“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.
The landscape has shifted
Carbon credits are no longer a reputational nicety. Over 7,000 companies now operate under Science-Based Targets. CORSIA is creating real compliance obligations for aviation. CSRD is expanding disclosure requirements across European operations. And voluntary buyers face growing scrutiny from investors, regulators, and media demanding evidence that carbon claims are defensible.
That scrutiny has reached the boardroom. Finance teams want to understand the business case. Risk teams want to understand the exposure. And boards want to know how the company's approach compares to peers, and whether it will hold up under external scrutiny.
The challenge is that many carbon credit strategies were built for a different era: lower scrutiny, simpler frameworks, and markets where quality differences between credits were less visible.
And, increasingly, they also want to know what the strategy looks like not just this year, but over a three-to-five year horizon, and whether the numbers behind it will hold up as markets evolve.
Where the internal conversation breaks down
Getting board sign-off on a carbon credit strategy typically involves navigating several objections.
"Why are we spending money on this when we haven't finished reducing our own emissions?"
The question isn't whether to use credits, it's how they fit into a credible net-zero pathway. Credits are not a substitute for abatement; they're the bridge for emissions that can't yet be eliminated. Getting this framing right is the difference between a strategy that survives scrutiny and one that invites greenwashing accusations.
"How do we know these credits are real?"
This is the quality question. Not all carbon credits represent equivalent climate impact. A project with weak additionality arguments, poor monitoring, or inadequate permanence safeguards can produce credits that look identical to high-quality alternatives on paper. Without independent quality assessment, there's no defensible answer to this question.
"Are we paying the right price?"
Carbon credit pricing can be opaque. Brokers quote prices that vary significantly for similar credits. Without visibility into what the market is actually paying - across project types, geographies, ratings, and vintages - procurement teams are negotiating blind, and finance teams know it.
"What will this cost us in three years?"
This question is one that current spot prices cannot answer. Boards and CFOs approving multi-year net-zero commitments want a range of plausible futures, not a single-point estimate. Without forward modelling, a clear, evidenced answer is hard to come by, which makes budget approval unlikely.
"What are our peers doing?"
If a competitor's strategy is more aggressive, more conservative, or demonstrably better-evidenced, that comparison will surface. Knowing where you sit relative to peer activity (by sector, by credit type, by quality standard) is important context for the board.
"Should we buy now or wait?"
Supply constraints in high-integrity credits are real. High-quality supply has been in deficit for three consecutive years, and forward pricing reflects that scarcity. Whether to buy spot, enter offtake agreements, or stage purchases over time is a strategic question, and it’s not one with a universal answer, but one that requires real market data and forecasting to answer well.
The opportunity when you get the strategy right
A well-constructed carbon credit strategy does more than reduce emissions. It builds stakeholder trust, creates competitive positioning, and, for companies with compliance exposure, creates optionality in markets that are still developing.
The quality-price relationship is real and increasingly transparent. Sylvera market data across 300,000+ transactions shows a clear premium for higher-rated credits, which means a strategy focused on quality doesn't just look better, it can perform better financially as the market matures and quality differentials widen.
The timing dimension matters too. High-quality supply is structurally constrained, and forward pricing for certain project types already reflects anticipated scarcity. Companies that lock in supply early - particularly for CORSIA-eligible credits or high-rated ARR and IFM projects - are increasingly finding that their cost-per-tonne improves relative to those buying spot in later years.
Companies that build their strategy on independent data also find that the internal conversation gets easier over time. When a board challenge comes, the answer is a benchmark, not a judgement call.
What a board-ready strategy looks like
1. A clear framework.
Before choosing credits, define what they're for. Compliance eligibility (CORSIA, domestic schemes), SBTi alignment, reputational positioning, co-benefits focus, or portfolio diversification each imply different credit types and quality thresholds. Most companies need credits that serve more than one purpose. The framework should make those trade-offs explicit.
2. A quality floor, defined before procurement.
Set minimum quality criteria independently of what's available in the market at any given time. For most companies, this means using independent ratings as a threshold. Credits below a defined rating don't make the shortlist, regardless of price.
3. A price benchmark, grounded in market data.
What are projects with equivalent ratings, methodologies, and geographies actually trading at? This benchmark should be built on actual transaction data, not broker quotes. Without it, every price negotiation is a guessing game, and finance teams won’t sign off.
4. A peer positioning view.
What are companies in your sector doing? What credit types are they buying? What quality standards are they applying? What are they paying? This context shapes both the internal conversation and the external narrative.
5. A multi-year budget model, stress-tested across scenarios.
That means modelling what your target portfolio will cost not just now, but in year two and year four, under different demand conditions. Key variables to stress-test: How does CORSIA scaling affect pricing for your target project types? What happens if Article 6 implementation accelerates demand for CA-backed credits? Which geographies face supply constraints over your procurement horizon? Sylvera's Market Forecasts provide project-type-specific pricing through 2050 under low, medium, and high demand scenarios, giving you the forward curves to build a budget your CFO can actually evaluate, and board-ready variance bands tied to credible market assumptions rather than internal guesswork.
5. A procurement structure decision.
Spot purchases offer flexibility but expose you to price risk and supply constraints. Offtake agreements lock in price and supply but require more due diligence upfront. Direct project investment creates alignment and optionality but carries more complexity. Most sophisticated buyers use a combination. The right mix depends on volume, timeline, and risk appetite, and should be informed by your forward price view: where scenario modelling suggests supply tightening, locking in early makes financial sense; where costs are likely to fall (certain CDR categories, for example), maintaining spot flexibility is rational.
What can good look like? Two examples
A global consumer goods company wants to build a carbon credit strategy ahead of an SBTi commitment. Internally, the CFO is sceptical, as previous sustainability investments haven't been well-evidenced. The procurement team uses Sylvera's Market Intelligence to build a benchmark: they can show, for their target project types and geographies, what the market is paying for each rating tier, and where peer companies are positioned. They also use Market Forecasts to model their target portfolio - 60% high-quality forestry, 40% durable CDR - across three demand scenarios, presenting leadership with a base-case annual budget and a credible variance range tied to CORSIA implementation timelines. The CFO approves the multi-year programme. The strategy uses Ratings as a quality filter, so nothing below BBB+ makes the approved list. When the question comes from the board, there's a clear, data-backed answer for every line.
A financial institution building a carbon trading desk needs to justify positions in an emerging compliance market, CORSIA, to an internal risk team. The challenge: the market isn't yet fully operational, pricing varies widely, and the risk team needs more than intuition. Using Sylvera's Market Intelligence and policy expertise, the team builds a scenario analysis covering supply readiness, demand pathways, and policy risk. Market Forecasts provide forward price curves under different compliance scenarios, giving the risk team the quantified upside and downside they need to size the position. Risk approval comes through. The institution deploys capital at a scale that wouldn't have been possible without the third-party intelligence to back the thesis.
How Sylvera helps
Market Intelligence gives procurement and finance teams the pricing benchmarks, peer activity data, and supply-demand context to build a strategy that stands up to scrutiny. Access spot prices across 20,000+ credits backed by 300,000+ verified transactions, track retirement patterns across 40,000+ companies to understand peer positioning, and model forward pricing scenarios to inform timing decisions.
Market Forecasts provide scenario-modelled pricing through 2050 under low, medium, and high demand conditions. This gives teams the forward visibility to build multi-year budgets, stress-test procurement timing, and present boards with credible assumptions, not single-point estimates.
Ratings provide the independent quality assessment that makes quality decisions defensible. Every rating covers carbon, additionality, permanence, and co-benefits, and is assessed independently of the project developer or broker. So the answer to "how do we know these credits are having real impact?" is grounded in third-party evidence.
Methodology and Country Profiles give teams visibility into compliance eligibility, regulatory risk, and delivery risk by project type and jurisdiction, essential inputs for a strategy with multiple purposes and stakeholders..
Ready to build a carbon strategy your leadership can stand behind? Get a 121 demo of the Sylvera platform here.
