The Philippines carbon market: new rules, a Singapore deal, and a pipeline that has barely issued

The policy picture

Most of the Philippines' carbon market rulebook was written this year. In January DENR adopted a Roadmap to Readiness for the voluntary forest carbon market for 2026–2030, developed with UNDP, which splits the work between the Forest Management Bureau (land forests) and the Biodiversity Management Bureau (blue carbon) and aims for an operational framework by 2028. A month later DENR Administrative Order 2026-05 set out the actual guidelines for forest carbon projects.

Three points in that order change who can develop a project. Project proponents must be at least 60% Filipino-owned, so a foreign developer needs a Philippine branch or a qualified Filipino partner. Projects in ancestral domains need free, prior and informed consent. And communities are owed a "fair and equitable share" of revenue, with the minimum ratio left to later guidelines from the Forest Management Bureau and NCIP. Every project is also to appear in a public DENR Forest Carbon Credit Database.

The international side moved at the same time. On 30 April the Philippines signed a legally binding Implementation Agreement with Singapore, its first, which makes Philippine projects eligible for Singapore's 12 million tonne tender. The authorisation process and the list of eligible methodologies are still to be published, and we have found no Philippine Letter of Authorisation yet. Japan has been a Joint Crediting Mechanism partner since 2017. In energy, a September 2025 DOE circular sets out who owns the carbon rights from energy projects.

On 8 September the government submitted NDC 3.0: a 75% reduction or avoidance of emissions over 2025–2035, of which 7% is unconditional (up from 2.71%) and 68% depends on international support. For the first time forestry and land use are in the target. That raises the question every forest developer should be asking: how many tonnes will the government want to keep for its own NDC before it authorises exports?

There is no carbon tax or emissions trading system. The Low Carbon Economy Investment Act, a cap-and-trade bill, passed the House in June 2025 and cleared the Senate climate committee in December; it still awaits a full Senate vote.

What the registries show

Most Philippine projects on Verra and Gold Standard are still in the pipeline. The country has issued fewer credits than Cambodia, Indonesia, Vietnam or Thailand, and most of what it has issued came from wind, solar and one cookstove project. The new wave is forestry: reforestation and REDD+ listings in Mindanao, Mindoro, Samar and Central Luzon, about half of them under Verra's VM0047 reforestation methodology.

The largest single claim is a grouped cookstove programme in validation whose proponent estimates about 20.7 million tonnes a year. That is more than ten times everything the Philippines has issued to date. A claim of that size will be tested hard at validation.

Where the credits have come from

Credits issued and retired to date, Berkeley Voluntary Registry Offsets Database (2026-06 release).

The largest projects not yet issuing

Claimed tonnes per year are the proponent's own estimate as filed with the registry, before validation.

Who is developing

By project count no developer dominates: the most active have three projects each. By claimed tonnes one does: the cookstove and water purifier programmes from a single developer are most of the pipeline (our data story on that developer). AC Energy leads on renewables, and the forestry pipeline is spread across a dozen small developers, some of them Singapore-registered. Under the new forest rules, any foreign developer among them needs a Filipino-majority partner.

Developers grouped across registries and spellings by CarbonIntel. A project with several proponents counts for each.

Latest registry moves

• 2026-09-25MinTrees Horizon ProjectPipeline listing requested (under development) → Pipeline Listing (under development) approved

What we are watching

• The authorisation process and methodology list under the Singapore agreement, and the first Philippine Letter of Authorisation.
• The Forest Management Bureau and NCIP guidelines on the community revenue share.
• How DENR's 60% Filipino-ownership rule is applied to forestry projects already listed by foreign proponents.
• Validation of the 20.7 million tonne a year cookstove programme.
• The Senate vote on the Low Carbon Economy Investment Act.