Carbon credit ratings are increasingly being reflected in market prices, according to a BeZero Carbon analysis using independent pricing data from AlliedOffsets.

The analysis examined three of the market’s most liquid sector-region segments: Sub-Saharan African Cookstoves, Latin American Avoided Deforestation and North American Improved Forest Management. It found that credits with higher BeZero ratings generally command higher prices than lower-rated and unrated credits within the same category.

For Latin American avoided-deforestation projects, credits rated A or higher were estimated to trade at 2.5 times the price of unrated credits. Across all three categories, the average premium was about $1 to $1.50 for each rating notch.

The premium associated with ratings has increased notably over the past two years. In Sub-Saharan African cookstoves, BeZero found little substantial evidence of a ratings-based premium in the third quarter of 2024. By the second quarter of 2026, the premium had reached 17% per rating notch.

The analysis used AlliedOffsets project-level offer-price estimates covering more than 38,000 projects, with low-confidence estimates excluded. BeZero said its expanded ratings coverage, now exceeding 720 publicly available ex-post ratings, enabled analysis at the sector-region level.

BeZero said the findings represent a significant development for carbon ratings, showing both that price-rating correlation is now visible within sector-region categories and that higher-rated credits are attracting premiums over unrated credits.

The company expects greater market liquidity, broader ratings coverage and emerging regulation to further strengthen the link between carbon ratings and prices. As data quality and transparency improve, independent pricing assessments should also provide greater insight into how differences in assessed risk are reflected in carbon credit prices.

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