Higher-rated carbon credits command an average price premium of $1 to $1.50 per rating notch across three of the market's most liquid sector-region segments, according to an analysis by BeZero Carbon drawing on independent pricing data from AlliedOffsets.

The study examined Sub-Saharan African Cookstoves, Latin American Avoided Deforestation and North American Improved Forest Management. Within each category, credits carrying higher BeZero ratings generally traded at higher prices than lower-rated and unrated credits. For Latin American avoided-deforestation projects, credits rated A or higher were estimated to trade at 2.5 times the price of unrated credits.

BeZero, which now publishes more than 720 ex-post ratings, said the findings mark a significant development: the price-rating correlation is now visible within sector-region categories, not just across them, and rated credits are attracting premiums over unrated ones.

How big are the premiums?

The average premium works out to roughly $1 to $1.50 for each step up the ratings scale, across all three categories studied. The largest relative gap appears in Latin American avoided deforestation, where top-rated credits change hands at an estimated 2.5 times the price of unrated credits in the same category.

The dataset behind the estimates is substantial. AlliedOffsets provided project-level offer-price estimates covering more than 38,000 projects, with low-confidence estimates excluded from the sample. BeZero said its expanded ratings coverage — now exceeding 720 publicly available ex-post ratings — is what made analysis at the sector-region level possible for the first time.

What changed since 2024?

The relationship between ratings and prices has strengthened substantially 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.

That shift matters for project developers and buyers alike. Cookstove credits, among the most heavily traded in the voluntary market, previously showed little price differentiation tied to assessed quality. The emergence of a measurable 17% per-notch premium in that segment within roughly two years indicates buyers are now pricing risk into procurement decisions rather than treating credits within a category as interchangeable.

Why does the correlation matter?

Independent ratings firms such as BeZero and Sylvera have argued for years that differentiated risk assessment should translate into differentiated pricing. Until recently, evidence for that link within individual sector-region categories was thin, partly because ratings coverage was too sparse to support statistical analysis.

The new data changes that. BeZero said the findings show both that the price-rating correlation is now visible within sector-region categories and that higher-rated credits are attracting premiums over unrated credits — two markers the company treats as evidence of a maturing market where assessed quality carries financial weight.

For developers of high-integrity projects, the premium structure creates a commercial case for pursuing stronger ratings. For buyers, it offers a benchmark for pricing due diligence: unrated or low-rated credits now carry a measurable discount rather than simply an unquantified reputational risk.

What happens next?

BeZero expects three forces to further strengthen the link between carbon ratings and prices:

• Greater market liquidity
• Broader ratings coverage
• Emerging regulation of carbon markets

The company also said that as data quality and transparency improve, independent pricing assessments should provide greater insight into how differences in assessed risk feed through to carbon credit prices.

The milestone to watch is whether the per-notch premium holds or widens as ratings coverage extends beyond the 720-rating mark and as regulators — through emerging carbon market rules — begin referencing credit quality in compliance contexts. The next round of AlliedOffsets pricing data, and BeZero's subsequent sector-region analysis, will show whether the cookstove segment's 17% per-notch premium becomes the market norm or remains an outlier in a still-fragmented trade.