World Bank: As coverage grows, global carbon pricing revenues will go over $107 billion in 2026
As emissions trading systems spread around the world, the World Bank says that carbon pricing brought in more than $107 billion in 2025.
The World Bank reported that global revenues from mechanisms that price carbon went above $107 billion in 2025. This continued a ten-year upward trend in climate-linked fiscal tools.
The World Bank released the numbers in its “2026 State and Trends of Carbon Pricing” study. They show that carbon taxes and emissions trading systems (ETSs) brought in 2% more money in 2025.
The report says that the money made from carbon pricing has gone from less than $30 billion in 2016 to more than $100 billion every year since 2021. This is because, as countries work to meet their climate commitments under the Paris Agreement, carbon pricing frameworks are being used increasingly around the world.
The study talks about how the growth of carbon pricing systems is changing the way the world pays for climate change. The World Bank says this:
“In 2025, annual income from carbon taxes and emissions trading systems (ETSs) rose by 2%, continuing a growth trend that began ten years earlier.”
The report also said, “The amount of greenhouse gas emissions covered by emissions trading systems has grown from about 8% in 2016 to over 24% in 2025.”
The report did say, though, that the coverage of carbon taxes has stayed pretty stable, at about 4% to 5% of world emissions.
The World Bank also said that most of the money made from carbon pricing still comes from advanced countries, where prices are higher and systems for trading emissions are more advanced. What it said:
“Several middle-income economies have not yet fully adopted systems that trade emissions based on auctions.”
The organization looked ahead and talked about new things happening in Asia. For example, they said that Japan’s brand-new GX-ETS would likely use future profits to fund national energy transition and decarbonization projects. It also predicted that carbon pricing systems would grow even more starting in 2026, with India, Japan, and Vietnam among the countries that would make their national ETS schemes bigger.
As part of its larger plan to change its energy and climate, Nigeria has stepped up its attempts to set up a structured carbon market in Africa.
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu gave the go-ahead for Nigeria’s national carbon market system to start working in January 2026. The project aims to establish Nigeria as one of the new carbon credit hubs in Africa.
The federal government thinks that by 2030, trading carbon credits and making investments linked to climate change could bring in at least $3 billion a year for Nigeria’s carbon market. It also announced plans in November 2025 to get up to $3 billion a year for climate change through the National Carbon Market Framework and Climate Change Fund.
Experts say that Nigeria could gain a lot from the growing global carbon economy. They point to the country’s large forest reserves, possibility for renewable energy, and growing clean energy sector as some of its main benefits.
They also say that carbon markets are becoming more popular as an alternative way for growing economies to make money while also helping to create jobs and share technology.
Stakeholders have, however, stressed the need for strong regulatory frameworks, reliable systems for tracking emissions, and openness in the distribution of carbon credits to protect the integrity of the market.
Supporters of climate finance also say that more African involvement in global carbon pricing systems could help close the continent’s funding gap for climate change and speed up progress toward net-zero and resilience goals.
