Corporate buyers are repricing the voluntary carbon market, even if public transaction data has not caught up yet. Boston Consulting Group’s latest carbon credit buyers’ survey, covering roughly 300 buyers across 14 industries and published this week, finds that target portfolio prices have roughly tripled since the previous edition in 2022, and that latent demand could double the size of today’s market. A second study released days earlier by Climate Impact Partners, surveying 600 senior climate decision-makers in the UK and US, lands on the same conclusion from a different angle: 90% of active buyers say credit purchases delivered against their corporate goals over the past year, and 84% rank quality above price. For developers, intermediaries and investors, the two datasets amount to the clearest demand-side signal the VCM has produced in years.
The Price Shift the Headlines Miss
Annual retirements have been stuck at roughly 170 to 180 megatonnes for four years, which is why most public commentary describes a stagnant market. The survey data tells a different story about willingness to pay.
In 2022, 84% of buyers targeted portfolio prices of $30 per tonne or less, and only 3% targeted prices above $50. By early 2026, only around one in five buyers still target prices below $25, while roughly one in four aim for the $51 to $100 band. A premium segment is now willing to pay more than $100 per tonne, a price point BCG describes as virtually nonexistent in 2022.
That shift creates a concrete budgeting problem. In the 2022 edition, buyers expected to pay an average of about $25 to $30 per tonne by 2030. Procurement teams still planning around those figures are underwriting their future climate commitments with numbers that are three years out of date.
Quality Now Means Measurable, Defensible Carbon
Both surveys converge on how buyers define quality. BCG finds that trusted registries and rigorous emissions measurement together account for roughly 60% of stated buyer preference, outweighing co-benefits and project revenue sharing. Durable engineered removals such as BECCS, direct air capture and biochar rank among the most credible credit types because their carbon impact is more directly measurable, while credits relying on behavioural assumptions, such as cookstoves, rank lower.
Preferences also shift with portfolio composition. Buyers whose portfolios are less than 15% removals still rate nature-based avoidance credits highly, often above DAC or BECCS. Once removals pass that 15% threshold, buyers place significantly more weight on engineered removals. Notably, no segment wants a single credit type: every group preferred a diversified mix, with durable engineered removals accounting for roughly 20% to 25% of ideal portfolios.
The Climate Impact Partners study adds the corporate governance layer. An average of 2.4 internal stakeholders now oversee each purchase decision, CEOs are directly involved in 43% of procurement decisions, CFOs in 32%, and boards participate in 40% of buying companies. Buyers cite brand trust (38%), measurable revenue growth (37%), reputation (36%) and customer acquisition (35%) as returns on their credit spending. “The most climate ambitious companies already understand this and are locking in high-quality supply today,” said Climate Impact Partners CEO Sheri Hickok.
A Market Constrained From Both Sides
The most useful finding in the BCG data is that the market is simultaneously supply-constrained and demand-constrained, and the arithmetic shows why.
At suppliers’ forward median prices, 90% or more of buyers would still purchase nature-based avoidance, nature-based removals and non-CO2 gas abatement credits, and roughly three-quarters would buy cookstoves, biochar and BECCS. The alignment breaks at the frontier: enhanced rock weathering forward prices of roughly $330 to $390 per tonne attract only about four in ten buyers, and for direct air capture the median supplier asking price of around $900 per tonne meets a buyer base in which half are unwilling to pay more than about $365. At $900, fewer than one in ten buyers would consider DAC credits.
The portfolio math quantifies the trapped value. Buyers’ current portfolios cost an average of $55 per tonne. If credits meeting their quality requirements were available, they would shift to a mix costing about $68 per tonne, an increase worth roughly $800 million in additional annual market value at current retirement volumes. Priced at the levels where demand for each credit type is strongest, the preferred mix rises to about $79 per tonne, nearly $1.5 billion in added annual value without a single extra credit changing hands. Yet the average target portfolio price sits at $58 per tonne, only $3 above today’s cost. Buyers value higher-priced credits but lack the budgets to build whole portfolios at those prices.
What It Means for Buyers, Developers and Investors
For buyers, the immediate exposure is planning risk: carbon budgets built on 2022 price assumptions will not fund the credit mixes those same buyers now say they want. Procurement frameworks anchored on measurable, registry-backed integrity will adapt better than fixed preferences for specific credit types, because the market’s definition of quality is still moving.
For developers, the survey splits the market into two distinct games. In mature categories where buyers accept supplier prices, the constraint is credible volume. In frontier removals like DAC and ERW, the constraint is cost, and growth depends on long-term offtake commitments and early financing that let projects move down the cost curve.
For investors, the combined signal is that demand is not the problem it was in 2022. Willingness to pay has tripled, C-suites are signing off on purchases, and the gap between what buyers want and what the market delivers is now measurable in billions of dollars of annual value.
What to Watch
Three markers from here. First, whether retirement volumes finally respond: flat volumes at tripled price targets would confirm the supply side as the binding constraint. Second, pricing on forward offtakes for biochar and BECCS, the categories where buyer and supplier expectations are closest to clearing. Third, regulatory recognition of high-integrity credit use in corporate climate claims, which BCG identifies as a key brake on converting stated willingness to pay into signed contracts. The next survey cycle will show whether latent demand started transacting, or whether the $1.5 billion gap is still sitting on the table.
