The CO₂ market has moved into a new phase: no longer a business for a select few, it is now an infrastructure that cuts across finance, geopolitics, industry, climate and international law. The pioneering and avant-garde era of the first carbon markets, the Kyoto Protocol's CDMs, DIY projects and transparency issues is coming to an end. Blockchain, increasingly widespread ETS, strict voluntary markets, and innovative frameworks that include removal sectors, such as the wood supply chain, biochar, BECCS and DACCS technologies, are the new defining features of climate finance.

If many of these terms are unclear to you, or you are not yet fully familiar with them, you are in the right place. With The Carbon Observer, we aim to launch the first European newsletter for anyone involved in the carbon market, but especially for those who will soon have to deal with it. An informative space, meticulous yet clear and understandable, not reserved for insiders but open, explanatory and designed for any economic operator.

We chose to develop The Carbon Observer because it accomplishes at least four crucial tasks, often better than isolated articles or institutional reports can. The Carbon Observer translates complexity into continuity. ETS, DACCS, Article 6, removals, MRV, integrity framework: individually, these are technicalities, but when followed month after month, a coherent story emerges. The carbon market cannot be understood through “snapshots” but rather through trajectories.

The Carbon Observer filters out the signal from the noise. Today's carbon market is crowded with announcements, green claims, competing standards and well-packaged greenwashing operations. An authoritative newsletter provides narrative fact-checking, explaining what is really changing and what is just regulatory smoke and mirrors.

The Carbon Observer anticipates the political and economic implications. Decisions about regulated and voluntary markets influence energy prices, industrial strategies, North-South relations and climate finance. To understand how the European Union, China or the negotiations under the umbrella of the UNFCCC are moving means reading in advance where investments and conflicts will go.

The Carbon Observer promotes climate literacy on decarbonisation processes and technologies. Without an informed foundation, the carbon market is at risk of being mythologised as a magic solution or demonised as a global scam. Both interpretations are wrong. A good newsletter shows that the carbon market is an imperfect, powerful, politically contested tool that is still under construction.

Today, the carbon market is a cognitive battleground, not just a technical tool. Our mission is to help you develop a critical, journalistic, and impartial perspective on one of the key mechanisms of the transition.