Allied Offsets released its 2025 review, underscoring that the voluntary carbon market remains a tiny fraction of global emissions but is poised to grow as compliance schemes expand worldwide. Compliance markets now cover roughly 23% of global greenhouse gas emissions, a sharp rise from earlier years, and are expected to drive demand for carbon credits and shape future pricing frameworks. The review tracks more than 36,000 projects across four dominant registries— Verra , Gold Standard , American Carbon Registry , and Climate Action Reserve —highlighting that the VCM's total value in 2025 reached $10.4 bn, including retired credits and announced offtakes. Technical credits, some upwards of $500 per ton, are increasing in number as projects move onto registries after years of R&D. Anton Root, co-founder of Allied Offsets, noted that companies buying via offtake are typically doing so because they can't find the credits they need on the spot market. He added that as technologies scale, the price per ton of technical credits is slowly falling, even as the weighted average price creeps up. Kutalmis Ersoy, a markets expert with Correggio Consulting in Brussels, stated that Article 6.4 should not be understood as a single global trading platform. Instead, it establishes a UN-regulated global carbon market framework with a central registry and governance system that enables internationally transferable credits to be issued, authorized, tracked, and used across borders. Andrew Cullen, founder of Axis Green, observed that the voluntary carbon market has never really gained scale and high levels of liquidity precisely because it is voluntary. He noted that as compliance markets expand, the incentives for buying carbon credits will change, with companies under mandatory schemes asking why they should pay above and beyond for credits with less benefit. With compliance schemes expanding to cover most countries and the EU poised to accept high-quality Article 6 credits, the voluntary market is likely to see a surge in volume and price, positioning it as a complementary driver of global emissions reductions.