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How corporate carbon credit retirements have changed since 2019, and what buyers are asking for in their procurements today.
Marc Height
Senior Content Manager
Kate Taylor
Director of GTM
Juan Carlos Arredondo Brun
Director of Knowledge, Policy and Advocacy
Stephanía Bohórquez Díaz
Brand Designer
The voluntary carbon market (VCM) saw significant growth in carbon credit retirements at the start of the decade. Overall retirements increased significantly between 2019 and 2021, rising from 76mn tonnes to 177mn tonnes, where they've remained relatively flat to 2025.
Behind those headline figures, the number of named companies retiring – those not doing so anonymously – continued to increase, nearly tripling between 2019 and 2023. Named buyers in our 18 sectors now represent over half of all tonnes retired – 54% in 2025, compared to 46% in 2019.
Looking at these named buyers' retirement trends by sector allows us to see what companies are buying, when they retire it, and what they pay. This reveals a growing set of buyers that are becoming more sophisticated in their approach to the market, that increasingly care about quality, and that are spending more on credits more frequently.
This interactive report breaks down these trends. The Out in the market section focuses on how the named buyers Abatable tracks on a sector level* are approaching project types, carbon credit quality, retirement frequency, and timing. The Inside our RFPs section goes inside Abatable's procurement events to surface what buyers are actually asking for today, and how the market is responding.
Each chart is interactive. Hover to explore, draw your own conclusions on top of our key takeaways, and look for the note at the end of each chapter on what this all means for your own VCM strategy. We hope it provides you with clarity on the market and actionable insights, as well as an in-depth understanding of your sector and how your competitors use carbon markets to meet their sustainability goals.
* This report focuses on the named buyers Abatable has assigned to one of 18 sectors. It covers 1,072 buyers in 2025, retiring 93mn tonnes.
Overall carbon credit retirement numbers have stayed steady over the last five years at around 180mn tonnes. But, as this first part of our report demonstrates, the data under the hood shows key shifts in buying behaviours. Portfolio diversity has increased, there are more named (versus anonymous) buyers entering the market*, buyers are making more frequent, smaller retirements, the shift towards high quality continues, and the retirement seasonality pattern has been pushed back from Q4 into Q1. You can explore all the data in this section in more depth in the Abatable platform.
* Carbon credit buyers can choose to retire credits – i.e. permanently remove them from circulation in the market – anonymously. Named buyers in our 18 sectors accounted for 54% of tonnes retired in 2025, up from 46% in 2019.
Retirements by the named buyers in our 18 sectors rose from 35mn tonnes in 2019 to 92mn in 2022, holding at around that level since. As Graphic 01 shows, however, the mix underneath the total has shifted. In 2019, two project types accounted for almost four in five tonnes retired by named buyers: REDD+ at 48% and renewable energy at 30%. By 2025, those two project types reduced to just over half of retirements. Improved forest management (IFM), cookstoves, and industrial efficiency have grown to make up the difference.
The shift in retirements is more dramatic by sector (explore with the sector drop-down in Graphic 01). For financial services, REDD+ fell from 35% to 12% of retirements, and IFM rose from 4% to 19%. The public and social sector moved from renewables making up 66% of its 2019 volume to cookstoves making up 66% of its 2025 volume, while growing its total volume of retirements four times.
Finally, the proportion of the market retiring anonymously has dropped from 50% in 2019 to 38% in 2025, as more companies disclose their activity against public climate claims and integrity initiatives improve trust in the market.
Retired volume by project type, 2019 to 2025, by named buyers in Abatable's sector retirement data. 'Tonnes' displays total retirements, 'Share' displays percentage. The sector drop-down allows you to display by sector. The 'Include anonymous buyers' toggle adds the retirements that sit outside the sector analysis, shown as a lighter shade of each project type. These include retirements that could not be attributed to a named organisation, broker-only retirements with no named end buyer, retirements still being matched, individuals, and named buyers with no sector classification.
Source: Abatable market data. Other includes all remaining project types.
The named buyers in our 18 sectors made 2,172 retirements in 2019 and 13,674 in 2025. The number of buyers rose, too, from 403 to 1,072. Each buyer now makes an average of 13 retirements per year, up from five in 2019. As a result, the typical retirement has shrunk accordingly from about 15,900 tonnes to 6,800 tonnes. Most of the growth in the market is in retirements under 1,000 tonnes, which rose 7.6 times between 2019 and 2025. This points to a more agile set of buyers with more sophisticated procurement strategies built around sustainability aims or regulatory needs.
The energy and utilities sector made 52% of all 2025 retirements, at 39 per buyer. Many of its largest buyers retire against compliance obligations, such as national carbon schemes that accept credits, which leads to frequent, routine retirements. Outside energy, the pattern still holds: retirements per non-energy buyer are rising from 4.6 to 7.5, led by the environmental services, aviation, construction, manufacturing, and technology sectors.
As Graphic 02 shows, the increase in retirements per year is mainly fuelled by the growth in retirements under 1,000 tonnes.
Retirements per year by named buyers, split by size. The line shows the number of named buyers active each year, read against the right-hand axis. Choose a sector to see its own pattern.
Source: Abatable market data
While the overall retirement volume from named sector buyers remained relatively steady from 2022 to 2025, over the same period, the share of retired volume from carbon credit methodologies now approved under the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market's (ICVCM's) Core Carbon Principles (CCPs) rose from 1.5% to 10.0%.
Some sectors have moved faster to retire credits from CCP-approved methodologies than others due to stakeholder pressure, more mature sustainability strategies, and a higher profit-per-tonne-of-CO2 ratio, allowing them to afford premium credits. Technology and telecoms, professional services, and financial services buyers now retire CCP-approved credits at up to 2.6 times the market rate, and environmental services, a sector that includes carbon market specialists, sits at 82%.
Energy and utilities, which accounts for close to six in ten tonnes retired by named buyers, has moved from under 1% in 2023 to 6%.
The size of bubbles in Graphic 03 denotes this change – larger bubbles reflect a higher percentage of CCP credits retired. The bubbles trend diagonally upward as they grow, representing a greater number of distinct buyers per sector and an increasing percentage of CCP retirements.
Each bubble is a sector of named buyers. The x-axis denotes retired volume on a logarithmic scale, which is plotted against the number of distinct buyers on the y-axis. The bubble area represents the share of that volume from methodologies that are now CCP-approved. The 2019 2.4% figure is lifted by one technology buyer's retirements of ozone-depleting substance destruction credits, a methodology since approved under the CCPs. Press play to watch the shift from 2019 to 2025, and pick a sector to trace its path.
Source: Abatable market data
Retirement seasonality is shifting. In 2023, 37% of retirements landed in the fourth quarter as companies closed out their annual accounts and claims. By 2025, the fourth quarter had dropped to 24%, and the first quarter had become the busiest, with 40% of the year's volume retired. This matches a sequence where companies complete their GHG calculations in Q1 and Q2, launch RFPs in Q3 to buy in Q4, and then retire in Q1.
The energy and utilities sector drives much of this: half of its 2025 volume was retired between January and March. Other sectors keep their own rhythm. Aviation and financial services still retire over 40% of their tonnes in the fourth quarter.
Tonnes retired in each quarter, 2019 to 2025.
Source: Abatable market data
We estimate named buyers' spend on retired credits* at $678mn in 2025, up from $197mn in 2019. Volume makes up a lot of this difference, but the implied average price per tonne (calculated as total spend divided by volume) across the market also rose, from $5.70 in 2019 to $7.28 in 2025, based on conservative single reference prices per project type from transactions and offers in the Abatable platform. The rise was not steady: the implied price jumped to $7.17 in 2020, when ARR made up 14% of retirements, mostly bought by energy and utilities buyers, and dipped to $6.15 in 2023 as that share fell to around 5%.
As buyers shifted from renewables and REDD+ to more expensive project types, including IFM and ARR, their average cost increased. Technology buyers went from paying $5.87 on average to $9.79 a tonne, and financial services from $5.21 to $9.49. Professional services shows how far mix can move the price: its implied price rose from about $5 to $27 a tonne as it shifted away from REDD+ credits towards ARR, IFM, and other project types including biochar, wetland restoration, and soil carbon. Its estimated spend grew almost five times while the volume the sector retired fell by about a tenth.
* Estimated using a single reference price for each project type across all years, calculated from volume-weighted prices from transactions and offers in the Abatable platform.
Estimated spend on retired credits from named sector buyers (left) and the implied average price paid per tonne (right), by year. Each project type is priced at one weighted reference price across all years from transactions and offers in the Abatable platform, so price changes are conservative and reflect project mix only.
Source: Abatable market data and Abatable price estimates. Estimates, not observed transaction values.
Interrogate purchasing trends by individual buyers, down to the specific projects each one bought. Explore prices from real market transactions by project type and vintage. Book a demo to explore the Abatable platform.
The Out in the market section of this report provides a historical view of how companies have used the VCM over the last seven years. Data from within Abatable's own RFPs provides further, differentiated insights into what buyers are looking at when they go to market today. In this section, we explore proprietary data from over 40 RFPs run on the Abatable platform since August 2024, in which buyers invited suppliers to submit priced offers against their briefs. We provide colour on what the briefs asked for, and what came back.
What a buyer receives through an RFP depends on what it asks for. In Graphic 06 we plot the average credit offer mix received through a selection of RFPs run through the Abatable platform per sector, against what that sector retired in 2025. This shows whether buyers follow their sector's norm when they reach out to the market, or are moving away from it. The project mix provides insight into how sectors are looking to the future and how their retirement mix might continue to change.
Professional services follows existing retirements most closely: IFM and ARR make up nearly half of the sector's offers, compared to around two-thirds of what it retired in 2025.
Other sectors' offered project mixes are moving away from their norms. Across all RFPs, REDD+ and renewable energy make up 9% of offers, against 53% of named buyers' 2025 retirements, while IFM and ARR make up 43%, against 13%. Technology sector RFPs brought back almost seven times the sector's share of ARR retirements. Unsurprisingly, aviation buyers are searching for CORSIA-eligible supply, so 71% of their offers are cookstoves projects, which make up a significant proportion of eligible projects, against 13% of the sector's retirements.
For each buyer sector, the bar shows the average share of priced offers by project type received through Abatable RFPs for buyers in that sector, and the thin line below it shows the mix that named buyers in that sector retired in 2025. Overlap is the share of the two mixes that match, from 0% for nothing in common to 100% for identical. Hover for detail.
Source: Abatable procurement platform, over 40 buyer RFPs with priced offers, and Abatable market data, retirements by named buyers. Unclassified offers are excluded. Other sectors are compared with all named sector buyers.
Newer vintages tend to cost more, so the vintage window makes a big difference in a brief. In our selection of RFPs, ARR offers rise from a median of $15 per tonne for 2019 and earlier vintages to $78 for 2030 and later, and IFM from $11 to $26.
Graphic 07 shows the median offer price across over 40 RFPs for different project types and vintages. The prices, plotted on a logarithmic scale, rise over time and indicate how different project types are priced and offered across different years.
Median offer price, US$ per tCO₂e on a logarithmic scale, by vintage offered. Each line is a project type, and a point needs at least five offers from at least two RFPs to be included. Vintages from 2026 to 2029 are grouped due to data point availability. Select a project type to highlight it, or hover a point for detail.
Source: Abatable procurement platform. US$ offers only.
A focused brief narrows what suppliers can offer from the outset. It might name a project type or group of types, such as nature-based or removals; eligibility for a scheme such as CORSIA; a minimum third-party quality rating; or a multi-year offtake. Around two in five of the RFPs were focused in this way, and the rest were open to any project type.
This approach creates better results. Across Abatable's RFPs, having a more focused brief resulted in more targeted offers from suppliers. As Graphic 08 indicates, focused briefs resulted in a tighter set of project types and prices to compare, and led to faster, more cost-effective procurement processes.
Offers also arrive quickly through Abatable's RFP platform. The median RFP had its first offer within three days, half its offers within a week, and 90% within about ten days. By day 14, 69% of RFPs had 90% of their offers in.
Figures are medians across focused and open RFPs. A focused brief names a project type, compliance scheme, quality rating, or contract structure; an open brief invites any project type. The gap between high and low offer prices shows how many times the high end costs compared with the low end, excluding the most extreme tenth of offers at each end.
Source: Abatable procurement platform.
Drawing on this report's insights from over 40 buyer RFPs, nearly 4,000 priced carbon credit offers, and seven years of retirement data from more than 2,500 named buyers across 18 sectors, we've distilled five actionable insights for your next carbon credit procurement:
Decide your split between established supply and the types your peers are moving into, plus future requirements under net-zero standards like SBTi's. Consider how to build a resilient portfolio for 2030 and 2050.
Start one to two quarters before your retirement date, or even earlier, and contract for delivery dates. Consider adopting an 'always-on' approach to procurement to make the most of supply opportunities in a market that's retiring more often.
Model your cost from your target mix determined in step 01, rather than a market average.
Focused briefs draw more targeted offers from a greater number of relevant suppliers, and bring back projects that are a better fit for your overall aims.
Invite widely and set a clear deadline to get a comparable, priced set within weeks. That set becomes a benchmark for future RFPs and provides a clearer view of the wider market, helping you sharpen your ideal credit profile and brief internal stakeholders with confidence. Running the procurement openly will help you uncover supply that may not have been on your radar.
Abatable helps corporate buyers design and run effective carbon credit procurements, from strategy to contracting.
Early retirement data for 2026 shows a continuation of the trends seen in the last seven years. Named buyers continue to retire more often and in smaller amounts, and the share of retirements from CCP-approved methodologies continues to grow – 12% of retired volume in the year to September was from CCP-approved methodologies, compared to 8.6% for the same period in 2025. Meanwhile, the project-type mix is splitting: energy and utilities buyers are leaning further into REDD+, while buyers in most other sectors keep adding IFM and other newer project types.
Look out for our full 2026 analysis and what it means for the market next year.
Part one covers retirements by named buyers: organisations identified in the retirement record, 2019 to 2025. The figures and sector charts throughout this report cover the 93mn tonnes of that volume retired by buyers assigned to one of 18 sectors, with each buyer counted in one sector. Around 7,000 named buyers in 2025 are not included in our sector analysis – these are mostly smaller, private, and regional organisations making smaller retirements, whose industry is often not recorded publicly. Together they retired about 12mn tonnes. In 2025, all named buyers accounted for 106mn of the 172mn tonnes retired. Retirements made anonymously or by brokers without a named end buyer made up the rest of the tonnes retired. CCP-approved share counts credits flagged as CCP-approved, or from projects with CCP-approved retirements, as recorded in September 2026, and will move in the future as the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market approves further methodologies. Spend and implied price in this report are estimates, using one volume-weighted reference price per project type across all years.
Part two uses a sample of over 40 buyer RFPs run on the Abatable platform between August 2024 and September 2026. Buyer identities are not shown. Prices are US$ offers only. In Graphic 08, a focused brief names a project type, standard, quality rating, or use such as CORSIA; around two in five RFPs had a focused brief.
This communication is provided for information purposes only, is subject to change without notice and is not binding. Any prices or quotations in the information provided are indicative only, are subject to change without notice and may not be used or relied on for any purpose, including valuation purposes. This communication is not a solicitation to buy or sell any product, or to engage in, or refrain from engaging in, any transaction. Nor does it constitute investment research, a research report or a personal or other recommendation. Nothing in the information provided should be construed as legal, financial, accounting, tax or other advice.
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