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TotalEnergies recorded its highest first-quarter carbon credit expenditure since entering the market in 2021, spending $28 million in the first three months of 2026, according to the French energy company's Q1 earnings report.
A family in rural Rwanda cooking on a clean cookstove while their family is playing in the background, surrounded by a lush green landscape reflects a growing shift toward sustainable energy solutions. AI generated picture.
The figure represents a sharp year-on-year increase. TotalEnergies spent just $2 million on carbon credits in Q1 2025, meaning its first-quarter spend in 2026 exceeds the total it recorded across the first nine months of last year.
The Q1 2026 figure is lower than the $49 million the company spent in Q4 2025—a record quarterly high—though that quarter is typically when TotalEnergies concentrates its largest annual purchases. Full-year spending in 2025 reached $73 million, a 33% increase on 2024 and a record annual high at the time.
The accelerating pace of acquisition reflects a stated portfolio target. TotalEnergies is working to accumulate 50 million tonnes of CO₂ equivalent (tCO₂e) in carbon credits by 2030. By the end of 2025, it held 17.9 million tCO₂e on its books, leaving 32.1 million tCO₂e still to acquire—an average of roughly 8 million tCO₂e per year over the remaining four years.
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From 2030, the company plans to begin retiring credits at a rate of 5 million tCO₂e annually to address its residual direct emissions (Scope 1) and indirect emissions from electricity use (Scope 2).
Part of the company's procurement strategy involves long-term supply agreements. In late 2025, TotalEnergies struck an investment deal for energy-efficient cookstoves, securing rights to over 2.5 million tCO₂e from cookstoves projects in Rwanda over ten years. Those credits are expected to qualify under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, the framework governing internationally transferred carbon units.
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As major energy companies scale their carbon credit programmes ahead of 2030 corporate targets, demand for high-quality, verifiable credits is rising sharply. Green Earth develops nature-based carbon projects built to meet exactly that standard: rigorous methodology, independent verification, and full traceability from ecosystem to certificate. For businesses building a long-term carbon credit strategy—whether to address residual Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions or to get ahead of tightening market supply—our portfolio of projects across Africa and Central Asia offers measurable outcomes backed by some of the most demanding quality benchmarks in the verified carbon market.
