Good morning [%first_name |Dear Reader%],

Almost 35 years after a few rich countries set up the first carbon market, the whole business of carbon credits, offsets, and trading remains a nascent one. Even fuzzy and unreliable, I’d say, since there’s little standardisation in what counts as a legit carbon credit, nor on what’s a good price for it. 

Carbon trading started formally in 1997, under the United Nations’ Kyoto Protocol on climate change. Over the years, it’s led to the creation of global and regional compliance regimes that require both countries and corporate entities to limit carbon emissions.

The benefits of going green are so big and attractive now that companies have turned to voluntary carbon markets to meet their targets. 

And when the world converges in Egypt next month for the twenty-seventh United Nations Climate Change Conference (more commonly referred to as COP27), carbon credits will be at heart of it again. (Here’s what I wrote last year as the previous summit—COP26—was kicking off.)

Yet, despite its growing consequence, the carbon business remains an information-bare landscape.