If you have seen a Thai carbon credit price in a board paper this year, it was almost certainly 84.50 baht per tonne. The figure is circulating widely in Thai business media, in ESG decks, and in offset strategies being priced right now for net-zero roadmaps.
It is not a market price. It is a cumulative average of every over-the-counter trade since Thailand’s voluntary carbon market opened — and TGO publishes the numbers that show it. Read the current-year row instead and the picture changes materially: the average price of a Thai carbon credit in fiscal 2026 is roughly 41 baht, less than half the number in circulation.
On 3 September 2026, the Thailand Greenhouse Gas Management Organization (TGO) published the results of a study into carbon-credit reference pricing and valuation — work aimed at putting Thai carbon credits on a footing where they can be treated as economic and financial assets. That study exists precisely because price discovery in this market does not currently work. Here is what the underlying data actually says, and why it matters to anyone writing a climate disclosure.
The number everyone quotes is an all-time average
TGO maintains live counters for Thailand’s voluntary carbon market on its own homepage. As at 31 July 2026, they read as follows — cumulative since the market began, and separately for fiscal year 2569 (2026), which began on 1 October 2025:
| Since inception | FY2026 only | |
|---|---|---|
| OTC volume, tonnes | 5,130,716 | 1,047,167 |
| OTC value, baht | 433,993,928 | 43,280,568 |
| Implied average price | 84.59 ฿/t | 41.33 ฿/t |
| Exchange volume, tonnes | 13,665 | 0 |
The 84.59 baht figure is simply value divided by volume across the entire life of the market. Quoting it as a current price silently averages in every trade back to the beginning.
Backing the current year out of the cumulative totals sharpens the point. The 4,083,549 tonnes traded before fiscal 2026 changed hands for 390,713,360 baht, an average of about 95.7 baht per tonne. Against roughly 41 baht today, that is a fall of well over half. That last calculation is ours, derived by subtraction from TGO’s two published rows; TGO does not publish a prior-period average itself.
There is no exchange, and TGO says so plainly
The second problem is structural, and more consequential than the price. Thailand does not currently have a carbon exchange. The FTIX platform, developed under the Thai Chamber of Commerce, has ceased operations, and TGO’s own carbon-market FAQ states the position without hedging:
ปัจจุบันประเทศไทยยังไม่มีแพลตฟอร์มในรูปแบบ Exchange — At present Thailand still does not have a platform in the form of an Exchange.
TGO Carbon Market FAQ, carbonmarket.tgo.or.thThe counters bear this out. Exchange-based trading totals 13,665 tonnes across the platform’s entire life, against more than five million tonnes over the counter, and zero tonnes in fiscal 2026. Every Thai carbon credit that moved this year moved by private negotiation, through a broker, or through a marketplace that matches counterparties without functioning as a formal exchange.
That has a direct disclosure consequence. Bilateral trades do not generate a public price signal, so there is no observable market price to reference when you value a credit portfolio, test an offset assumption, or explain to an analyst how you arrived at the cost of your residual emissions. A wide reported spread is the predictable result, and it is the reason a reference price was commissioned at all.
Why TGO commissioned a reference price this month
TGO’s 3 September study is built to close exactly that gap. Its stated purpose is to establish credible reference pricing and valuation methods so carbon credits can be treated as economic and financial assets — the prerequisite for a credit appearing on a balance sheet, in an impairment test, or in a note to the accounts rather than only in a sustainability narrative.
For finance teams the read-across is immediate. Until a reference price exists, any carbon-credit valuation in your reporting rests on a negotiated transaction price you selected yourself. That is entirely defensible if you disclose the basis. It is not defensible if you quote a headline market average that turns out, on inspection, to be an all-time cumulative figure.
The compliance market is being drafted right now
Meanwhile the legal architecture is being written. Thailand’s draft Climate Change Act — 14 chapters and 205 sections — is under clause-by-clause review at the Office of the Council of State, the government’s legal-scrutiny body, and the Department of Climate Change and Environment has been publishing weekly summaries of its progress. The recent sessions went straight to market plumbing:
Powers to monitor controlled entities’ emissions; return, retention and offsetting of emission allowances; conversion of carbon credits into allowances; and the legal status of allowances under foreign law.
Registration, transfer, purchase, sale and disposal of emission allowances, plus secondary-market oversight and market-stability mechanisms.
The SEC and the Stock Exchange of Thailand joined officials, to align the trading provisions with existing capital-markets law and avoid duplication.
The draft’s CBAM chapter — the provisions aimed squarely at exporters.
Two honest conclusions follow, and they point in opposite directions. The bill is still in pre-parliamentary legal review, roughly seventeen weeks in. It has not been tabled, and anyone being told the Act is imminent is being oversold. But the fact that the securities regulator and the exchange are shaping the allowance registry and secondary-market articles is a strong signal about where this lands: a Thai compliance market plumbed into capital-markets infrastructure, supervised by the same institutions that already receive your 56-1 One Report. The teams that file your disclosure are likely to inherit allowance accounting too. We track the moving pieces on our ESG regulatory tracker, and the exporter-facing half in our CBAM briefing for Thai exporters.
What this means for your climate disclosure
Under IFRS S2 — the standard Thailand is adopting, with SET50 companies first reporting for financial year 2027 and filing in 2028 — a company that plans to use carbon credits to meet a climate target must say so and explain the extent of that reliance. That disclosure is only as good as the price and volume assumptions behind it. Three practical exposures follow:
That last point is where carbon strategy and disclosure quality meet. A TGO CFO certification gives you a verified organisational inventory; buying credits does not. Under TGO’s revised Net Zero certification criteria, CFO certification becomes a prerequisite for setting a Net Zero base year at all, so the verified inventory now gates the offset story rather than the other way round. We set out how those carbon numbers travel into a rated disclosure in TGO carbon data to FTSE disclosure.
There is a language dimension, and it is worth stating precisely rather than overstating it. FTSE Russell assesses companies from publicly disclosed information only — there is no questionnaire. Its published FAQ names six key research languages: English, French, Spanish, German, Japanese and Chinese. Thai is not among them. FTSE also says explicitly that it recognises the importance of local languages, so this is not an English-only rule and we will not present it as one. The real risk is narrower: a carbon-credit disclosure that exists only in Thai is less likely to be found by an analyst team whose named research languages do not include Thai. That is a readership problem, not a scoring rule. Our comparison of the major raters sets out what each one actually publishes about language, and our FTSE English disclosure page covers the mechanics.
What to do before the reporting season closes
Fiscal 2026 closes on 30 September, and the same date is FTSE Russell’s cut-off for disclosure to count toward the December index review — the first-ever review of the FTSE4Good Thailand Index, which launched in July with 119 constituents. Practical steps for the weeks ahead:
- Strip the 84.50 baht figure out of any offset model or board paper and replace it with a period-appropriate price, stating the basis.
- Stop describing Thailand as having a carbon exchange. It does not — TGO says so in its own FAQ, and FY2026 exchange volume was zero.
- If you disclose carbon-credit use under IFRS S2, disclose the valuation basis, not just the tonnage.
- Get Scope 1 and 2 independently verified. It is the input credits cannot substitute for, and the one FTSE’s climate scoring will not take on trust.
- Watch the CBAM chapter of the draft Climate Change Act, reviewed next, if you export to the EU.
Make your carbon numbers legible to the people scoring you
We build the verified carbon inventory and the English disclosure that carries it: ISO 17100 certified, terminology-locked, and clause-mapped to your Thai One Report. Run the free Gap Audit to see what an analyst reading your English edition can actually find.
Run the free Gap AuditThailand is in an awkward interval: a voluntary market thin enough that its own regulator has had to commission a reference price, and a compliance market still being drafted clause by clause. Neither is a reason to wait. The disclosure habits that will matter under the Act — verified inventories, stated valuation bases, and numbers a reader can actually locate — are the same ones that earn credit today. Talk to us about the English edition that carries them.
Sources: TGO carbon market counters and Carbon Market FAQ (tgo.or.th, carbonmarket.tgo.or.th), data as at 31 July 2026, read 9 September 2026; TGO news release on carbon-credit reference pricing and valuation, 3 September 2026; Department of Climate Change and Environment weekly summaries of the Council of State review of the draft Climate Change Act (dcce.go.th); FTSE Russell ESG Scores and Indices FAQ v1.5 and ESG Data Model Methodology; FTSE4Good Thailand Index Ground Rules v1.0; SEC Thailand news release 298/2025 on the ISSB adoption timeline. The prior-period average price is Othello’s own calculation from TGO’s published cumulative and current-year figures.
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