The different standards, project activities, geographies and SDG contributions of a carbon project will influence a carbon project price due to different levels of market demand and appetite. For instance, it has been observed in the data that a VCS project in general fetches a higher price in the market compared to a CDM project of the same project activity and geography, as a result of the higher market demand for VCS projects compared to CDM. There can be many speculative explanations on why this is so, and one could be the perception by market participants that CDM is Kyoto legacy and less suitable as an offset in the Voluntary Carbon Market (VCM).
Another factor relates to different cost curves. For instance, the upfront costs of reforesting an area of land may be significantly higher than simply conserving an existing forest. Similarly, implementing and operating carbon projects in different countries come at different overall costs.
Finally, the contributions to one or more of the 17 UN’s SDGs require that real cash go into tangible actions specific to each of the SDGs, e.g., building schools (SDG 4), improving sanitation (SDG 6), etc. This means that revenues from the sales of carbon credits end up financing those actions, thus higher SDG contributions translating into higher carbon credit prices.