The rise in independent accreditation of projects, a surge in project activity in Asia, the US, Australia and New Zealand are key trends to emerge from the State of the Voluntary Carbon Markets 2008 survey report from Ecosystem Marketplace and New Carbon Finance. The report measures the size and scope of the voluntary market worldwide in 2007, a year when the integrity of emissions reductions in the unregulated market was a dominating issue. In response arrived of a number of independent accreditation standards aimed at increasing project transparency and VER credit quality. Although a number of industry respondents to the survey on which the report is based were cagey on the question of independent accreditation, the authors are conservative in their estimate that up to half of the voluntary market transactions conducted in 2007 involved credits verified to a specific third party standard. The Voluntary Carbon Standard, CDM, CCX, VER+ and Gold Standard were cited as the most frequently used standards, the survey found.

The rise of voluntary trade in 2007, especially in the US, Australia and New Zealand, reflects many companies using the voluntary markets as a dress rehearsal for mandatory markets, a future certainty or almost so in their jurisdictions. The motivation appears to be either to come to terms with carbon trading and exposure to a carbon price within their organisation, or in the expectation that such investment will receive credit for early action down the track under a mandatory scheme. Also notable was the big rise in the numbers of VERs generated out of projects in Asia, up from 22 per cent of all credits in 2006 to 39 per cent of the much higher numbers in 2007. The rise appears to be being driven by CDM project developers seeking VERs for their projects in the interim while they pursue the long process of CDM validation, registration and verification, which delivers higher prices for their offsets in the long run.