A kitchen full of cooks: Harmonising the carbon market
Nick Osborne, Vice President, Global Carbon and Environmental Products Trading at Shell, explains why greater alignment on standards and data quality can help the voluntary carbon market move from fragmentation toward trust and scale.
Nick Osborne, Vice President, Global Carbon and Environmental Products Trading at Shell
Nick has over 25 years of experience at Shell, with a trading career spanning since 2000 across gasoline, chemicals and related products. He led the global ethanol business from 2006 to 2012, scaling it from a single trader operation into a global team.
A fragmented ecosystem limiting trust and supply
At a BNEF London roundtable I hosted on carbon credit procurement, one participant described today’s voluntary carbon market (VCM) as “a kitchen with too many cooks.” It’s a useful analogy: the VCM is bustling with activity and a growing cast of players. Integrity bodies, standard setters, rating agencies, and intermediaries are all striving towards the same goal: to build trust, improve transparency, and define what “quality” truly means in carbon credits.
Progress is underway. Organisations such as the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market (ICVCM) and the Voluntary Carbon Markets Integrity Initiative (VCMI) are helping to bring more consistency to integrity and claims. Meanwhile, the potential convergence of compliance markets – such as Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation (CORSIA) and the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) – with the VCM could see compliance-grade standards influence the VCM.1
But defining quality is only part of the challenge. Translating quality standards into consistent, investable supply remains difficult. CCP-labelled credits, for example, are still emerging and availability can be limited across some project types and vintages. According to MSCI, less than 5% of credit surplus today is CCP approved (approximately 52 million tonnes), underscoring the current scarcity of high-quality supply.2
Webinar: Navigating quality in voluntary carbon markets
Nick Osborne, Vice President, Global Carbon and Environmental Products Trading at Shell, shares insights on the evolving voluntary carbon market and the growing emphasis on integrity.
Nick Osborne, Vice President, Global Carbon and Environmental Products Trading at Shell“While momentum is undeniable, greater alignment and clearer guidance would help unlock the carbon market’s full potential.”
Insights into voluntary carbon market trends
The voluntary carbon market (VCM) is becoming a useful tool for helping companies work towards their net-zero goals. This research whitepaper explores what drives demand, how businesses choose and procure carbon credits, and why credibility and impact are critical to building effective carbon credit strategies.
Buyers navigating a fragmented market
Absent that alignment, existing differences in buyer priorities play out more starkly – shaping how quality is interpreted, risk is managed, and supply is secured in practice.
Shell’s PwC-commissioned research study3 shows just how varied these approaches are: some corporates pursue multi-year offtakes to secure long-term, high-quality supply, while others rely on short-term tactical purchases. Priorities also differ – from rigorous measurement, reporting and verification (MRV) and reputational assurance to affordability and flexibility.
This diversity reflects the market’s complexity. But without shared definitions of quality and consistent claims frameworks, it’s harder to compare credits and scale best practice. In a crowded kitchen, what’s missing is a shared recipe. Frameworks such as the Paris Agreement Crediting Mechanism (PACM) and ICVCM can help set it, but trust and liquidity will grow only through consistent application, robust MRV and more transparent data across registries.
Demand driving market quality
At the BNEF roundtable, buyers described carbon credits as “the mortar between the bricks” – playing a strategic role in decarbonisation plans and filling unavoidable gaps with credible, measurable outcomes.
That strategic role is reshaping demand. Buyers are becoming more discerning, seeking project‑level data, scrutinising developer track records and insisting on transparency around impact claims alongside price.
Market data suggests that this shift is starting to take hold. Sylvera’s Q1 2026 analysis shows that investment-grade (BBB+) credits are not only getting more expensive – averaging $20.10 in Q1 2026 versus $18.10 in Q1 2025 – but also taking a larger share of activity, accounting for nearly two-thirds of the total market value.4
These are encouraging signals. But sustaining them depends on confidence in future demand. Transparency and accountability are advancing – yet without clear, durable demand signals, developers cannot invest at the scale required to deliver high‑integrity supply.
Corporate demand as a catalyst
Corporate activity remains the main catalyst for market growth, with forecasts suggesting demand could reach almost seven billion tonnes of CO₂ by 2050.5 Early engagement – through forward purchases, long-term partnerships and investing in emerging technologies – sends powerful price and volume signals that can allow high-quality projects to scale.
Some corporates are already showing how this works, integrating credits into wider emissions-reduction strategies and balancing avoidance and removals based on cost, availability and credibility. Crucially, they treat credits not as a substitute for decarbonisation, but as a complement for residual emissions.
As buyer expectations for integrity and robust MRV continue to rise, they will drive the market toward higher standards – ensuring carbon credits remain a trusted and effective tool in the global decarbonisation journey.
Baseline long-term carbon credit demand scenarios
Peak corporate carbon credit demand in 2050:
6.9GtCO2e
Note: Inelastic demand scenario assumes companies will be obligated to achieve their sustainability goals regardless of the cost and any reputational risk. Elastic demand scenario assumes that companies will lessen their financial commitment to carbon credits as prices go up, and reputational risk.
Source: BloombergNEF5 for BNEF Summit London 2025
Finding harmony through complexity
Making the carbon market work increasingly comes down to a few essentials: consistent standards, better data and the capability to assess quality with confidence.
At Shell, our role is not only to buy and sell credits, but to help shape a trustworthy market. We engage with policymakers and market initiatives such as ICVCM and IETA to support high-integrity standards, and we apply our own due diligence to assess credit quality with confidence and increase transparency for corporate buyers.
A market taking shape
From the discussions at Shell’s BNEF roundtable, a picture is emerging. Integrity bodies are creating structure, buyers are raising expectations and data quality is improving.
The recipe for success is coming together – but it will only scale if buyers stay engaged. Acting early, backing high integrity projects, insisting on robust MRV and making credible claims are what will turn progress into lasting market depth.
It’s also important to recognise that definitions of “high quality” will continue to evolve. With better data, stronger standards and more market experience, the bar has risen materially in just a few years – a sign of progress.
The next phase for carbon markets won’t be defined by complexity, but by collaboration – and every good kitchen thrives on that.
Ready to include carbon credits into your decarbonisation strategy?
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Date of publication: Jun, 2026
Shell Environmental Products
Used in addition to low-carbon fuels and decarbonisation technologies, quality carbon credits offer business leaders the choice to compensate for emissions that cannot yet be avoided or reduced.
Sources
1 Sylvera. “Compliance vs. Voluntary: How Carbon Credit Market Convergence Creates New Opportunities”. n.d.
2 MSCI. “Carbon Credits Come of Age in 2025”. January 6, 2026.
3 Shell Low Carbon Solutions. “Navigating the Voluntary Carbon Market (VCM): Insights into Buyer Behaviour, Barriers and Opportunities”. n.d.
4 Sylvera. “Q1 2026 Carbon Data Snapshot”. April 8, 2026.
Disclaimer
Disclaimer
*Carbon credits are not a substitute for switching to low-emission energy solutions or reducing the use of fossil fuels. Shell encourages their customers to focus first on emissions that can be avoided or reduced and only then compensate for the remaining emissions through the purchase and retirement of voluntary carbon credits. Where specific projects or project types generating carbon credits are referred to in this webpage, Shell does not guarantee that it has the carbon credits from these specific projects available in its current carbon credit portfolio; benefits of projects described are based on publicly available information from Project Developer Documents and/or provided by Project Developers. Shell does not guarantee projects will deliver the benefits exactly as described.
**Photos are for illustrative purposes only and may not depict the specific projects in Shell's current carbon credit portfolio.
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