Authorisation (LoA) and is hoping to gain more, while keeping up with market trends toward high integrity, representatives told Carbon Pulse in Peru.

A UK firm is launching a platform to sell up to 100,000 carbon-removal credits a year to cloud-computing providers. 

A South Korean trader and project developer has signed a contract with a Singapore-based marketplace for carbon credit procurement worth KRW 8.38 billion ($5.59 million).

Faster audits - Removals registry Puro.earth has launched an audit booking calendar to allow suppliers to generate revenue faster and bring greater transparency to buyers, it said in a release Thursday. The new tool enables suppliers to submit, manage, and track facility audit bookings in a single, structured platform, thereby replacing previous processes with a real-time view of booking status, audit timelines, and coordination with Puro certification teams. It's designed to shorten the gap between production of carbon removals (CDR) and the issuance of carbon credits, supporting faster time to revenue as the market scales.

Ethiopia's carbon market law - Ethiopia’s Council of Ministers has approved a draft carbon market proclamation to establish rules for carbon trading and attract green investment, local news outlet The Reporter said Tuesday. The draft legislation, which will now go to Parliament, seeks to operationalise the country’s carbon market strategy, define procedures for carbon trading, support climate finance access, and set safeguards for communities and ecosystems affected by carbon projects. It would also create mechanisms for sharing carbon trading revenues among the government, project developers, local communities, and other stakeholders, the outlet reported.

An emerging risk that many corporate net zero goals will not be met could push through greater pragmatism when outlining targets, as well as a more flexible approach across standard-setters, according to experts, even as the number of companies announcing science-aligned climate ambitions continues to grow.

A carbon removal (CDR) registry launched on Thursday a tool seeking to centralise audit scheduling and shorten the time to issuance.

A Toronto-headquartered carbon and precious metals royalty and streaming company has sharply narrowed its focus on voluntary offset markets after pulling back from a large-scale regenerative agriculture programme, while continuing efforts to monetise forestry credits and advance a planned merger.

Ardea ascends – Founder Marcos Almeida launched Ardea Climate this week, which is an environmental assets company specialising in the commercialisation of credits in the VCM. The new Sao Paulo-based firm said it will operate across sales, brokerage, and commercial advisory services, connecting selected climate projects with a global network of corporate buyers across REDD+, ARR, landfill gas, renewables, and I-RECs. Almeida previously led international sales and business development at Biofilica Ambipar Environment, and has also held roles at Bank ABC Brasil, Louis Dreyfus Company, ED&F Man, and PwC.

US policymakers should align voluntary and compliance carbon markets around common standards and infrastructure to improve market efficiency, a public policy group reported.

Peru will by June accredit new standards to its national RENAMI carbon registry and approve over a dozen Article 6 projects, just on the heels of its recent authorisation of a flagship clean cooking project under Article 6.2, according to a senior official.

Pipeline pressure – Summit Carbon Solutions’ (SCS) supporters and opponents have urged Iowa regulators to act on the developer’s revised CO2 pipeline proposal, with industry groups requesting a hearing on Tuesday while some landowners called for the plan to be denied over eminent domain concerns, local media reported this week. The Iowa Renewable Fuels Association (IRFA) this week formally asked the Iowa Utilities Commission (IUC) to schedule a hearing on Summit’s revised route application, arguing delays are costing Iowa ethanol plants about $5.2 mln per day in forgone revenue. Summit unveiled the revised route on May 13, before affected landowners formally filed requests with the IUC on May 20 seeking denial of the updated proposal.

Local communities must be put at the heart of clean cooking projects for them to generate credible carbon credits and fulfil their potential as one of the only climate measures that can be deployed fast and at scale in displacement settings.

Peru will be looking to sell around 1 million forest carbon credits a year into the Singapore market under its bilateral Article 6.2 deal, a project developer told Carbon Pulse this week.

A Dutch carbon market standard setter has approved a new methodology for generating voluntary credits from crop residues transformed into long-lived biobased construction materials, in a move aimed at supporting circular building supply chains and scaling carbon storage in the built environment.

Zimbabwe's dispute over the eligibility of its carbon credits for aviation offsetting scheme CORSIA highlights the persistent political uncertainties around Sub-Saharan Africa's race to enter international carbon markets – while scientific studies warn that carbon investments could be key to saving the continent's vital forest sinks.

Corporate buyers of legacy voluntary carbon credits could face growing audit, disclosure, and impairment risks as carbon accounting rules tighten, according to a recent guide by a US investment bank.

From CDM to PACM – Brazil has approved nine additional projects and programmes from the former Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) for inclusion in the Paris Agreement Crediting Mechanism (PACM), it announced on Tuesday. This adds to a previous round of approval for 80 projects. While most of the projects focus on renewable energy, the reforestation initiative Renewable Source of Wood Supplies for Industrial Use in Brazil stands out among them.

Gold Standard has opened a consultation on updates to a methodology that credits activities that tackle methane emissions during organic waste disposal, which will align with requirements set out under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement.

Only a third of EU ETS stakeholders are explicitly in favour of allowing the use of international carbon credits in the cap-and-trade market, whereas a strong majority backs the bloc's use of credits outside the scheme, data from the European Commission's call for evidence reveals.

Integration - Carbon infrastructure provider Xpansiv and environmental commodities exchange Enechain have begun real-time data integration between their platforms. This will allow users of Enechain's carbon marketplace, Japan Climate Exchange (JCEX), to view bids and place trades for environmental products directly on the JCEX screen without separate registration. The move also enables centralised management of domestic and global credits, expands liquidity, and improves price discovery. The firms had earlier struck a deal to link JCEX with Xpansiv’s infrastructure, giving Japanese companies access to high-quality voluntary credits, including CCP-aligned, CORSIA-eligible, and I-RECs.

Modelling the carbon curve - London-based venture capital firm Counteract has launched the Carbon Curve tool for investors to explore the financial dynamics of carbon removal (CDR) projects as the industry scales. For investors, the tool illustrates conditions for early returns in CDR, and for developers, it can help optimise variables such as capex and opex that affect capital costs and project viability.

Artificial intelligence (AI) tools can help fill GHG data gaps, but may also amplify uncertainty and reduce transparency if not carefully validated, a webinar heard on Tuesday.

A Canadian carbon removal (CDR) company has landed a major research deal with a federal body to launch a nearly C$7.5 million ($5.4 mln) research project.

A cohort of five nature-based project developers from around the world have completed a German-based offset platform’s fourth accelerator programme.

Prices for Phase 1 CORSIA-eligible carbon credits continued to fall last week as uncertainty around the international aviation offsetting scheme and persistently high jet fuel prices weighed on market sentiment, pushing thoughts of future compliance lower down carriers’ list of priorities.

Morocco this month inked another bilateral Article 6.2 agreement, as the government is finally putting in place market infrastructure to support its ‘learning by doing’ approach, while Oman produced a concrete roadmap outlining its carbon market priorities.

Aligning with Paris - Gold Standard has launched its Paris Agreement-aligned templates - those both for project developers and validation and verification bodies, it said on LinkedIn. The update is intended to raise market integrity and to reduce admin burden by integrating Paris Agreement requirements directly into core documents, including the project design document (PDD), programme of activities design document (PoA-DD), voluntary project activity design document (VPA-DD), and monitoring reports. The templates are effective immediately for new projects and existing projects can voluntarily opt to transition early.

The Congo Basin needs a boost of investment, strengthened governance, and coordinated action in order to ward off mounting pressure on its resources and remain a vital carbon sink, including through more forestry carbon crediting projects, a UN-backed panel of scientists warned on Tuesday. 

A Germany-based airline has announced that its customers contributed to climate protection projects covering more than 710,000 tonnes of CO2 in 2025, an increase of around one-fifth year-on-year.

The CEO of large carbon removal developer Climeworks has called on governments and corporations to expand their support for new technologies, warning that the industry cannot rely on a small group of early adopters to scale operations fast enough to meet global climate goals.

A Belgian startup has raised €17.5 million in Series A funding to scale its plasma-based carbon utilisation technology, it announced Tuesday.

A removals registry has certified a new module for biochar produced in mobile reactors, supporting projects that transport reactors between sites.

A €20 million carbon capture and utilisation (CCU) plant has begun producing low-carbon aggregates at the Port of Bilbao in Spain, using industrial CO2 from a nearby refinery and thermal residues that would otherwise typically be sent to landfill.

A direct ocean carbon capture developer has issued an urgent call for investment or said it will file for bankruptcy this week.

Brunei Darussalam is set to tap its vast forest resources for international carbon markets, media reported.

Communications push - The Super Pollutant Action Alliance (SPAA), a project of US non-profit Multiplier, is seeking a consultant to test how policymakers, funders, journalists, scientists, and communicators respond to language around near-term warming and fast-acting climate mitigation. The work will cover methane, black carbon, hydrofluorocarbons, and tropospheric ozone, and include testing in the US, EU, China, India, and other geographies ahead of COP31. The contract, estimated at $325,000-475,000, will run from June to Oct. 2026, with proposals due June 5.

UN platform revamp - The UNFCCC secretariat has recommended repurposing the CDM voluntary cancellation platform to allow voluntary cancellation of Article 6.4 MCUs and eligible second commitment period CERs, while excluding authorised Article 6.4 emission reductions due to complexity and cost. The existing platform, launched in 2015, has facilitated the cancellation of around 16 mln CERs from almost 300 projects, but would need $265,000 in one-off development and software upgrades, plus $120,000 in annual maintenance, to integrate with the Article 6.4 mechanism registry and address security vulnerabilities. The CDM registry is due to close for transactions on Dec. 31, 2026, meaning the platform would be shut down unless a decision is taken, with the secretariat asking the Article 6.4 Supervisory Body to reach an agreed outcome by its twenty-second meeting in July.

Biochar boost - The Climate Trust (TCT) said it is exploring biochar carbon projects to help dry inland forest managers in the western US reduce wildfire risk while generating revenue from fuel reduction treatments. The Oregon-based non-profit said biochar production could turn small-diameter wood, deadwood, and other forest debris from pre-commercial thinning into a soil amendment that stores carbon, improves water retention, and reduces fertiliser needs, while cutting the cost of forest management through carbon credit and biochar sales.

Indonesia’s development of its forest carbon market is running into concerns over export levies, taxation, regulatory uncertainty, and technical bottlenecks, according to experts and stakeholders.

Biodiversity credits could become the next premium layer of carbon markets, rewarding projects that protect nature as well as store carbon, the head of a climate finance company has said in a paper.

A procurement and intelligence platform has launched a library of forward vintage curves for credits issued on the voluntary carbon market.

An agreement to buy 750,000 tonnes of carbon removals from a Swedish bioenergy carbon capture and storage (BECCS) facility sees a new market entrant buy at a scale approaching that typically reserved for the American tech giants, notably Microsoft.

Vietnam has finalised rules governing forest carbon credit trading, paving the way for the Southeast Asian country’s first issuances later this year.

A global exchange industry body has drafted principles for stock exchanges to label listed companies and IPO candidates with credible climate transition plans, it announced Tuesday.

Europe's only Verra-certified improved forest management (IFM) project has paid to have the activity fully assessed by a ratings agency after finding out earlier 'estimated' quality scores were too low to attract buyers, its developer told Carbon Pulse.

The first EU-backed transaction registered under the bloc’s Carbon Removals and Carbon Farming (CRCF) scheme will deliver its initial credits in 2029, according to the partners involved in the project.

A new academic study has proposed a machine learning recommendation framework designed to minimise carbon emissions from AI model development by predicting the environmental impact of training runs before they occur, with the researchers claiming the approach could cut emissions from model selection by more than 98%.

A carbon removals financier has partnered with a London-based biochar and biocarbon project authentication platform to apply independent scientific analysis and authentication services across its global CDR portfolio, in a move aimed at bolstering transparency, permanence assurance, and operational performance in the fast-growing sector.

A carbon asset manager with ambitions to become a major supplier of CORSIA-eligible credits has struck its second marketing deal, the company announced on Tuesday.

Latin American countries advanced carbon market plans last week, with Argentina proposing a carbon credit regime and Brazil outlining the rollout of its future emissions trading system, as the region eyes Article 6 demand to unlock investment.

A bipartisan US proposal to expand reforestation infrastructure support could ease long-standing supply bottlenecks constraining nature and carbon projects, observers told Carbon Pulse.

Silver linings? – The CDR market could actually benefit from Microsoft’s reported retreat from purchasing, the CEO of Swiss direct air capture firm Climeworks told Bloomberg late last week. Christoph Gebald said if Microsoft does pull back from the carbon removal market, it could signal the next phase of CDR - an era marked by many cross-sector companies making serious offtake commitments. Microsoft denied in April it would pause its CDR purchase programme after reports circulated that the tech giant would step away from large scale procurement. Microsoft’s offtake agreements have accounted for a huge portion of the CDR market to date. The company has signed inked a BECCS deal.

The risk that a developer goes bankrupt or fails to deliver is the biggest obstacle to funding carbon removal (CDR) projects, financiers told a European Commission event on the EU’s Carbon Removals and Carbon Farming (CRCF) scheme last week.

A new discussion paper has urged governments to rapidly establish a global governance framework for carbon removal (CDR), warning that the world is dangerously unprepared to manage the scale needed to meet climate targets.

The Article 6.4 Supervisory Body (SBM) has formally adopted a new tool for calculating the fraction of non-renewable biomass (fNRB), a key parameter underpinning baseline-setting in cookstove and biomass carbon activities, though has requested more granular country-level values be included following further work.

Australia can generate up to 127 million tonnes of annual carbon removals from land-sector activities by 2050, according to a report published Monday which argued sequestration and biodiversity restoration can occur simultaneously with expanding agricultural production.

Taiwan has begun evaluating a new voluntary offset methodology that optimises building chiller efficiency by adjusting operations to match weather forecasts.

Marine carbon removal (mCDR) projects looking to use sargassum could benefit from more predictable and persistent blooms in the Atlantic, as floating seaweed mats have increasingly begun to sustain their own growth, according to a recent study.

Indonesia is preparing new regulations for carbon trading in the energy sector, aiming to mobilise up to $7.7 billion in additional green investment annually, the energy ministry announced.

Offsets from Chinese carbon projects used by European companies lacked the equipment they claimed would cut greenhouse gas emissions, according to an investigation.

India has opened public consultation on three new draft methodologies under the offset mechanism of its Carbon Credit Trading Scheme (CCTS), looking at generating units from activities related to transport, maritime electrification, and vehicle recycling.