It's interesting, because there is indeed a system in the EU known as carbon allowances. While everyone and their dog can buy offsets, allowances exist in the EU and California (I think?) which are a legal mandate that firms must purchase which are necessary to pollute. There's even tradeable products based on this, and the market seems healthy enough. Offsets are definitely a scam, but I'd love to hear anyone else's opinion on allowances.
Hailing from a coal-heavy EU member state(Poland), the least carbon allowances did was to dissuade investors from financing new coal projects.
There's also a shift to renewables - the public at large especially jumped on it because fossil-genereated electricity simply became expensive and there are government subsidies in place to to further sweeten the deal.
There's a law coming into force soon which will allow apartment blocks to produce more solar energy than they consume and sell it, which wasn't the case to date.
Overall the system is working as intended and the share of renewables went from a low point of 11% in 2018 to 20% in 2022 and the trend is likely to continue considering how many new solar projects are in the pipeline.
https://climate.ec.europa.eu/eu-action/eu-emissions-trading-...
Allowances
https://sparkchange.io/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/SparkChang...
Guide on allowances from a firm that sells a physically backed allowances product