The Phantom Market
Nearly half of all rated projects have never issued a single credit. The voluntary carbon market's pipeline is larger than its supply — and skews to its riskier categories.
Based on CarbonDecode's ratings of 11,649 projects · registry data as of 2026-06 · 5 min read
- — 48% of all rated projects (5,547 of 11,649) have never issued a credit. Nearly half the “market” is a pipeline, not supply.
- — The pipeline is expected to be lower quality than what's already issued: 59.3 average vs 64.4, a 5.1-point gap.
- — It concentrates in the market's riskier, modeled categories — cookstoves, afforestation, improved forest management, rice.
- — A grade on a pre-issuance project is a forecast, not a track record. Treat it accordingly.
Half the market is a promise
The voluntary carbon market is usually counted in projects and headline tonnage. But a project on a registry has not necessarily produced anything. When we split every rated project by whether it has actually issued a credit, the result is stark: 48% — 5,547 of 11,649 projects — have issued none. They are listed, validating, under development, or registered, but not yet supplying.
Status of pre-issuance projects (zero credits issued). Bar to scale by project count.
The pipeline is riskier than the market it's joining
Growth is not neutral. The projects still waiting to issue score 59.3 on our integrity scale on average, versus 64.4 for projects that have already issued — a 5.1-point deficit. That's because the pipeline concentrates in exactly the categories where integrity is hardest to establish: modeled baselines, behavioral additionality, and reversal-exposed land use.
| Pipeline project type | Projects | Avg. score |
|---|---|---|
| Cookstoves | 759 | 63 |
| Afforestation/Reforestation | 615 | 58 |
| Improved Forest Management | 519 | 52 |
| Rice Emission Reductions | 363 | 39 |
| Sustainable Agriculture | 247 | 53 |
| Wind | 242 | 61 |
| REDD+ | 234 | 50 |
| Manure Methane Digester | 231 | 65 |
A grade on a phantom is a forecast
None of this makes a pre-issuance project bad — but it does make its rating a different kind of claim. With no issued credits, there is no realized MRV, no retirement record, and often no final documentation to test. A grade at this stage anticipates how the type tends to perform; it is not a verdict on delivered tonnes.
That's why CarbonDecode marks these projects pre-issuance and, where no project-specific review has been run, preliminary · model-based — so a forecast is never mistaken for a track record. For buyers evaluating forward purchases from the pipeline, the type-level integrity signal is the first screen, and project-specific diligence is the second.
How this is measured
“Pre-issuance” means zero credits issued in the registry record. Every project is scored 0–100 and graded AAA–D on a transparent, documented rubric applied identically across registries; data derives from public registry records (the Berkeley Carbon Trading Project) and the registries themselves. See the full methodology →
Screen the pipeline before you buy it
Every project, issued or not, rated and free to browse — or pull the data programmatically.