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Ecosystem Marketplace recently released its "State of the Voluntary Carbon Market 2025" report. One of the most comprehensive looks at the Voluntary Carbon Markets (VCM), Ecosystem Marketplace’s analysis is grounded in the world’s largest dataset of verified carbon credit transactions.
While the report demonstrates that the voluntary carbon market is maturing and that buyers are rewarding quality and integrity with real capital, many corporate buyers remain reluctant to invest in the VCM.
We believe this is in large part due to the Science Based Targets initiative’s (SBTi) reluctance and inflexibility in allowing companies to define their own pathway toward their targets, specifically by excluding the use of carbon credits.
SBTi has played a pivotal role in galvanizing corporate climate action. By setting clear expectations around emissions reductions, SBTi has become a powerful standard-setter that many businesses look to for guidance on their net-zero journeys.
While the changes made in the latest version of SBTi’s Corporate Net-Zero Standard (CNZSv2) do signal a willingness to evolve, several critical challenges remain around the use of high-integrity credits in achieving net-zero goals.
To that end, BACA urges SBTi to consider three key recommendations. If SBTi chooses to adopt them, the CNZSv2 will unlock climate action with the urgency the climate crisis demands.
In general, SBTi’s reluctance to allow the use of carbon credits toward interim decarbonization targets across Scopes 1, 2 and 3 creates a critical barrier to engagement. We understand and respect SBTi’s focus on real emissions reductions within the value chain. However, the current binary framing—reductions “within boundaries” are good, while credits are viewed with skepticism—overlooks the nuanced realities companies face.
Technological readiness, capital constraints, permitting hurdles and regional infrastructure gaps can all delay a company’s decarbonization timeline, despite strong intentions and planning. In these moments, the ability to invest in high-quality, high-integrity carbon credits can help companies stay aligned with their climate ambitions, even when their direct levers are temporarily out of reach.
Crucially, the atmosphere does not distinguish between a tonne of CO₂ abated through on-site efficiency and one prevented through a credible REDD+ project. As long as the integrity of the credit is assured, the climate impact is the same. Denying companies the opportunity to use such tools not only limits near-term finance for mitigation but may also discourage companies from setting targets at all.
One of the more encouraging elements in CNZSv2 is SBTi’s openness to recognizing companies that proactively address ongoing emissions using carbon credits. However, the proposed treatment remains vague, and the lack of a clear, credible framework for recognition risks undermining the potential impact of this practice.
BACA supports a more defined and widely accepted recognition mechanism for firms that choose to voluntarily “neutralize” their unabated emissions year over year. Standards such as ISO 14068 and frameworks like VCMI’s Claims Code provide clear precedents for what this could look like in practice.
Recognition for these actions should not be seen as a shortcut or an excuse to delay decarbonization. Rather, it is a way to hold companies accountable in the present moment while they work toward long-term emissions reductions. Companies willing to tax themselves for their emissions by purchasing high-integrity credits are demonstrating serious climate leadership—and should be encouraged, not sidelined.
CNZSv2’s preference for permanent carbon removals, with lifespans exceeding 100 years, risks excluding a broad swath of impactful climate solutions that are available now, scalable and urgently needed.
While engineered removals such as Direct Air Capture will play an important role in the future, today they remain expensive, limited in scale and geographically constrained. Meanwhile, emissions reductions and nature-based solutions are ready and able to deliver real mitigation today.
By excluding reductions and short-term removals, CNZSv2 inadvertently limits investment in projects that tackle superpollutants like methane, protect critical ecosystems or reduce emissions in vulnerable communities. These are high-quality interventions with measurable benefits—and they should not be pushed to the sidelines because they do not meet a narrow definition of “permanence.”
The solution is not to lower the bar on integrity but to recognize a broader array of pathways that meet rigorous quality criteria. This includes differentiated guidance that ensures transparency about the types of credits used, their climate impact and how they contribute to broader mitigation outcomes.
SBTi is a cornerstone of corporate climate ambition. Its leadership in establishing science-based frameworks has mobilized thousands of companies toward credible climate action. But as the urgency of the climate crisis deepens and the financial demands grow, we must ensure that ambition is met with practical pathways.
BACA stands ready to work with SBTi as they create a standard that maintains scientific rigor, ensures credibility and empowers more companies to act boldly. That means embracing flexibility without compromising integrity, expanding the toolbox without diluting ambition and acknowledging that companies need every credible lever available—including carbon markets—to succeed.
A more inclusive, practical and forward-looking CNZv2 can be the catalyst for the next wave of corporate climate action.
