An afforestation initiative has become the first-ever project to register on Portugal’s voluntary carbon market (VCM) platform, launched last October.

Delivery offset – A large Russian online retailer, Wildberries & Russ, has called for unified market recommendations on reducing carbon emissions from the e-commerce sector, according to a statement shared to the Russian Carbon Units Registry on Friday. The retailer has seen customers offset 3.7 tonnes of CO2e from delivery services since launching a voluntary compensation initiative in mid-April with Moscow-based petrochemical company, Sibur. The initiative is aimed at allowing online customers to make their orders 'carbon neutral' with Russian carbon credits. Demand for offsets from Russian companies has increased since the start of 2025, according to analysis from AlliedOffsets.

Coalbed consultation – Absolute Climate has opened a public consultation on Version 1.0 of its Biomass Injection with Geologic Storage (BIGS) methodology from June 1 to July 1, outlining an assessment framework for quantifying CDR and low-carbon natural gas in coalbed reservoirs. The methodology describes how injected liquid biomass is converted by native microbial communities into biogas primarily composed of methane and CO2; while biomethane, CO2, and any unreacted biomass may be stored in the reservoir. According to the draft, coal’s preferential affinity for CO2 over methane supports CO2 storage and biomethane recovery, while small amounts of resident fossil natural gas could also be co-produced during early-stage operations.

A forest finance facility launched Friday is targeting an initial $50 million raise to provide early-stage and continuity capital for Indigenous and traditional community-led forest conservation projects.

A large US bank has signed its second carbon removal offtake deal with a developer of bio-oil projects, bringing its total commitment with the company to 90,000 tonnes.

London’s Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), the world’s largest marketplace for environmental derivatives, has lost a legal tussle this week over its world famous acronym, after a Dutch court ruled that a crypto trading company, owned by an environmental markets firm and using a similar branded registration, did not infringe on the bourse's trademark.

The news that Zimbabwe’s carbon credits are barred from the international aviation offsetting scheme CORSIA has sparked concerns elsewhere in Africa of a disconnect between Paris Agreement and ICAO rules – and may dissuade others from following a similar model for their national carbon registries.

A UK energy-from-waste operator has completed a major upgrade at a West Yorkshire plant earmarked for carbon capture and storage (CCS) deployment, it said Monday.

Member states will for the first time be able to use EU-certified permanent carbon removal credits to meet their national climate targets for agriculture, forestry, and other non-ETS sectors under proposals due to be presented later this year, a senior official has said.

Last month's change of government in Bulgaria could sharpen Sofia’s tone on EU climate policy, adding to wider Eastern European pressure for more flexibility on carbon costs, industrial rules, and border carbon fee exposure.

The Chilean government is looking into building a platform designed to increase carbon project transparency and connect developers with investors, consultants, and potential buyers across different markets, an official said on Thursday.

A Canadian-headquartered forestry company this week reported progress towards its climate targets, including lower emissions and new revenues from carbon market activities, in its latest sustainability report.

EU-approved CORSIA Phase 1 supply, based on provisional eligibility criteria, could reach as many as 160 million credits across the three-year period, according to a rating agency, but the company urged that Brussels takes a more moderate stance as this total is unlikely to be anywhere near as high in reality.

Colombia has published a draft carbon markets decree addressing technical and safeguarding concerns with tools that don’t yet exist, also imposing new responsibilities on domestic and international entities, but leaving key implementation questions open.

A voluntary carbon registry has listed its first Paris Agreement-aligned project, a clean cooking initiative in Senegal that is set to expand to cover several different programmes in the coming years, it was announced on Thursday.

The European Commission is facing mounting criticism over its forthcoming rulebook for certifying carbon farming activities, with campaigners warning that the framework risks undermining environmental integrity just as the EU seeks to expand carbon removals alongside its emissions trading and carbon border policies.

Stepping into SAF - The first procurement of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) has gone live on carbon removal portfolio manager Climefi's platform, in partnership with The International Aviation Group and British Airways, said ClimeFi co-founder, Sebastien Dewarrat. It reflects growing client demand and helps ClimeFi to coordinate removal purchases alongside SAF, as well as "to consolidate procurement, portfolio, and inventory management", he said on LinkedIn.

A Canadian bank has signed a deal to purchase 18,000 verified direct air capture (DAC) carbon removal (CDR) credits from a Montreal-headquartered project developer, it was announced on Thursday.

Open for feedback - The Rainbow Standard has opened a 30-day consultation on its bio-oil in asphalt module under the biomass carbon removal and storage (BiCRS) methodology. Module highlights include that projects are required to demonstrate carbon durability of 100 years or more, and that developers can issue removal credits for both pyrolysis co-products (biochar and bio-oil) within a single certification framework. The consultation is open until June 25. Find out more here.

Papua New Guinea has set a pathway to reach net zero emissions by 2030 and become net-negative by 2035 under a near-final update to its national climate pledge, while simultaneously securing new EU funding to strengthen climate finance, forest monitoring, and biodiversity governance.

The UK government needs to create a dedicated carbon reporting office in order to streamline an increasingly fragmented landscape of regulations and approaches to emissions accounting, according to a report published on Thursday.

Companies should split net zero targets between emissions cuts they can deliver themselves and reductions that depend on wider system change, as part of a more honest approach to corporate climate commitments, according to a report published Thursday.

Optimising composting practices using machine learning could transform the global organic waste sector from a net greenhouse gas emitter into a carbon sink while conserving nutrients for agriculture, according to a new study.

An India‑based climate infrastructure company has signed a multi‑year agreement with a carbon removal (CDR) financier to deliver 180,000 tonnes of biochar removals, in what the partners say is one of the largest long‑term offtake deals of its kind from the South Asian country.

Several governments across Latin America and the Caribbean are studying how to replicate Argentina's Misiones programme after it became the first jurisdictional REDD+ initiative approved under Verra's Jurisdictional and Nested REDD+ (JNR) Framework, the standard's regional representative told Carbon Pulse. 

Mining activities across sub-Saharan Africa have triggered far more deforestation beyond mine boundaries than within them, with every hectare of forest directly cleared for mining associated with nearly 34 additional hectares of offsite forest loss, according to a new study.

The Mexican government is aiming to publish the regulation required to make its emissions trading system (ETS) fully operational by the end of 2026, accompanied by a national programme to boost local supply of carbon credits, according to a federal official.

The climate ambition of host countries and the stability of their regulatory frameworks are increasingly emerging as factors that could influence the price of internationally-traded carbon credits, as buyers and proponents seek to manage sovereign risks beyond the control of project execution, legal experts said this week during the Latin America Climate Summit (LACS) in Mexico.

Minor modifications - Verra has published VMR0018 methodology (Methane Avoidance Through Separation of Solids from Wastewater or Manure Treatment Systems v1.0) under its VCS programme, it announced Wednesday. The voluntary carbon standard said this constitutes a minor revision to its CDM methodology AMS-III.Y. (Methane avoidance through separation of solids from wastewater or manure treatment systems, v4.0), which applies to project activities that avoid or reduce methane production from anaerobic wastewater treatment systems and anaerobic manure management systems through the removal of volatile solids from the wastewater or manure slurry stream. Updates are being made to: allow the use of separated solids from animal manure as bedding material in barns; provide quantification procedures for projects using biofiltration systems to separate the solids; and require the use of newer VCS tools to establish baseline scenarios. AMS-III.Y. will be inactivated as a standalone methodology on July 1, 2027, Verra noted.

The EU should consider creating a 'Carbon Bank' to fund the scale-up of carbon removals (CDR) along with setting a separate deployment target for the nascent technology by 2040, new analysis suggests.

Off the grid – NatureGrid, a data management platform developed by Open Forest Protocol, was launched this week, with the aim of helping NbS projects organise field data, manage workflows, and consolidate data for reports. The platform was designed as a single source of truth for managing project documentation across regenerative agriculture, conservation, and ecosystem restoration projects alike. Open Forest Protocol added that the new platform is to make it easier to collect, validate, and monitor field data, as well as to share impact.

Gold Standard has opened a public consultation on a proposed green hydrogen carbon methodology that would quantify emission reductions from replacing fossil fuel-based hydrogen production with water electrolysis.

Up and away - UpEnergy has announced its project (VCS2676) in Tanzania has now become eligible for CORSIA Phase 1 under Verra's VM0050 methodology. The cookstove operator said on Linkedin that 142,504 credits have now been tagged as eligible for the international aviation offset scheme on the Verra registry, and they have already found a buyer. But further volumes are expected from the project this year and throughout the remainder of the CORSIA Phase 1, which runs from 2024-26.

A Global South-focused carbon crediting standard is partnering with forestry researchers to strengthen the environmental integrity of nature-based credits in carbon markets, the two sides announced on Wednesday.

On track – ACR and ART remain on track to transition their registries to the ICE GreenTrace platform as planned, representatives confirmed to Carbon Pulse this week. GreenTrace is a registry system used to manage carbon credits from issuance through to retirement. Under the previously announced schedule, participant onboarding was due to run from January-March, followed by a transition rehearsal in April and training sessions in May ahead of the June migration. The platform was also demoed in a recent online session by ACR.

The voluntary carbon market's (VCM) era of private sector registry-centric governance is over, according to an investment bank which claims  sovereign registries will assume the leading role in driving market changes now that Article 6 of the Paris Agreement is up and running.

The bottleneck in host countries approving projects for CORSIA, the international aviation offsetting scheme, is holding back nearly 600 million eligible credits to date, a ratings agency has found.

A US carbon removal company has secured investment from a Japanese trading firm to expand a facility in Arkansas, while separately signing a credit purchase agreement with a major shipping group, it announced Wednesday.

Buyers in the voluntary carbon market are paying more for biochar carbon credits when they are marketed with Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) co‑benefits, according to a study.

A co-founder of a California-based carbon offsets developer and fintech startup has been sentenced to 14 years in a US prison after admitting to a years-long fraud scheme that prosecutors said caused $248 million in losses to lenders and investors.

Keep it separated - Isometric announced a draft module for book and claim for public consultation until July 1, underpinning the carbon standard’s expansion into Environmental Attribute Certificates (EACs). The new module establishes requirements for credits where the environmental attributes are decoupled from the physical product, including low-carbon materials, low-carbon energy, and sustainable fuels. With the module and the upcoming release of sector-specific protocols, Isometric is poised to become the first certifier to support CDR, superpollutant reduction, and EACs under one set of standards, on a single platform. The first EAC protocol will be released for low-carbon materials – Microsoft and Meta have both signed EAC-based agreements, and Isometric expects demand to expand. The module will ensure that every EAC issued by Isometric is additional, tied to verified physical production, and protected against double counting, in compliance with the ISO 22095-3 Chain of Custody Standard.

An offsets developer based in British Columbia reported net earnings of C$693,200 ($500,900) in the first quarter of 2026 and nearly tripled the company’s quarterly revenue year-on-year.

A carbon removal market maker is partnering with a ratings agency as it expands its purchasing into the "ugly ducklings" of the carbon market – superpollutant credits, which it says are vital to averting imminent climate tipping points, the two announced on Tuesday.

Brazil should consider an Article 6 strategy that allows the export of carbon credits while retaining 50% of mitigation outcomes for domestic climate targets, carbon trading industry group IETA said in a new report.

A major carbon removal (CDR) registry will evolve to issue three different classes of credits, it said Tuesday, after announcing plans to certify units under the EU’s Carbon Removals and Carbon Farming (CRCF) scheme.

Benin has raised its climate ambition under a newly submitted Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC), pledging to cut greenhouse gas emissions by one-third over the next decade while positioning itself to tap international carbon markets under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement.

Nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions from North American agricultural soils amended with organic fertilisers are substantially lower on average than the default factors used in international greenhouse gas inventories, though certain manure types and management practices remain significant emissions hotspots, according to a new study.

Concentration among a handful of buyers, weakening prices, and policy uncertainty are threatening the scale-up of carbon removal (CDR) despite recent growth in the sector, according to a report released on Tuesday.

A developer of enhanced rock weathering projects has worked with Formula 1 racing engineers on a new soil carbon measurement process that significantly reduces sampling time and associated emissions.

Verra has approved its first-ever government-led REDD+ project, a milestone as countries seek to monetise the avoided deforestation sector under jurisdictional carbon crediting.

India has opened a public consultation on two additional draft methodologies under the offset mechanism of its Carbon Credit Trading Scheme (CCTS), looking to expand the range of activities that could generate carbon credits.

Tourists on safari in South Africa can now offset their carbon emissions through a new partnership between a luxury tour firm and a grassland restoration project certified under Verra’s VM0042.

Feedback sought – Carbon Registry-India (CR-I), a voluntary carbon crediting programme operated by the Network for Certification and Conservation of Forests (NCCF), has opened a public consultation for the Piplantri Tree Plantation Project (CRI30023IN), an afforestation and land restoration initiative in the western state of Rajasthan. The project aims to convert degraded and under-utilised land into forested landscapes that can sequester carbon, enhance biodiversity, and improve ecosystem services. Feedback has been invited from local communities, experts, government agencies, and other stakeholders before the project advances through the registry's approval process.

Germany’s federal government has slashed spending on carbon offsetting for official travel by more than 90% in 2025 as stricter international standards left policymakers struggling to find enough qualifying carbon credits, according to Table.Briefings.

Low-carbon infrastructure - A subsidiary of Japan's Hitachi has launched a service to help clients offset emissions from IT infrastructure through the use of domestically issued J-Credits. Hitachi Vantara has been working with its business partner, Mitsubishi HC Capital, to leverage its expertise in carbon credits. The new service eliminates the need for separate carbon-offsetting procedures, allowing companies to balance their essential IT infrastructure investments with initiatives that reduce their environmental impact, the company said.

Methane milestone - Calgary-based oilfield services company Kathairos announced Monday it has eliminate 1 MtCO2e to-date via the application of its nitrogen systems to oil and gas operations to reduce methane output. Currently, the company's technology is eliminating more than 1,250 tCO2e daily through its 3,000 liquid nitrogen systems deployed across over 70 facilities across North America. According to Kathairos, the advantage of its technology is its simplicity, which it said requires no external power, no moving parts, and no disruption to existing operations, but through which nitrogen simply power devices previously actuated by natural gas.

Global wildfire activity in 2025 produced the second-lowest burned area and third-lowest CO2 emissions since satellite records began in 2002, but a growing concentration of destructive fires in populated and carbon-rich regions continued to generate severe human and economic impacts, according to a review published this week.

A forest restoration initiative in Brazil has secured new public financing from Brazil's national development bank to rehabilitate Atlantic Forest ecosystems while generating carbon credits and biodiversity benefits.

CORSIA prices failed to rebound last week, with price assessments for eligible units down by more than 12% week-on-week and benchmark ICE futures dipping below $10/tonne amid higher jet fuel prices, even as market executives expressed hope for resurgence in demand once the Middle East conflict ends.

European Commission officials have detailed a seven-step process for carbon registries to obtain recognition under the EU’s Carbon Removals and Carbon Farming (CRCF) regulation, saying the procedure will typically take about six months.

Vietnam’s environment ministry has launched a blue carbon partnership to help mobilise finance for the sustainable management of coastal and marine ecosystems, in collaboration with the UN and UK government. 

A Thai state agency and an agribusiness and food conglomerate announed last week they have launched a rubber plantation project that aims to generate up to 1 million carbon credits across 80,000 hectares in northeastern Thailand.

Runway ready – Russia’s application for accreditation under CORSIA has entered the final stage of review by ICAO, with a decision expected in August, according to the country’s economic development minister. Interfax reported last week that Maxim Reshetnikov said Russia’s application had successfully passed all previous assessment stages and described it as “fairly strong”, adding that any negative outcome could result in a request for revisions rather than outright rejection. Accreditation could provide a boost to Russia’s voluntary carbon market by allowing airlines to use domestically issued carbon credits for future CORSIA compliance, observers said.

Denmark deal – Danish financial institution Nykredit has entered a four-year partnership with carbon removals platform Klimate to purchase CDR credits and support the development of carbon capture and storage technologies in Denmark, it was announced last week. The agreement will help Nykredit to advance its target to cut emissions from operations by 85% by 2030, the partners said. As part of the deal, Klimate has facilitated an investment in CDR credits generated by Danish biogas company Bigadan, which captures and permanently stores biogenic CO2. The companies added that this collaboration will support the development and scaling of high-integrity CDR solutions in Denmark.

ESG support – Brazilian bank Banco do Brasil (BB) and climate consultancy WayCarbon are preparing to launch an ESG advisory service next month to help 100 small and medium-sized Brazilian municipalities develop climate mitigation and adaptation projects. The Municipal Climate Management service, announced on May 20, developed with support from Brazil’s National Treasury Secretariat, is currently in testing and expected to become available in June. It will use artificial intelligence, monitoring technology, territorial diagnostics, and financial management tools to help local governments identify climate vulnerabilities, design adaptation measures, and structure projects suitable for fundraising. The service will be offered free of charge to participating municipalities, using resources provided under National Treasury Normative Ordinance STN/MF No. 808, BB said in a press release.

An Australian biochar developer has begun harvesting and pyrolysis trials at a project in North Queensland that aims to convert invasive woody biomass into biochar-based carbon removals (CDR).

The developer of the world’s largest direct air capture (DAC) facility has received backing to develop a new plant in North America alongside a mix of other carbon removal (CDR) projects.

Carbon credit registry and certification body Isometric has certified Version 2.1 of its standard, introducing a more streamlined validation process designed to accelerate the issuance of carbon removal credits.

A US-based land management company has secured just over $4 million from the sale of carbon credits generated from an improved forest management (IFM) project in Tennessee, it announced last week.

A French carbon standard last week opened a public consultation on a new module that would allow carbon credits to be issued from the use of bio-oil as a lower-carbon substitute for fossil-based asphalt binder.

Blue shift – A mangrove conservation project in Mexico developed by MarVivo has been archived on the US carbon offset platform Wren’s registry after its proponents shifted priorities away from carbon and towards community-driven educational efforts. The project description said the initiative aimed to protect nearly 15,000 hectares of mangrove forest in Baja California Sur, Mexico, through a proposed conservation arrangement intended to prevent activities such as aquaculture and mining in the area. Under a REDD+ framework, the project aimed to mobilise carbon finance to strengthen forest governance, support conservation activities, and fund community initiatives, following the guidelines set out by VM0007 - REDD+ Methodology Framework (REDD+ MF), v1.6.

Biomass-based carbon removal could help build the feedstock supply chains needed to scale sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) production, rather than competing with biofuels for limited resources, according to a paper released last week.

A Thailand-based digital services firm last week announced plans to issue a digital token in the third quarter of 2026, raising up to THB 480 million ($14.7 mln) for a mangrove reforestation project tied to 400,000 carbon credits.

A nature intelligence startup is working with Angolan land stewards to develop large-scale agroforestry initiatives in the country, using its technology to screen potential projects and reduce the risk of early-stage investment, just as the government begins building its carbon market framework.

Nearly three-quarters of low- and middle-income countries include clean cooking or wider household energy measures in their national climate plans, according to a new public tracker launched last week by a US-based non-profit.

A UAE law on corporate GHG reporting, planning, and management entered its compliance phase on May 30, but businesses are still largely unprepared, according to the chief executive of a Dubai-based sustainability consultancy speaking with Carbon Pulse.

For now, technology-driven activities dominate Latin America’s Article 6.2 Letters of Authorisation (LoAs), in a departure from the REDD-heavy profile of the local voluntary market (VCM) – but jurisdictional REDD+ (J-REDD+) is poised to flood both systems, Carbon Pulse has reported.