Voluntary Carbon Market Insights & FAQs
Everything you’ve ever wanted to know about the voluntary carbon market – and more!
Carbon Corporate Buyers
Who are the carbon credit buyers?
Buyers are companies that have been active in the voluntary carbon market (VCM) by transacting carbon credits. They can also be understood as the beneficiary of a transaction, whether this be ownership of the credits or compensation for their emissions.
What is AlliedOffsets buyer supplementary data?
Buyer supplementary data provides profile information about the buyer, including:
- Company
- Global headquarter location
- Sector
And where applicable:
- ISIN
- Parent company
- FTSE100
- Internal carbon price
Where is our supplementary data sourced from?
ISIN is sourced from Borse Frankfurt/ LSEG/ DivvyDiary/ Market Screener. As large companies will often have different types of securities available, the ISIN chosen is normally attached to equity (as opposed to bond) listed on a major exchange based in the same country that the company is headquartered in.
Headquarter location sourced through a combination of automated websearch and manual retrieval.
Sector is selected from an in-house list of options, whilst being compared against what both Companies Market Cap and Renoster have tagged. Some divergence is possible here; for example, we might call something industrial instead of manufacturing, and in a case where an organisation is especially large and performs a diverse range of activities which fall into multiple sectors, they’re likely to be categorised as “other”.
How do VCM buyers vary from brokers?
The AlliedOffsets way of matching actors involved in a transaction to specific titles considers brokers in a looser way which means that they can be better understood as intermediaries. Brokers are companies that play a role in the transaction on behalf of the ultimate beneficiary of the carbon credit; this is usually some variation on the broker sourcing the credits, purchasing the credits, or closing the transaction and taking the credits off-market using their relevant registry account. However, brokers can also retire credits on their own behalf, in which case they are the beneficiary.
For example, a retirement note may read “Assigned by Forest Carbon Ltd.Credits purchased by Gray Dawes Legacy Project on behalf of its contracted clients MPM Products.” in this case, the developer is known to be Forest Carbon, the broker is Gary Dawes Travel (the company behind the legacy project), and the buyer/ beneficiary is MPM Products.
One exception to this is in the case of credits retired for the purpose of complying with the Colombian tax (see link below), where the retirement of credits primarily benefits the account holder in reducing their tax obligation. The company named in the retirement details refers to the a relationship that the offset emissions may be associated with.
What emission data does AlliedOffsets track?
Emissions data is retrieved directly from the sustainability, non-financial disclosures, and annual reports of companies in the AlliedOffsets buyer database, prioritised by volume of VCM retirements. This is currently available for over 1,000 companies.
This means that the dataset is smaller in sectors that are less active in the VCM, such as legal companies and education. Reports must also be available online, in English. Most figures are drawn from the years 2020 to 2023, when reporting quality is high.
How comprehensive is AlliedOffsets’ carbon credit transaction data?
AlliedOffsets has access to transactions data from 30 global registries covering all project types, updated on a daily basis. Matching of buyers and brokers against transactions takes place three times a week, all year round. Currently, a market-leading rate of 90% of non anonymous retirements have been matched to a buyer.
