Amazon Expands Carbon Credit Service to UK Companies for First Time Outside the United States

Amazon has announced the expansion of its carbon credit service to qualified UK companies through its Sustainability Exchange platform, marking the first time the programme has operated outside the United States since its launch there in March 2025. The service is available to UK-based companies that have set a net-zero carbon emissions target for no later than 2050 covering Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions and that measure and publicly report greenhouse gas emissions on a regular basis, ensuring credits complement meaningful emissions reduction work rather than substituting for it. Initial UK users of the service include Aether Compliance, BizClik Media, Co-op Live, euNetworks, Moss UK and Winston Taylor LLP, with the portfolio offering nature-based carbon neutralisation credits, direct air capture credits, superpollutant abatement credits and lower-carbon fuel inset credits linked to supply chains companies already use.

 

The Voluntary Carbon Market Problem Amazon Is Addressing

 

The voluntary carbon market, worth billions globally, has been persistently challenged by concerns over credibility and whether funded projects truly deliver the climate benefits they claim, creating a significant barrier for companies that want to invest in high-quality credits with confidence. Kara Hurst, Chief Sustainability Officer at Amazon, said the voluntary carbon market has struggled with transparency and quality but that the science is clear that the world needs to protect forests, restore ecosystems and remove carbon at scale. She said Amazon is using its size and technical expertise to make high-quality credits available to ambitious UK companies already doing the hard work of cutting their own emissions and wanting to go further.

Amazon's approach to this quality challenge involves rigorous vetting of every project in the portfolio, with only a small fraction of credits in the voluntary carbon market meeting its quality standards. The service manages the complexity of multi-year purchase agreements on behalf of buyers, takes on buyer-side risk and provides support including retirement tracking and reporting, addressing the operational barriers that have historically made high-quality carbon credit procurement difficult for companies without dedicated sustainability procurement teams. Climate Pledge signatories benefit from exclusive discounts on credits, incentivising membership of Amazon's net-zero by 2040 corporate coalition while directing their carbon credit spending toward the highest-quality available projects.

 

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The Credit Portfolio and Its Climate Coverage

 

The carbon credit portfolio available to UK companies spans multiple climate solution categories designed to address different parts of the emissions challenge. Nature-based deforestation reduction credits fund jurisdictional-scale programmes in Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana that work with local communities to keep forests standing, using jurisdictional approaches that leverage government policy to address drivers of deforestation across entire landscapes rather than individual projects, which are considered more reliable for preventing leakage. Forest restoration credits finance carbon removal by restoring native ecosystems on land that has been stripped of vegetation, while direct air capture credits support technology development and deployment that captures carbon dioxide from ambient air and stores it deep underground.

Superpollutant abatement credits fund the safe destruction of old refrigerant gases and projects that reduce methane released from rice paddies, addressing high-global-warming-potential gases that can deliver significant near-term climate impact relative to their cost. Lower-carbon fuel inset credits are structurally distinct from the other categories, linking to cleaner alternatives within supply chains companies already use, including renewable diesel for shipping, rather than funding external projects. This insetting approach directly reduces the carbon intensity of existing supply chain operations rather than offsetting emissions elsewhere, representing a more operationally integrated form of carbon management that complements both neutralisation credits and direct emissions reduction activities.

 

UK Regulatory Context and Corporate Climate Obligations

 

UK companies face growing regulatory expectations in the context of ambitious national climate targets for 2030 and beyond, including the recently announced 87 percent emissions reduction target by 2040, which creates increasing pressure on large companies to demonstrate credible and comprehensive climate action across their full emissions footprints. The requirement for service users to have set a net-zero target covering Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions by 2050 and to publicly report emissions creates a quality filter that aligns the service with companies that are genuinely engaged in systematic decarbonisation rather than using credits as a primary climate strategy. Sara Tomkins, Sustainability Director at Co-op Live, said Amazon's carbon credit service shares Co-op Live's drive for innovation in sustainability and that high-quality nature-based credits will help deliver further on the venue's net-zero commitment.

The expansion to the UK also reflects Amazon's own Climate Pledge commitment to reach net-zero carbon by 2040, with the Sustainability Exchange designed to help other companies make faster progress through practical resources, playbooks and decarbonisation guidance. By making its carbon credit procurement infrastructure and quality standards available to external companies, Amazon is creating a commercial service from capabilities originally developed for its own sustainability programme, leveraging the scale and negotiating power of one of the world's largest corporate carbon buyers to improve credit quality and price accessibility for smaller companies that could not develop equivalent procurement capability independently.

 

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Outlook for Amazon's Carbon Credit Service Expansion

 

The UK launch represents a significant step in the internationalisation of Amazon's carbon credit service, which began as a US-only programme in March 2025 and has now moved into the world's second-largest voluntary carbon market within 15 months of inception. Whether Amazon can continue expanding the service into European and Asia-Pacific markets will depend on adapting the portfolio of available credit types to different regional regulatory contexts, carbon market standards and corporate sustainability reporting requirements. The rigorous vetting standards that restrict eligibility to a small fraction of available voluntary market credits create both a quality differentiator and a portfolio scaling challenge as the service grows beyond its initial US and UK footprint.

Sustained expansion of the service would establish Amazon as a significant channel for corporate voluntary carbon credit procurement globally and potentially accelerate the quality improvement of the voluntary carbon market by directing large volumes of corporate demand toward projects that meet rigorous additionality, permanence and verification standards. The combination of Amazon's brand credibility, procurement scale, operational management capabilities and Climate Pledge demand network creates a distinctive market position in the voluntary carbon intermediary space that could attract substantial corporate buyer interest as mandatory climate disclosure requirements intensify pressure on companies to demonstrate credible residual emissions management. The next phase of the service's development will be defined by the pace of geographic expansion, portfolio diversification and the depth of engagement from UK corporate users across different sectors and emissions profiles.

 

Source: Amazon Press Center