Blockchain and double auction for credible and efficient voluntary carbon market

The voluntary carbon market (VCM) is a crucial mechanism for facilitating the renewable energy transition and global climate goals. However, the credibility and efficiency of this market-based mechanism are constrained by several challenges, including transparency issues, credit double-counting, and inefficient pricing. This study proposes a blockchain-enabled VCM that uses tokenization and a double auction for climate governance. First, blockchain is used to enhance transparency by maintaining an immutable ledger that records all carbon credit transactions. Second, tokenization reduces double-counting across stakeholders by digitizing carbon credits with unique identifiers. Third, the double auction mechanism, implemented via smart contracts, enables efficient market clearing by automatically matching buyers' bids and sellers' asks at fair prices. We validate the system in three dynamic energy-relevant scenarios: (1) Poisson-based arrivals of credit buyers' demands and sellers' supply in the energy sector, (2) seasonal credit demand variation for energy stakeholders, and (3) a large-scale application driven by U.S. 3144 counties' transportation emissions, a sector tightly coupled to fossil fuel consumption. Results show that the proposed blockchain–auction solution achieves stable and efficient market clearing across all three energy-relevant scenarios. Performance benchmarking further confirms low latency and stable throughput, indicating the practicality of deploying the mechanism for real-world applications. Together, blockchain transparency, unique tokenization, and double auction pricing deliver a credible and efficient VCM.