Offset Market Prices
In a competitive market, offset prices are a function of supply and demand. The attractiveness of a project depends on the buyer’s objectives. These are different for a compliance buyer than for a voluntary buyer:
- Compliance buyers are interested in obtaining credits reliably and cheaply in order to fulfil their regulatory requirements.
- Most institutions that voluntarily use offsets for their climate neutralization efforts want to communicate that effort to the public and choose projects that are well-received by the target group.
- Each offset is given an individual serial number as a unique identifier.
- In Europe, voluntary buyers are especially interested in biomass, renewable energy and enduser energy efficiency projects from less developed countries. Other emissions reduction projects such as industrial gas projects at chemical plants are less attractive to these buyers because, despite their emission reducing capability, such projects deliver very limited cobenefits such as job creation and protection of local ecosystems.
- In the US, voluntary buyers prefer offsets generated by domestic projects, and are less focused on project type or sustainable development components.
Carbon markets are still in their infancy. As public opinion and understanding of the markets increase, different project attributes may become more attractive to buyers. The following market prices1 are only approximations, and do not reflect the full variety of the purchase and sale preferences of all market participants.
Pricing of Offsets for Each Standard
| Standard | Pricing |
| CDM | The wholesale market price for CERs is at around € 18.2 A seller therefore has the possibility to sell the CER to a compliance customer at that price using a standardized and cost efficient process and will sell to other buyers only, if any additional administration costs are covered by additional revenues. Additional costs apply for marketing expenses, certificate management, administration, value added tax etc. Therefore, CERs are sold in the area of € 14 to € 30. |
| GS | GS CER or GS VERs are sold on average at a premium to regular CERs or comparable VERs of 5-25% of the market price. The premium varies depending on a number of factors: the project itself (its attractiveness for communication for example), project location (projects in so called least-developedcountries for example, are much sought after), whether a trade happens in the wholesale or in the retail market, vintage etc |
| VCS | VCU prices depend to a large extend on the project type. VCS version 1 VCUs are traded at € 5 to € 15 |
| VER+ | VER+ offset prices depend to a large extend on the project type and are traded at € 5 to € 15. |
| VOS | GS VER: see above Other VOS VERs: prices depend to a large extent on the project type. They trade at a premium compared to other VERs, but at a lower level than GS VER levels. |
| CCX | CCX offsets are traded at €1.2–3.1.3 Additional costs apply for exchange fees, marketing expenses, certificate management, administration, providers profit, value added tax etc. and resale prices will usually be higher than the price listed on the exchange. |
| CCBS | Offsets from CCB projects are traded at €5 - €10. |
| Plan Vivo | The price of Plan Vivo Certificates depends on the volume of the purchase and the project. Plan Vivo certificates are traded at €2.30 - €9.50 / tCO2 |
| GHG Protocol | N/A |
| ISO 14064-2 | N/A |
