Fulfilling the Rising Demand for High-Integrity Carbon Credits: Long-Term Offtakes with Meta and Microsoft

As leading companies shrink their operational and supply-chain carbon footprints, they increasingly turn to the voluntary carbon market (VCM), using carbon credits as a key instrument on their path to net-zero.

Rooted in natural-resource management, the long-standing mitigation hierarchy—avoid, reduce, substitute and, for the hardest-to-abate emissions, offset—continues to guide global decarbonisation efforts. As leading companies shrink their operational and supply-chain carbon footprints, they increasingly turn to the voluntary carbon market (VCM), using carbon credits as a key instrument on their path to net-zero to neutralise residual emissions and manage emerging climate-related business risks. Forward-thinking corporates now see carbon credits as more than a compliance hedge: they are a strategic tool to anticipate future regulation, to demonstrate visible climate leadership to stakeholders and to direct capital into nature-positive projects that restore ecosystems, strengthen climate resilience, and create sustainable economic opportunities for local communities.

Regulators and standard setters are reinforcing this evolution. The EU’s proposed Carbon Removal Certification Framework (CRCF) and the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market’s Core Carbon Principles (CCPs) tighten definitions of “high-integrity” units, prompting carbon credit buyers to demand greater quality, permanence and co-benefits. Corporate procurement strategies have matured accordingly, moving from one-off spot purchases to long-term offtake contracts and, increasingly, to direct investment in portfolios that diversify risk and secure lower abatement costs in advance.

Climate Asset Management: A Scaled Natural-Capital Platform

With the purpose of offering such diversified exposure to carbon credits and nature-based assets for corporate and institutional investors, Climate Asset Management (CAM) was established in 2020, as a joint venture of HSBC Asset Management and Pollination, as a dedicated natural capital platform. Currently managing two strategies with over $1 billion investor commitments, CAM illustrates how carbon credits can be integrated within scalable real-asset strategies, as demonstrated by the Natural Capital Fund (NCF), and generated through diversified restoration and conservation projects, as undertaken by the Nature-Based Carbon Fund (NBCF).

Beyond delivering high-quality carbon credits, natural-capital real-asset strategies  can provide attractive cash yields, inflation-linked income, long-term capital appreciation, and defensive features such as low volatility and downside protection, while simultaneously delivering measurable impact outcomes.

Flagship Case Study: Olympic Rainforest, Washington State

NCF joined an investor consortium of mission-aligned partners that was assembled by EFM, a forest management and investment firm, to acquire the 68,000-acre Olympic Rainforest project on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula in late 2024. This investment illustrates our model in action. Located adjacent to Olympic National Park, the project transforms a long-managed industrial timber estate into FSC-certified, climate-smart management forest estate.

The new regime is expected to generate over one million tonnes of additional carbon removals over the next decade through an Improved Forest Management (IFM) approach. Within 15 years, it is projected to nearly double standing timber volumes while enhancing forest health and improving the long-term quality of timber. At the same time, it establishes a 150-mile landscape-scale conservation corridor that protects one of North America’s largest remaining old-growth temperate rainforests. The initiative also advances habitat restoration for six species listed under the U.S. Endangered Species Act, supports wild Pacific salmon recovery, and strengthens overall landscape resilience. In parallel, the initiative deepens partnerships with the Quileute and Hoh tribes on restoration, cultural harvesting, and flood-risk mitigation, while expanding public access to link major trail networks and bolster the regional tourism economy.

Long-Term Offtakes with Meta and Microsoft

To secure the carbon revenue stream, the project’s operating partner, EFM, negotiated a long-term offtake agreement with Meta concurrently with the property acquisition, followed by a second long-term offtake agreement with Microsoft. Together, these contracts lock in price certainty for the bulk of projected carbon credits, mitigate financial risk, and affirm IFM as a credible, long-duration carbon removal pathway—supporting Microsoft’s pledge to be carbon-negative by 2030 and Meta’s commitment to net-zero across its value chain within the same timeframe.

Securing these innovative offtake agreements with Meta and Microsoft underscores both the commercial strength of climate-smart forestry and, as CAM’s Head of Asset Management James Bullen emphasises, how blending timber income, conservation easements, and carbon credits can simultaneously de-risk returns and enhance returns, while advancing NCF’s impact objectives, including carbon, biodiversity, water, and community outcomes.

Scaling Nature-Positive Finance

The Olympic Rainforest project demonstrates how corporates can mobilize capital at scale for high-integrity climate outcomes that complement, rather than substitute, emission-reduction efforts. In this context, initiatives like the Sustainable Markets Initiative (SMI), which recently published a Voluntary Carbon Market Mobilisation Guide outlining key actions for corporate engagement, can further catalyse capital flows into investments that build a climate-resilient, nature-positive, and inclusive economy.

Even though offsets rank last in the mitigation hierarchy, high-quality carbon credits make it possible to finance essential ecosystem restoration today while companies continue to decarbonise for the future. CAM aims to continue structuring the scalable, diversified solutions corporates and institutional investors need to meet net-zero commitments with integrity and ambition.

Connect With Us To Know More

To learn more about how long-term carbon offtake agreements and nature-based investments can support your organisation’s net-zero goals, visit www.climateassetmanagement.com.