The companies not buying carbon credits are the ones we should worry about

The opinions expressed here by Trellis expert contributors are their own, not those of Trellis.

Something striking is happening in corporate climate strategy: Ambition is accelerating, but action is stalling.

Between the end of 2023 and mid-2025, the number of companies setting both near-term and net-zero science-based targets surged by 227 percent. More than10,000 companies now have targets validated by the Science-Based Targets initiative, representing more than 40 percent of global market capitalization. Much of that growth was driven by the expansion of mandatory disclosure requirements in Europe, rising investor expectations in Asia and post-COP28 momentum that pushed thousands of companies to formalize commitments they’d been considering for years.

By any measure, this is progress. Yet in 2025, credit retirements in the voluntary carbon market fell by 7 percent, to 157 million metric tons. The tools designed to translate corporate climate ambition into funded outcomes are being used less, not more. Internal decarbonization is rightly the first priority; but for companies already on credible reduction pathways, the question of what comes next — how to fund climate action beyond their own value chain — remains unanswered.

Many companies still treat carbon credit engagement as a reputational liability rather than a climate responsibility. And that framing is overdue for an update.

The double standard

For the past three years, scrutiny has been directed overwhelmingly at companies that buy carbon credits. Purchases are examined for quality, motive and messaging. That scrutiny drove genuine, necessary reform. But it also created a rarely mentioned imbalance: Companies with climate targets and but without beyond-value-chain mitigation strategy face little accountability for the growing gap between what they’ve promised and what they’re funding.

This is exactly the wrong way around. Research from Ecosystem Marketplace found that companies purchasing carbon credits are nearly twice as likely to steadily reduce their own emissions and invest three times more in value chain decarbonization than non-buyers. Data from Trove Research (now MSCI) shows that companies using material volumes of credits decarbonize at roughly twice the rate of those that don’t. 

Buyers, in other words, aren’t using credits as a substitute for action;. they’re doing the most, on all fronts.

Meanwhile, the market infrastructure has evolved. Independent quality thresholds are now in place and being enforced; the Integrity Council had approved 36 methodologies by the end of 2025, rejecting ones that didn’t meet its standards. Claims guidance now exists for how companies can talk credibly about the credits they purchase. Government-led coalitions are aligning policy expectations across jurisdictions. Nearly 100 bilateral agreements have been established under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement. 

As Donna Lee recently argued in a Trellis column, supply-side quality tools, including independent standards and credit ratings, now make it possible to identify high-integrity credits with far greater confidence than was possible three years ago. Companies still citing 2023-era concerns as a reason for complete disengagement are using outdated risk assessments.

We’ve built an accountability framework that, in effect, penalizes the companies doing the most and gives a free pass to those doing the least. That needs to change.

The silence that makes it worse

There’s a second insidious corollary to this problem: A growing share of the companies that are buying carbon credits are doing so silently.

According to analysis from Carbon Direct, more than 55 percent of spot market retirements over the past three years have been anonymous, and the proportion is increasing. A similar pattern holds for high-durability carbon dioxide removal: Nearly 40 percent of offtake transactions in 2025 didn’t disclose the buyer.

This is understandable. In a climate where credit purchases attract criticism regardless of quality, anonymity feels like risk management. But it comes at a cost — and not just to the individual company.

Anonymous purchasing weakens the demand signals that the market needs to mature. It makes it harder for analysts, investors and policymakers to track corporate progress. And it reinforces the narrative that no credible company is willing to attach its name to a carbon credit. 

If you’re buying because you believe in the climate value of what you’re funding, saying so is part of the value. Silence creates space for skeptics to claim that the market has no credible demand — and that claim, left unchallenged, becomes self-fulfilling.

From avoidance to engagement

So what should sustainability teams actually do? The answer isn’t to rush into the market uncritically. It’s to stop treating carbon finance as a binary — buy or don’t buy — and start treating it as a strategic decision about how to fund climate outcomes beyond the value chain.

A growing body of science supports the case for a diversified approach to climate investment that deploys the solutions available at scale now while continuing to invest in those that will be essential over the long term. Nature-based solutions offer large-scale, low-cost mitigation that’s ready today, with co-benefits for biodiversity, water and communities. Engineered removals offer higher durability but remain early-stage and expensive. Neither is sufficient alone. Both are necessary.

For companies, this means treating carbon finance as a portfolio decision. That portfolio should work in tandem with a credible internal decarbonization plan that includes credits that meet independent quality standards, reflect a deliberate mix of solution types and time horizons and be communicated transparently. And it should be reviewed and refined as the science, the standards and the market continue to evolve.

The cost of standing still

The companies doing nothing aren’t playing it safe. They’re falling behind—behind the science, behind the governance architecture and behind the peers who are already building climate portfolios that fund real-world outcomes.

The carbon market isn’t perfect. No market is. But the trajectory of reform is clear, and the tools to engage responsibly are better than they’ve ever been. Continued avoidance, at this point, looks less like prudence and more like a failure to update assumptions that were formed in a different era.