Cost to consumers of carbon credits

Yes, it’s a made up product, an exercise in bureaucracy (certificate shuffling), no one sees anything. But the consumer is meant to pay.

Carbon credits is this weird market, where the product is some positive externality. No one in the market has any incentive to be honest.

The buyer of the carbon credits doesn’t actually need the carbon to be captured. They just want a certificate for X credits, so they can emit elsewhere or get some other benefit.

The seller doesn’t actually need to capture the carbon. As long as they can make a convincing enough case to the buyer that they did capture the carbon, the buyer is happy to buy.

It’s pretty much exactly the same as the plastic recycling market in Canada. The plastic waste is actually just shipped/sold to Asia. Not actually recycled.