For early 2021, March 4 was an average day. The US continued to soul-search in the aftermath of January 6. COVID vaccines were being approved and distributed around the world. It was a Thursday.
Indeed, the day was unspectacular in almost all respects, save one: it was the best day ever for the voluntary carbon market.
With 8.5m tCO2e retired, March 4 saw the largest number of credits taken out of the VCM in a single day; it accounts for 1% of all VCM retirements, ever.
Since 2004, there have been nearly 5,000 days of carbon offsetting activity with at least 1 tCO2e retired. On an average day, going back to 2004, about 180,000 credits are retired; since 2020, the average day sees nearly 450,000 in retirements.
Overall, there have been 165 days with more than 1m+ tCO2e retired, most taking place in the last two years:
This makes March 4, 2021 an impressive outlier: it would take almost three weeks of (post-2020) average daily retirement activity to equal the amount of credits retired that day.
There are two projects that drove the record number. The first was Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation in Keo Seima Wildlife Sanctuary (Keo Seima), which retired more than 5.7m tCO2e on March 4 — accounting for more than 70% of all Keo Seima credits ever retired. The second project was the Rimba Raya Biodiversity Reserve Project, which retired over 2.1m tCO2e on that day.
The transactions from the projects ranged from 1,000 to 350,000 tCO2e, with the majority landing between 50,000 and 200,000 tCO2e.
Highlighting an issue with transparency in the VCM, all of the retirements that were made from the two projects are anonymous: none of the 7.8m tCO2e have information filled in any of the retirement detail fields.
So, next time you’re having a slow day, take a step back and take a look at our data: you may be living through momentous times, yet!
