Does the recent uptick in voluntary carbon headlines speak of a market again hitting its stride? You tell us! After you read through this week’s packed issue of V-Carbon News, please take part in our State of the Voluntary Carbon Markets 2011 survey if you supplied offsets to voluntary buyers in 2010. 

It’s no exaggeration to say that the voluntary market events of the last two weeks will be a topic of conversation and conference panels for months – if not years – to come.

From the first REDD credits to be issued from VCS to potential delays to the California carbon trading program to what appears to be the largest single transaction in the history of the voluntary (or any) carbon marketplace, the short month of February has already packed a big punch for market participants. 

First things first, the CCX’s cap-and-trade program may have ended in December, but not before seeing one bilateral transaction of Carbon Financial Units (CFIs) on December 22 that was approximately 5 MtCO2e larger than the entire voluntary “over-the-counter” market volume in 2009. After a transaction of 47 MtCO2 credits from the Mbaracayú Forest Reserve in 1990, this is the single largest transaction of voluntary carbon credits tracked by Ecosystem Marketplace.

According to the (new) CCX website’s publicly available transaction data, the bilateral (non-platform) transaction of 59.1 MtCO2 equivalent consisted of CFIs from a variety of locations (domestic and international allowances and offsets), project types and a range of vintages – priced at US$0.17/tonne. 

Market observers speculate that the trade is most likely too large to be a CCX member buying offsets to meet a legally binding end-of-phase target – but could have been the work of a large broker or one of several aggregators that are going out of business. Ecosystem Marketplace will continue to follow this development, so please contact Molly Peters-Stanley if you have any additional information.

Of course, the news heard round the world this week was that of the market’s first ever offset credits for the Voluntary Carbon Standard from a project designed to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD). 

Wildlife Works Carbon revealed this week that the Voluntary Carbon Standard (VCS) – soon to be Verified Carbon Standard! – issued the first REDD-based Voluntary Carbon Units (VCUs) to Wildlife Works’ Kasigau Corridor REDD project, which protects over 500,000 acres of forest in Rukinga, Kenya.

Wildlife Works’ project was validated and verified against the VCS’ most recently approved REDD methodology for addressing Avoided Mosaic Deforestation of Tropical Forests – “mosaic” referring to the patchwork quilt kind of deforestation pattern that arises in regions with many drivers of deforestation.