Southeast Asia's Carbon Markets in 2026: A Regional Map

Six Southeast Asian jurisdictions are building carbon market infrastructure at once, at very different speeds and for different reasons. None of them individually constitutes a large market today. Together they change what a nature-based project in the region has to be able to prove.

It helps to separate what is being built into two categories, because they behave differently.

Demand-side mechanisms create an obligation to pay for emissions. Singapore's carbon tax is the clearest regional example: taxable facilities face a real price, and eligible credits offset a capped share of it.

Supply-side infrastructure lets projects issue and trade credits. Indonesia's dual registry and exchange, and Malaysia's exchange, are examples. Infrastructure without demand produces thin volumes, which is what the region currently shows.

Indonesia has the region's largest nature-based supply potential and, since Perpres 110/2025, a functioning legal pathway to trade it internationally.

The infrastructure is now more developed than the liquidity. IDX Carbon traded 903,915 tCO2e in 2025 up 118.5% year on year, for IDR 36.36 billion, and cumulatively about 1.98 MtCO2e by mid-2026 with 155 participants. Real growth on a small base, with long periods of minimal activity.

What matters more than the volumes is that the pathway now exists end to end: registration, validation, verification, ministerial approval, registry recording, and authorization for international transfer.

Singapore's carbon tax steps to S$45 per tonne in 2026, with eligible international credits usable against a capped portion of liability.

That is the region's clearest compliance demand signal, and it behaves differently from voluntary demand: eligibility criteria are published rather than negotiated, and diligence is consistently deeper because a later finding of ineligibility returns the liability to the buyer.

For regional sellers, Singapore is the buyer whose requirements are worth designing against, because meeting them generally means meeting everyone else's.

Malaysia's Bursa Carbon Exchange provides a Shariah-compliant trading venue, notable less for volume than for opening Islamic-finance capital to carbon markets, a genuinely differentiated channel in a Muslim-majority region.

Vietnam's activity runs substantially through Joint Crediting Mechanism cooperation with Japan, which is the region's longest-running practical demonstration of Article 6.2-style bilateral crediting, including applied corresponding adjustments.

Both are earlier in development. Thailand operates a voluntary programme and participates in bilateral cooperation; the Philippines is building framework legislation with significant blue carbon potential given its coastal extent.

For project developers, the practical reading is that neither offers near-term domestic demand at scale, but both will require the same measurement standards when their frameworks mature.

Three implications hold across all six.

Compliance beats voluntary. Global voluntary retirements have been flat at roughly 157–182 MtCO2e per year for four consecutive years. Regional demand growth is coming from obligations, not from discretionary purchasing.

Requirements are converging. Authorization, corresponding adjustment, recognised methodology, quantified uncertainty and traceable data appear in every jurisdiction's diligence in some form.

Measurement is the portable asset. Registries and exchanges differ by country. A defensible sampling design and an auditable data chain travel across all of them.

1. Perpres 110/2025 — https://www.trucarbon.co/perpres-110-2025 (accessed 17 Sep 2026)

2. SRUK launch and IDXCarbon figures — https://iki-indonesia.id/government-launches-sruk-carbon-unit-registry-permen-lh-bplh-no-10-2026-ojk-issues-pojk-no-10-2026-overhauling-carbon-exchange-rules-idxcarbon/ (29 Jul 2026)

3. Singapore carbon markets cooperation — https://www.carbonmarkets-cooperation.gov.sg/our-art6-cooperation/ (accessed 16 Sep 2026)

4. Ecosystem Marketplace, SOVCM 2025 — https://www.ecosystemmarketplace.com/articles/sovcm-2025-finds-the-voluntary-carbon-market-in-transition-demand-holding-steady-as-turnover-stabilizes/ (29 May 2025)

5. Bursa Carbon Exchange — https://www.bursamalaysia.com/ (accessed 16 Sep 2026)