A Buyer’s Guide to Corporate Offsetting and Navigating the Voluntary Carbon Market

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The voluntary carbon market (VCM), enables the transfer of capital on a voluntary basis to help fund carbon crediting activities that avoid, reduce, or remove carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) emissions from the atmosphere. While this market has existed for decades, it saw a recent meteoric rise in popularity with the explosion in corporate climate commitments resulting in an increased appetite for carbon credits. Within a few years, this rise was followed by a precipitous fall, due in part to scrutiny from media sources largely questioning market integrity.

Despite the voluntary market's challenges, a growing majority of corporate leaders are interested in buying carbon credits. The 2023 BMO Climate Institute Business Leaders Survey found that 53% of corporate decision-makers in the U.S. and Canada, across companies of all sizes, are interested in buying carbon credits, up from 47% in the previous survey.

However, only 19% of business leaders say they have a strategy that aligns their carbon credit purchases with specific sustainability goals. More than a third of respondents (34%) say their company encourages the use of carbon credits but do not have a formal strategy.

In this white paper, we aim to help buyers understand the many elements that lead to quality differentiation and explore how companies can adopt an offsetting strategy in a way that is aligned with a net-zero outcome.