“Over the years we’ve invested significantly in our field data team - focusing on producing trusted ratings. While this ensures the accuracy of our Ratings, it doesn’t allow the scale across the thousands of projects that buyers are considering.”
For more information on carbon credit procurement trends, read our "Key Takeaways for 2025" article. We share five, data-backed tips to improve your procurement strategy.
One more thing: Connect to Supply customers also get access to the rest of Sylvera's tools. That means you can easily see project ratings and evaluate an individual project's strengths, procure quality carbon credits, and even monitor project activity (particularly if you’ve invested at the pre-issuance stage.)
Book a free demo of Sylvera to see our platform's procurement and reporting features in action.
Most carbon project developers spend years building a project before they seriously think about who's going to buy the credits.
But the buyers who pay the premium prices for carbon credits aren't waiting at the registry for new issuances to appear. They're building procurement strategies months or years in advance, forging direct relationships with developers whose projects match their criteria, and responding to supply opportunities that come to them through trusted channels.
By the time your credits exist, the best buyers have often already committed elsewhere.
This article is designed to help developers find those buyers early and get in front of them before your first credit issues.
Start with the market, not the contact list
Many developers understandably start within their network - calling brokers, attending conferences, relying on existing relationships to surface demand. That approach isn't wrong, but it's incomplete, and time-consuming. Brokers extract margin. Conferences are slow. And your network likely isn’t made up of the right buyers, just the accessible ones.
A more systematic approach starts with understanding the market structure:
- Which buyer segments are actually active in your credit type?
- Which companies have demonstrated, through real retirements, that they purchase credits from projects like yours - same methodology, similar geography, comparable quality?
- Where is demand heading, given the regulatory pressures, compliance obligations, and voluntary commitments that are reshaping buyer behaviour?
That intelligence exists. Retirement data across tens of thousands of transactions shows exactly which companies buy which credit types, at what volumes, and how frequently.
Buyer activity data shows who is growing their procurement, who is shifting methodology preferences, and which segments of the market are most likely to absorb new supply in your project category.
Starting your buyer search from that foundation changes the conversation from cold outreach to informed targeting.
Understanding who buys what, and why it matters for your project
Carbon markets have distinct buyer segments, each with different motivations, different quality thresholds, and different price sensitivities. For example:
Large corporates with science-based targets and public net-zero commitments tend to prioritise high-quality, independently validated credits - they're the buyers most likely to pay a premium for a strong Sylvera Rating, and most likely to conduct meaningful diligence before purchasing.
Financial institutions buying for portfolio or compliance purposes have different requirements again.
CORSIA-eligible buyers are constrained by specific eligibility criteria that filter the project universe considerably.
Understanding which segment is the right target for your project affects your project design, your methodology selection, and your pricing strategy from the outset.
Again, for developers, the practical question is: who has actually retired credits from projects like mine? Buyer retirement data answers that question.
For example, if you're developing an ARR project in Southeast Asia, you can see which consumer goods companies have retired similar credits, which technology firms favour forestry methodologies, which industries prefer your approach — and build your outreach list from demonstrated behaviour rather than assumption.
Timing: when do buyers buy, and how do you get ahead of it?
Most sophisticated buyers operate on annual budget cycles, with procurement decisions made months in advance of actual retirement. Companies with formal net-zero commitments often have multi-year procurement strategies that they're executing against, meaning they're not just buying for this year's retirement, but building supply pipelines that extend considerably further out.
So, the window for getting into a buyer's procurement plan is often well before you have credits to sell. A buyer who is building a three-year forward supply strategy will want to identify and vet potential suppliers now, not when the credits land.
Understanding when in the year different buyer segments are most actively procuring, which companies are approaching deadlines against their stated targets, which have a visible gap between their public commitments and their current retirement track record, gives developers the ability to time outreach for maximum relevance.
Which markets are available to you?
Before targeting specific buyers, it's worth mapping the full landscape of markets your credits could access.
CORSIA, the aviation industry's carbon offset mechanism, has specific eligibility requirements that, if your project meets them, open access to a large and growing pool of structured demand.
Article 6 of the Paris Agreement is creating new ITMO markets that some developers are positioning for now.
Certain jurisdictions are developing compliance markets that accept voluntary carbon credits under specific conditions.
Each of these markets has different price dynamics, different buyer characteristics, and different quality requirements. A developer who understands the full range of markets available to their project, and has positioned for multiple access points, has more pricing leverage than one selling exclusively into the spot voluntary market.
How to differentiate your project to buyers
Once you've identified the right buyers and the right market access points, the question is how to stand out in a supply landscape where buyers are evaluating multiple projects simultaneously.
The developers who command the best prices and the strongest buyer relationships differentiate on independently verified quality. A Sylvera Rating or Pre-Issuance Rating gives buyers an independent, trusted view on quality. The Sylvera Ratings Badge makes that signal visible and standardised, giving buyers a shorthand they recognise and reference when making purchasing decisions.
Beyond ratings, differentiation comes from transparency. Buyers doing meaningful diligence want to understand your monitoring approach, your risk mitigation strategy, your community relationships, your co-benefits evidence. Developers who can show these elements of their projects will stand out.
Show up well where buyers are looking
Before you even reach the point of active outreach, there's a more fundamental question: are you visible in the places buyers are looking? When procurement teams, investors, and offtakers are scanning the market for supply - building long-lists, screening developers, evaluating pipelines - they're increasingly doing it through their trusted data platforms.
Sylvera's Developer Directory, sitting within Market Intelligence, is where that screening happens. Each developer profile shows total issuance, registry balance, issuance history, pipeline projects, and a distribution of ratings and prices across their portfolio. It also surfaces who your largest buyers have been, which is the intelligence prospective offtakers and investors use when deciding who to approach. The directory is filterable by project type and region, meaning buyers and investors with specific criteria can surface the developers most relevant to their mandate directly, without intermediary introduction.
For developers, this means two things. First, your profile is being looked at by the investors and offtakers you want to reach. Second, the directory includes a benchmarking tab that lets you compare your performance (total issuance, weighted average rating, co-benefit scores) against peer developers. So, you can see how you're positioned relative to the developers competing for the same buyers, and identify areas for improvement.
Access buyers where they’re actively procuring
Brokers offer access and distribution, but they extract margin (often 5–15% of transaction value) and sit between you and the buyer relationship.
Sylvera's Market Gateway changes this for developers. It gives you a channel to respond directly to buyer RFPs that match your project specifications, and build direct relationships with end purchasers without intermediary commissions eating into your margins.
Integrated ratings and market data mean you can evaluate opportunities in context - understanding whether an RFP offer reflects fair market value for your quality tier, rather than accepting or rejecting in the dark. For developers with pre-issuance supply to position, it also provides a mechanism to signal upcoming availability to buyers who are actively building forward supply pipelines - getting you into procurement conversations early.
Building your buyer pipeline: practical steps
In practical terms, for developers this looks like:
- Understand the market landscape for your credit type before beginning outreach
- Identify which buyer segments have demonstrated demand for comparable credits
- Research which companies have a visible gap between their public commitments and their current retirement track record
- Get independent quality validation early enough to use it as a credibility signal
- Access structured buyer demand directly, building relationships with procurement teams, not just brokers.
To explore Sylvera’s Ratings, Pre-Issuance Assessment, Market Intelligence, Developer Directory and Market Gateway, get your demo here.
