Understand the carbon market before you trust a claim in it.
An independent library for learning how carbon credits actually work, who verifies and grades them, and which organizations are quietly doing the work well, without ever selling you a credit ourselves.
Carbon markets are full of jargon, marketing and quiet asterisks.
Voluntary and compliance carbon markets now move hundreds of millions of credits a year, yet most people, including many buyers, cannot explain the difference between a registry, a methodology and a rating agency. We built this coalition to close that gap with plain language, source linked education.
- We do not sell credits
- We do not broker credits
- We do not certify credits
- No paid placement
What is a carbon credit?
A tradable certificate representing one metric tonne of CO2, or its equivalent in other greenhouse gases, that has been avoided, reduced or removed by a specific project.
A buyer can retire it, permanently taking it out of circulation, to claim that tonne against their own emissions.
Voluntary carbon market
Companies, events and individuals buy credits by choice, usually to back a net zero pledge or offset an activity. Quality varies enormously because there is no single global regulator, which is why independent standards and rating agencies matter so much.
Compliance carbon market
Government mandated systems where regulated entities must surrender allowances or eligible offsets: the EU ETS, California’s program (which recognizes credits from the American Carbon Registry and Climate Action Reserve) and the UK ETS. Rules and prices are set by regulation.
Additionality, permanence and leakage.
Almost every controversy over junk carbon credits traces back to one of these three ideas.
Would this have happened anyway?
A credit should only represent reductions that would not have occurred without the carbon finance. If a forest was never going to be logged, protecting it is not additional. This is the most disputed and hardest to verify concept in the market.
Will the carbon stay stored?
A tree that stores carbon for 20 years and then burns has not delivered a permanent reduction. Geological storage and biochar can lock carbon away for centuries; some nature based projects carry real reversal risk, which is why buffer pools and insurance exist.
Did the problem just move?
If protecting one forest pushes loggers to the forest next door, the net impact is zero. Rigorous methodologies model and discount for leakage; weak ones ignore it.
Where carbon credits actually come from.
Roughly ordered from lowest to highest typical durability.
Renewable energy
Older avoided emissions credits from wind, solar and efficiency. Additionality is now widely questioned, and most major buyers have moved away.
Forestry and land use
Avoided deforestation (REDD+), new forest and improved forest management. The largest category, with high biodiversity benefits, and the most exposed to additionality and permanence criticism.
Soil carbon
No till farming, cover crops and managed grazing. Measurement is improving fast, but soil carbon can be released again if practices lapse.
Blue carbon
Mangroves, seagrass and wetlands store carbon several times faster per acre than most forests, and protect coasts and fisheries.
Biochar
Biomass heated without oxygen into a stable char that locks carbon away for 100+ years. Certified in detail by standards like Puro.earth.
Direct air capture and storage
Engineered capture injected into deep rock for centuries to millennia. Very durable and easy to measure, and the most expensive per tonne.
Two very different promises, sold under the same word.
Prevents a tonne that would otherwise have been emitted, like a clean cookstove or a wind farm displacing coal. It does not remove existing carbon.
Carbon actively pulled from the air and stored: forestry, biochar, soil carbon, direct air capture. Net zero standards such as SBTi increasingly require removals.
Why it mattersAsk which one you are buying before you make a neutral claim.
From project design to your retirement certificate.
- Project designAgainst a published methodology from a registry such as Verra or Gold Standard, with a baseline for what would have happened otherwise.
- ValidationBy an accredited third party auditor before any credits are issued.
- Monitoring and verificationWith satellite data, field measurement and periodic audits.
- IssuanceSerialized credits go into a public registry, one per verified tonne.
- Independent ratingBy agencies like BeZero Carbon, Sylvera and Calyx Global.
- Trade and retirementPermanently removing the credit so it can never be resold or claimed twice.
Registries issue credits. Agencies grade them.
Two jobs get confused constantly: issuing a credit, and grading how good it is. Here is a neutral map. We do not rank or endorse any of them.
Registries and standards bodies: where credits come from
Independent rating agencies: who grades credits after they are issued
Carboreal is turning drained Finnish peat fields back into carbon sinks.
Carboreal Oy plants diverse boreal forests on land unsuited for farming, with third party certified carbon accounting. Its Trammell S. Crow Forest in Rovaniemi, Lapland converts a former peat field into a forest expected to remove about 13,000 tonnes of CO2, protected in the Finnish land registry for at least 70 years.
Disclosure: Carboreal is connected to this site through the Environmental Xperience at EarthX conference series, which hosts the Carboreal Carbon Stage.
EarthX 2026 · Hilton Anatole, Dallas · April 20 to 22
The Carboreal Carbon Stage, where this coalition first met.
For three days at the Environmental Xperience at EarthX 2026, the Carboreal Carbon Stage brought scientists, former environment ministers, financiers and project developers together to ask one question: which climate solutions are credible, and which can people act on now?
The Carbon Stage was also where the Carbon Advisory Coalition held its first meeting.
Carboreal sponsored the stage and Taavi Havre, Carboreal’s COO, built the program with Steve Bender of the Environmental Xperience.
True value can only be provided by fostering real, science based discussions. The world needs gigatons worth of additional climate action, and we need credible and scalable solutions that can be implemented now.Taavi Havre, COO, Carboreal Plc
The program
Three days, from finance to peat to coral.
Day 1
Monday, April 20
- Opening remarksTaavi Havre
- Keynote: from Olympic competition to climate actionJoona Puhakka
- Scaling voluntary and regulated carbon markets, with lessons from the Montreal ProtocolJeff Cohen
- Carbon project financing workshopRick Davis, Akshay Sriprasad, Margaret Morales
- Chemical solutions to climate change: the pharmaceutical caseProf. Karl Anker Jørgensen
- Panel: the credibility of climate projectsDr. Ricardo Alvarado, Dr. Jim Blackburn, Katariina Koivula, Richard Garza
- Fossil fuels, renewables and other energy solutions working togetherDan Romito
Day 2
Tuesday, April 21
- Sustainable land management and carbon storage in tropical forest economiesDr. Marciano Dasai
- Carboreal’s climate work in boreal regionsSalomo Vilén, Taavi Havre
- Why nature based solutions matter for Texas and the worldDr. Jim Blackburn
- Carbon capture technologies and nature based approachesDr. Rodolfo Lacy
- Peatlands and an inverted carbon market in the USADr. Curtis J. Richardson
- Fireside chat: afforestation in Central AmericaMarko Kärkkäinen
Day 3
Wednesday, April 22
- Blue carbon investment in Texas and beyondJoe Ryan
- Panel: lessons from global climate projectsMarko Kärkkäinen
- Guatemala’s climate efforts: lessons and outlookÁngel Lavarreda
- Geological storage of captured carbonDr. Sherilyn Williams-Stroud
- Fireside chat: protecting coral reefsMarko Kärkkäinen
On the Carbon Stage
The voices behind the program.
Also on stage: Margaret Morales, Dr. Ricardo Alvarado, Katariina Koivula and Richard Garza.
From the stage to the ground
Crow Forest: an EarthX forest in Finland.
The EarthX Rotary Forest in Tervola, Northern Finland, is dedicated to Trammell S. Crow, the founder of EarthX, and registered as Crow Forest. Carboreal turned a drained peat field back into a living forest, the same kind of project this site explains in plain language.
- Before 1970The land was forest.
- 1970sIt was cleared and drained for farming. Over time the exposed peat soil decomposed and the field became a source of carbon dioxide.
- 2025Carboreal prepared the site and planted seedlings, turning the land back into a carbon sink.
- TodayOfficially registered as a carbon sink for at least 70 years.
Photos from EarthX 2026
At the Environmental Xperience.
The Carboreal Carbon Stage is part of the Environmental Xperience at EarthX, the Congress of Conferences held each April in Dallas. The 2nd Annual Carbon Conference returns in April 2027.
Visit EarthX.orgDisclosure: Carboreal sponsored the Carbon Stage and is connected to this site through the EarthX conference series.
2nd Annual Carbon Conference
Hosted at the Environmental Xperience at EarthX 2027 on the Carboreal Carbon Stage at the Hilton Anatole. The conference returns for a second year of sessions on carbon markets, carbon capture, nature based solutions and carbon finance, building on a 2026 stage that drew climate scientists, ministers and market leaders from across the world.
Formally launching October 2026
Independent by design.
What we are
An independent educational publisher, a neutral directory of registries and rating agencies, and a monthly spotlight on credible work.
What we are not
A carbon credit broker, seller or exchange; a certification or rating body; a paid placement platform.
How Org of the Month works
An editorial choice based on transparency, third party verification and public documentation. Any relationship is disclosed. Being featured is not an endorsement of every claim.
Questions, corrections or a nomination?
Carbon markets move fast. We welcome corrections to anything on this site.
hello@carbonadvisorycoalition.org