News & Insights

Monthly Country Policy Update

Written by Fundi Maphanga | Aug 23, 2024 8:37:19 AM

In this report, we highlight the countries that saw the most significant improvements and steepest declines in their scores from June to July, as determined by our scoring system.

Additionally, we examine the specific impact of the ICVCM’s decision to reject eight methodologies for CCP approval on the domestic carbon markets of these countries.

Over the last month, we have added seven new countries (Malaysia, New Zealand, Namibia, Taiwan, Morocco, Ecuador, Nicaragua) to the AlliedOffsets Policy Tracker, taking the number of countries tracked to 36.

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Top-Ranked Countries and Notable Market Movements

The United States, Singapore, Colombia, Ghana, and Chile are the top five ranked countries across all metrics, demonstrating strong performance in the global carbon market.

Thailand stands out as the most improved, climbing nine positions. This progress is driven by increased political commitment, with the Thai government set to submit the Climate Change Bill for cabinet approval. The bill proposes carbon credits, a carbon tax, and an Emissions Trading System (ETS). Additionally, Thailand signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Japan to create a joint crediting mechanism, allowing for carbon credit sharing and exchanges in technology, infrastructure, and capital.

Vietnam is the second most improved, climbing six positions. In terms of policy development, Vietnam plans to launch a national carbon credit exchange by 2028, with a pilot trading platform starting in 2025. The Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment (MONRE) is also developing a national system to track emissions quotas, carbon credits, and connect with global markets after 2030. Regarding market performance, the average estimated price per credit increased by 30.3% from June to July, rising from $2.72 to $3.91.

On the other hand, South Africa has experienced one of the largest declines, falling nine positions. The average estimated price per credit decreased by 15.6% from June to July, dropping from $5.89 to $5.09. Additionally, credit retirements plummeted from 3.3 million credits to just 150,482 in July, representing a 95.4% decline.

Pakistan has also seen a significant decline, with a drop of nine positions. Despite launching support for Preparedness for Article 6 Cooperation and announcing intentions to develop a cap-and-trade system in 2023, the lack of further progress in finalising the Article 6 agreement and creating a robust regulatory framework has resulted in a relatively low political commitment score.


The Impact of the ICVCM’s decision on the above-mentioned countries


The top 10 most impacted countries, based on the volume of impacted available credits are primarily in Asia followed by Africa. 

Specifically, the ICVCM's decision impacts:

  • 9.62% of the total credits issued (3.9 million) from 2 projects in South Africa,
  • 9.15% of the issued credits (2 million) from 8 projects in Pakistan,
  • 20.5% of the issued credits (7.3 million) from 33 projects in Thailand, and
  • 16.9% of the issued credits (9.4 million) from 48 projects in Vietnam.
  • Vietnam ranks as the 7th most affected country in terms of impacted issued credits and 6th in affected remaining credits (6.3 million).

 

In this report we also include a breakdown of all the latest country scores by the total policy score, movement since last month and score difference from the previous period.