COP30 panel: Scaling Investment in Renewables and Nature-Based Carbon Projects through Global Carbon Compliance Markets

Date: 14 November, 2025

Time: 18:15-19:15

Location: COP30 Planetary Science Pavilion (Blue Zone, Location #PV-B47; access requires official credential)

Event flyer

Rapid global decarbonization is essential to avoid the catastrophic costs of climate breakdown. Some of the most cost-effective opportunities lie in renewable energy and ecosystem protection projects in low- and middle-income countries.

Yet, while voluntary carbon markets have opened the door for these projects, they struggle with generating the credibility, demand, and price signals to deliver investment at scale.

Compliance markets, meanwhile, offer high integrity, predictable demand and high prices but so far remain largely confined to industrial emissions in wealthy nations, and only trade very limited quotas of non-industrial projects.

The recent announcement by Brazil of the Open Coalition on Carbon Compliance Markets, which will explore the long-term cross-country integration of these markets, opens the door to substantial gains in efficiency and create the potential for these markets to be a major source of funding for emissions abatement worldwide.

However, for this funding to reach low-cost renewable and nature-based abatement opportunities in low- and middle-income countries, emissions reductions from these projects need to be as credible as those from industrial emissions reduction projects. This panel explores the institutional and technical innovations necessary to achieve this. The discussion will address:

•⁠  ⁠What policies and governance could bring nature-based and renewable projects up to a standard that would allow them to be traded at scale in compliance markets ?

•⁠  ⁠What financial structures would be needed to reduce moral hazard and risk?

•⁠  ⁠What measurement and verification systems will ensure credibility and trust?

•⁠  ⁠How should these efforts align with Paris Agreement mechanisms and build on the achievements of existing credibility initiatives like the Carbon Markets Coalition?

The panel focused on how existing global carbon markets can evolve to channel serious capital into the most impactful climate solutions — at scale, and where it’s needed most.

Juliano Assunção is Executive Director of the Climate Policy Initiative in Brazil, which contributes to improving climate policies in Brazil through evidence-based analyses and direct engagement with policymakers and civil society. Dr. Assunção is also a Professor in the Department of Economics at PUC-Rio and an expert in the politics and economics of Amazon forest conservation.

Miguel Moraes is Director of Projects at re.green, which works to restore tropical forests at scale and is a winner of this year’s Earthshot Prize. He is an ecologist, specializing in biodiversity conservation, governance, public policies, and sustainability.

Rohini Pande, Director of the Economic Growth Center at Yale University, is a development economist with expertise in economic growth and climate who has been chairing the working group at the request of the COP30 Presidency on designing a path to a unified global carbon market.