Today, in partnership with ClearBlue Markets, we’ve launched first-of-their-kind indices that track carbon credit quality and the price-quality relationship in the voluntary carbon market (VCM).

Until now, stakeholders have lacked standardized metrics to assess price and quality together — two key factors shaping the market. These new Calyx Global and Calyx Global-ClearBlue Markets indices are a major step toward greater transparency, trust and efficiency in the VCM.

For companies, investors and policymakers, these tools provide a clearer benchmark to make informed decisions and navigate the market with greater confidence.

The Calyx Carbon Indices

The first two indices draw from Calyx Global’s extensive database of greenhouse gas (GHG) integrity ratings, offering the most comprehensive view of quality trends in the VCM. The third index was developed in partnership with ClearBlue Markets and provides insight into how integrity is being valued.

1. Calyx Carbon Integrity Index: Issuances

This index tracks the quality of newly issued carbon credits entering the market, offering insights into a key leading indicator of GHG integrity in the VCM. Since credit issuance is typically driven by project developers and intermediaries anticipating future sales and buyer demand, this index provides an early signal of market trends.

2. Calyx Carbon Integrity Index: Retirements

This index tracks the quality of carbon credit retirements. Retirements are the ‘end-of-life’ of a credit. This is a 'lagging' indicator of the types of credits purchased, as many buyers may have forward contracts for several years that need to wind down before they change course. 

3. Calyx-ClearBlue Carbon Price-Integrity Index

This index combines our quality ratings with ClearBlue Markets’ pricing data to show how the market values quality. It aggregates 2,000 pricing data points from ClearBlue Markets and over 800 GHG integrity ratings from Calyx Global, offering unprecedented insight into price-quality relationships.

Our methodology

Our indices employ sophisticated analytical methods to ensure comprehensive market coverage and accurate quality assessment:

Calyx Carbon Integrity Indices: Issuances & Retirements

Calyx Global’s GHG ratings cover 70% of all retirements and 56% of all issuances from 2021-2024. The total issuances and retirements rated by Calyx Global were segmented by project type and country, resulting in distinct "market segments" (e.g., large-scale wind-India).

For each segment, we calculate a rating distribution and apply Shannon’s Diversity Index as a measure of rating variability to establish minimum quality criteria for extrapolation. Rating distributions were subsequently applied to market segments that met the established criteria. By extrapolating, the coverage of the market expands to 83% of retirements and 70% of issuances.

Calyx-ClearBlue Carbon Price-Integrity Index

This index combines 333 Calyx Global ratings with ClearBlue Markets pricing data, focusing on highly-traded projects with active pricing since 2022. The projects were selected to ensure consistency, as they represent highly-traded projects with active pricing data in recent years, providing a representative view of the current VCM. 

Pricing data includes bid, ask and trade data. A monthly average price was calculated at the project level wherever sufficient data was available. The monthly tier average price was then determined as the average of the monthly project-level prices within each tier. All projects within a given tier were assigned equal weighting in the calculation of the tier's monthly average price.

Early insights

Our initial analysis reveals several encouraging trends:

• The overall GHG integrity of credits in the VCM is showing steady improvement
• High-quality credits are finally receiving appropriate price premiums, marking a shift from previous market dynamics
• The market is demonstrating increased sophistication in valuing quality metrics

These indices will be updated regularly to provide ongoing insights into market trends and developments. To learn more about our methodology and access the latest data, explore the Calyx Carbon Indices.