Co-Founder & CEO
2025 marked a pivotal year for both the voluntary carbon market and for Kanop. While surface-level numbers showed stagnation, a structural shift emerged beneath the headlines: H1 2025 delivered record retirements, over $10B was committed to nature-based removals, and high-quality credits now trade at 4x the price of low-rated ones. At Kanop, we responded by launching AI agents that compress weeks of analysis into hours, expanding methodology support across six standards, forging partnerships with developers and enterprises, and growing our team and community. Here's the full recap, and what we see ahead for 2026.
As 2025 comes to a close, it's worth stepping back from the day-to-day and taking stock of where the voluntary carbon market actually is, and where it's heading.
The surface-level numbers paint a mixed picture. VCM retirements plateaued at approximately 182 million tonnes for four consecutive years, while trading volumes dropped 25% and market value fell to $535 million. But beneath these headlines, a structural shift is underway. H1 2025 saw record retirements of 95 million tonnes, the highest half-year ever, signaling renewed momentum. Over $10 billion in capital was publicly committed to nature-based removals, more than triple the same period in 2024.
The market is bifurcating along quality lines. High-rated credits (A-AAA) now trade at $14.80/tonne on average, compared to just $3.50/tonne for low-quality credits (CCC-B). The share of A+ rated credits has grown 1.5x over two years, yet 43% of 2024 retirements still came from low-rated projects. Quality is being repriced, but the transition remains incomplete.
Nature-based solutions are leading this quality shift. NBS offtake agreements doubled to 18 deals, securing over 20 million tonnes at average prices exceeding $20/tonne. Removal credits now trade at 381% premiums over avoidance credits, up from 245% in 2023. ARR credits averaged $24/tonne in H1 2025.
At Kanop, we've spent 2025 expanding our support across the full NbS project lifecycle, from feasibility assessments and dynamic baselining for ARR and REDD+ projects, to supply chain monitoring helping corporates track environmental impacts across tropical commodities like cocoa, coffee, and palm oil. We're proud to have played a role in equipping developers, investors, and enterprises with the tools they need to meet these rising standards.
Here's a look back at the year's highlights.
The biggest story of our year was the launch of Kanop's AI Agent platform. What began as an automated eligibility assessment tool in June quickly evolved into a comprehensive suite that's transforming how developers and investors evaluate opportunities.
Our Eligibility Assessment Agent now delivers methodology-specific reports across Verra VM0047, Gold Standard ARR, Isometric Reforestation Protocol, Equitable Earth M001, and more, in hours rather than weeks. The impact has been substantial: our collaboration with several project developers demonstrated 95% time savings and 70% cost reduction compared to traditional consulting approaches.
In September, we launched our LULC Chat Interface, turning weeks of custom land cover analysis into three-minute conversations. Users simply describe the land cover classes they need, and our AI generates tailored historical maps on demand. By December, we announced automated carbon credit projections using our Forest Carbon Model and Local Maximum Approach for dynamic baseline simulations across VM0047, Isometric, and Equitable Earth frameworks.
We forged several partnerships this year that directly address the carbon market's core challenges.
We announced a strategic partnership with Calculus Carbon, connecting high-quality restoration projects across the Global South with institutional investors. While we provide the technical foundation for proving project viability, Calculus Carbon brings deep expertise in structuring deals and accessing capital markets.
Our work supporting Wovoka, goodcarbon, and Ponterra through the Symbiosis Coalition RFP process culminated in a webinar where all three developers, who advanced to at least intermediate diligence, shared insights on what it really takes to build investable ARR projects. Their experiences reinforced what we've seen across the market: remote sensing and dynamic baselining are no longer nice-to-haves; they're essential infrastructure for de-risking early-stage projects.
We also kicked off a multi-year partnership with a world-leading chocolate manufacturer to assess agroforestry removals across thousands of cocoa farms in West Africa. With 80% of their emissions stemming from agricultural value chains, they needed a scalable monitoring solution aligned with the GHG Protocol Land Sector and Removals Guidance. Our work includes farm-level biomass assessments, dynamic baselining to differentiate carbon pools, and transparent, auditor-ready documentation, demonstrating how satellite-powered insights can support corporate Scope 3 decarbonization at scale.
This year, we significantly expanded the methodologies we support. Beyond Verra and Gold Standard, we now offer eligibility assessments for BioCarbon Standard, Cercarbono, and Isometric Reforestation Protocol. When Verra released VM0047 V1.1, we were ready with enhanced remote sensing integration that aligns with the methodology's expanded applicability.
On the research front, Carla Geara, our PhD student, had her work accepted for publication in IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters (GRSL) for her innovative research leveraging SAR data for ecosystem analytics. This advancement enables more accurate forest monitoring, improved biomass estimation, and better characterization of forest structure from real satellite data.
We also improved our early-stage forest monitoring capabilities and expanded our supply chain monitoring platform to support GHG Protocol Land Sector and Removals Guidance, TNFD, EUDR, SBTN, and GRI reporting frameworks.
Kanop was accepted into two prestigious accelerator programs this year:
The CASSINI Business Accelerator, Europe's largest space startup accelerator and a flagship initiative of the European Commission's Space Entrepreneurship Programme, selected us from over 100 applicants. This positions us to deepen our connections within the European space community and continue advancing satellite-based nature monitoring.
We were also chosen as one of just 10 finalists for Catapult: Green Fintech in Luxembourg, validating our mission to provide essential digital infrastructure for sustainable finance in nature-based solutions and carbon markets.
Additionally, we were featured in the Nature Tech Collective's landmark report, "Valuing Nature: The Rise of Nature Fintech," highlighting our work with CarbonPool on climate risk assessment and monitoring for forest carbon projects.
Our team expanded with key hires who strengthen our capacity across science, strategy, and advisory:
Amaury de la Bretesche joined as Environmental Data Scientist, bringing deep expertise in geospatial data and natural resource management from his prior work at ICEYE. His experience spans the full geospatial data pipeline, from satellite image processing to dashboard development, bridging environmental insight with technical precision.
Max DuBuisson joined as company advisor, bringing over a decade of carbon market leadership including roles at Climate Action Reserve and Indigo Ag, and current positions on the European Commission's Carbon Removal Expert Group, the ICVCM Permanence Working Group, and the USDA Advisory Council guiding implementation of the Growing Climate Solutions Act.
Kevin Brown also joined us as an advisor. As Global Lead of Technical Standards for Natural Climate Solutions at the Wildlife Conservation Society, Kevin brings deep expertise in REDD+, voluntary carbon standards, and forest monitoring. He serves as a UNFCCC expert reviewer of REDD+ reference levels and has contributed to crediting standards including Verra-VCS and the High Integrity Forest (HIFOR) initiative.
This year, we welcomed dozens of new clients and partners into the growing Kanop community. From project developers navigating complex methodologies to investors conducting due diligence on early-stage opportunities, from corporates tracking supply chain impacts to researchers pushing the boundaries of what's possible with satellite data, each collaboration has enriched our understanding and pushed us to expand our capabilities in new directions.
We are so grateful for your trust and partnership. Thank you for building the future of climate infrastructure with us.
We connected with the carbon market community across four continents this year.
At Climate Week NYC, we hosted two signature events: a methodology deep dive on dynamic baselines with Verra, Equitable Earth, and Isometric; and our 2nd Annual Pickleball Event (co-hosted with Restoration Climate) that brought together NbS stakeholders for networking over New York's best bagels.
Our team also engaged at GreenBiz 25 in Phoenix, the European Carbon Farming Summit in Dublin, ChangeNOW in Paris, NACW in Los Angeles, the Gold Standard Conference, the East Africa Carbon Markets Forum in Kampala, Colombia Carbon Forum in Bogotá, Mexico Carbon Forum in Tampico, the Sustainable Commodities and Land Use Forum in Amsterdam, London Climate Action Week, and the Latin American Climate Summit in São Paulo.
Looking into 2026 and beyond, scaling NBS removals requires progress on three fronts:
Policy integration: The UK confirmed plans to integrate removals into its ETS by 2029. The EU Commission will report on CDR integration into the ETS by 2026, while exploring a dedicated purchasing scheme for permanent removals. Article 6 rules are converging voluntary and compliance frameworks.
Scalable MRV infrastructure: ICVCM's Core Carbon Principles reshaped buyer behavior in 2024—CCP-approved credits saw 3x higher transaction volumes. But nature-based projects face unique verification challenges around additionality, permanence, and leakage that demand satellite-powered monitoring at scale.
Patient capital: NbS projects don't follow software investment cycles. Initiatives like the Symbiosis Coalition are setting important precedents, but the pipeline of investment-ready, high-integrity projects remains constrained by data gaps and validation bottlenecks.
At Kanop, we'll continue pushing the boundaries of what's possible with satellite-based analytics. Our upcoming updated biomass model, also featuring canopy height and cover data with full time series and uncertainty layers, will set a new standard for carbon project intelligence. We're also exploring integrations with next-generation satellites like NISAR and ESA's Biomass mission that promise unprecedented insights into forest structure and carbon storage.
As we head into 2026, we're more convinced than ever: scaling high-integrity nature-based solutions is a very tangible lever to bend the climate curve.
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Thank you for being part of our community in 2025. We look forward to continuing this work together in 2026.
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