Home › Blog › Sustainability

How Much Does Carbon Offsetting Cost, and Is It Worth It?

Carbon offsetting cost depends almost entirely on what kind of credit you buy. The average voluntary carbon credit traded in 2024 changed hands for $6.34 a tonne, a UK woodland unit sold for £28.32 on average in 2025, and credits from engineered removals such as biochar averaged more than $160. That is a spread of more than twenty times for something that is sold under the same name. This page sets out the real prices behind each type of credit, what offsetting 100 tonnes would cost a small business, and the honest answer to whether it is worth paying for at all.

Carbon credit price per tonne: what the market data says

One carbon credit represents one tonne of carbon dioxide equivalent (tCO2e) that a project has avoided or removed. There is no single exchange price. Credits are sold project by project, and the most reliable picture comes from survey data.

Ecosystem Marketplace's State of the Voluntary Carbon Market 2025 report found that 84.4 million tonnes of credits traded in 2024, worth $535.1 million, at an average of $6.34 a tonne, down from $6.71 in 2023. Behind that average sit very different products:

• Credits representing removals were 381% more expensive than credits representing reductions in 2024, up from 245% a year earlier.
• Credits from recent projects (vintages from the last five years) carried a 217% premium over older ones.
• Prices for REDD+ credits, which pay to protect existing forests, fell by 23%, and their trading volume halved.
• Biochar credits averaged more than $160 a tonne, over 25 times the market average.

The cheap end of the market is dominated by older avoidance credits, the kind that have attracted the most criticism over whether the claimed tonnes are real.

Woodland Carbon Code price and other UK credits

UK businesses that want credits from projects at home use two UK standards: the Woodland Carbon Code for new woodland and the Peatland Code for restored bogs. Most of what they sell is the pending issuance unit, a promise of a tonne that the new trees or rewetted peat are expected to lock up in future, verified over time.

The Woodland Carbon Code's 2025 price survey, published on 3 August 2026, reported:

The spread is wide: £112.50 between the cheapest and dearest woodland deal reported in 2025, and about £75 for peatland. A pending unit cannot be used to claim that today's emissions have been compensated, because the carbon has not yet been captured. It is better described as funding future removals in the UK.

How much to offset a business: three worked examples

Take a small business with a measured footprint of 100 tonnes CO2e a year, which is in the range of an office-based firm of a few dozen staff once travel and purchases are counted. At the average prices above, compensating for that footprint for one year would cost:

Retail offsetting websites add their own margin on top of these traded averages, so expect to pay more per tonne buying small volumes than the survey figures show. Ask any seller which project the credits come from, which standard issued them, and for proof that they are retired in your name on the registry. If they cannot tell you, do not buy.

Removal vs avoidance credits: why the price gap matters

An avoidance credit pays for emissions not to happen: a forest left standing, a landfill's methane captured, a cleaner cookstove. A removal credit pays for carbon to be taken out of the air and stored: new woodland, restored peat, biochar buried in soil, direct air capture. Avoidance is cheaper, but it depends on a counterfactual (what would have happened otherwise) that is hard to prove. Removals are scarcer and dearer, but they are the only type that can balance out emissions you cannot cut. The 381% premium in the market data is buyers paying for that difference.

Quality labels help. The Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market approves methodologies against its Core Carbon Principles, and credits carrying its CCP label are increasingly what serious buyers ask for. Ecosystem Marketplace noted that landfill gas credit prices rose 35% between the first and second halves of 2024 once that category was approved.

Is carbon offsetting worth it?

As a way to fund climate projects, it can be, if you buy good credits and describe them honestly. As a substitute for cutting your own emissions, it is not, and the main standards say so. The Science Based Targets initiative does not count carbon credits towards a company's emission reduction targets; credits are for the residual emissions left at net zero, and for funding action beyond your own value chain in the meantime.

The reputational risk is real too. Claims such as "carbon neutral" built on cheap offsets are exactly what the UK's advertising and competition regulators have targeted, and the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 lets the CMA fine businesses directly for misleading consumers. Our guides to UK greenwashing rules and making green claims cover what you can and cannot say.

A defensible order of work is: measure your carbon footprint, set reduction targets in a net zero plan, cut what you can, and only then buy high-quality credits for what is left, describing them as a contribution rather than a cancellation. More on responsible business is on the e-Business Ethics home page.

Sources

• Ecosystem Marketplace, State of the Voluntary Carbon Market 2025
• Woodland Carbon Code, UK woodland and peatland carbon prices 2025

Prices checked on 2 October 2026.