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White Papers by CGEP • June 01, 2026
Project-based carbon credit markets (PCCMs) facilitate the generation, trading, and retirement of carbon credits from projects that remove, reduce, or avoid greenhouse gas emissions. They offer a pathway to crowd in significant financing for critical decarbonization activities that would otherwise struggle to attract investment, while also in some cases providing important co-benefits such as the preservation of water, land, forests, and biodiversity.
While Since their introduction, PCCMs continue to expandhave expanded steadily, but the pace of that growth has slowed as demand has shifted to high-integrity credits that produce independently verified real, additional, quantifiable, unique, and permanent reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. In response to growing demand for such creditsthis demand, several credible and robust standards for XX have been proposed, but because they remain voluntary by design and therefore , they cannot, on their own, provide enforceable safeguards, consistent oversight, or dependable recourse for market participants. For PCCMs overall to gain credibility and function with integrity, countries need regulatory frameworks that provide oversight, similar to the rolemuch as regulation has played in strengtheninghas strengthened trust and accountability in broader financial markets. That said, regulatory oversight should still be viewed as an enabling condition rather than a guarantee for of a scalable, high-integrity market because structural barriers may still keep demand weak and markets fragmented.
To better understand the varying evolution of regulations for PCCMs across the globe, the Center on Global Energy Policy (CGEP) at Columbia University SIPA conducted a year-long project underpinned bycombining research and stakeholder engagement through multiple convenings. The effort examined regulatory frameworks for PCCMs and emerging trends across countries and regions and assessed whether such frameworks could help close the integrity gap in carbon credit markets. The project aims to inform policymakers and regulators seeking to design or refine regulatory approaches for PCCMs, as well as market participants and other stakeholders for whom these regulations are pertinent.
This white paper, a product of this effort, provides a comparative analysis of G20 countries and Singaporehow jurisdictions align and differ across key dimensions of PCCM regulation to discover how jurisdictions align and differ based on an in-depth stocktake of their regulatory landscapes for G20 countries and Singapore, which areis included in the appendix. (The United States was excluded from the stocktake and the analysis in this report because it is part of a separate study.)
Several cross-cutting themes emerged from the analysis:
Looking ahead, PCCM regulation is likely to move toward a more state-anchored, integrity-driven, and interoperable architecture in which credits are treated less as stand-alone voluntary instruments and more as part of broader climate-governance systems. The next phase of market development is likely to center on deeper integration into national climate law and compliance frameworks, stronger domesticstronger domestic integrity rules that are still but globally aligned integrity rules, faster development of demand-side governance around claims and disclosure, and clearer differentiation between domestic credits and internationally transferable units. At the same time, sovereign registries are likely to become critical as core regulatory infrastructure, while financial oversight may deepen as carbon credits become more liquid and widely traded.
The UNFCCC process is marred by gridlock in the COP multilateral framework, threatening joint efforts by countries to mitigate the climate crisis.
Full report
White Papers by CGEP • June 01, 2026