Capital committed and deployed into the global carbon-credit market reached $22 billion in 2025, according to MSCI Carbon Markets data. That figure represents a 72% increase on 2024 and more than five times the levels recorded in 2021. The growth is not driven by immediate purchases, but it reflects a structural shift in how corporate buyers and investors are positioning for the future.
Aerial view of ecosystem restoration next to a corporate cityscape, highlighting decarbonisation driven by carbon credit markets. AI generated picture.
Offtake agreements, contracts to secure future credit supply, nearly tripled year on year to $12.3 billion and, for the first time, exceeded direct project investment, which reached $9.7 billion. Pre-purchase and forward agreements now account for roughly two-thirds of offtake value, up from less than a quarter in 2022. Buyers are moving from opportunistic purchasing to long-term, strategic procurement.
Quality is central to this shift. Only around one-third of available credits achieve a BBB rating or above under MSCI Carbon Project Ratings, pointing to a limited pool of high-integrity supply. Projects in carbon engineering and nature restoration together accounted for 93% of 2025 activity, and the quality profile of those projects is materially higher than the market average. More than 95% of carbon-engineering projects and half of nature-restoration projects achieve a BBB rating or above, compared with a global average of roughly one quarter.
Read more: Carbon credit project stewardship: what happens after credit issuance
Corporate capital alone reached $14.2 billion in 2025, more than tripling year on year, with over 100 corporates contributing to that total. The total number of deals declined from 555 to 467, even as total value increased, which is a sign of a market being shaped by fewer, larger transactions.
The pipeline of future demand reinforces the urgency. More than 12,000 companies now hold near-term science-based targets, collectively covering approximately 27 gigatonnes of emissions. For many sectors, meeting those targets by 2030 to 2035 will require access to high-quality carbon credits alongside internal emissions reduction efforts.
Financing structures are also evolving to support earlier action. A $210 million non-recourse project-finance facility structured by JPMorgan Chase for Chestnut Carbon—funding a 25-year forestry credit agreement with Microsoft—illustrates how traditional project-finance techniques are beginning to be applied to the carbon-credit market.
The central question is no longer whether demand will emerge. It is whether sufficient high-quality supply will be available when it does.
Read more: Spanish bank opens carbon credit trading for corporates
As major energy companies and financial institutions scale their carbon-credit programmes ahead of 2030 corporate targets, demand for high-quality, verifiable credits keeps rising. Green Earth develops nature-based carbon projects built to meet high standards: rigorous methodology, independent verification, and full traceability from ecosystem to certificate. For businesses building a long-term carbon credit strategy, whether to compensate for hard-to-abate emissions within their value chain or to secure supply ahead of tightening market conditions, our portfolio of projects across Africa and Central Asia delivers measurable outcomes backed by some of the most demanding quality benchmarks in the verified carbon market.
