Three charts showing the growing price premium for high-quality NBS carbon credits.
1. $10/ton growth in 2025 for highly-rated ARR credits
Average prices for afforestation and reforestation (ARR) credits rated BBB or above by Sylvera rose to $24/ton in September. That’s up $10 since January of this year.
2. >40% premium for highly-rated NBS credits across project types
Calyx Global data shows a very large price premium for nature-based carbon credits in its Tier 1 category (A-rating or above on the Calyx scale). Calyx/Clear Blue Markets pricing data for Tier 1 NBS projects began in May, 2024 and showed about a 40% premium over Tier 2 credits at that time. The chart shows this Tier 1 premium rising steadily since then, to about ~150% as of July of this year. This data is across all nature-based project types rated by Calyx, so includes both removals and reduction/avoidance projects.
3. AlliedOffsets
The third chart, this one by AlliedOffsets, shows a very large spread between maximum estimated retired price for NBS credits vs weighted average, since Jan 2024. Though the chart isn’t mapping this against a measure of project quality, it underscores the story in the previous two charts – that a few projects are selling for substantial premiums above average market prices.
One takeaway:
It’s impressive to see the correlation between high ratings and price premiums. To me, it’s unclear whether the ratings are causing the price premiums, or just reflecting what’s happening (probably a little bit of both?). Either way, it underscores the big responsibility on ratings agencies to get it right !