Most businesses start exploring carbon credits after they have measured a footprint and found emissions they cannot remove this year. Others have a climate budget, a customer commitment or a board instruction and need to understand what the money can credibly fund. Some set that budget with an internal carbon price on their own emissions.
Carbon credits give that money a quantified destination. One issued credit represents one tonne of carbon dioxide equivalent removed, reduced or avoided by a named project under a defined methodology.
The complication is that the tonne is only the accounting unit, not the product. An issued agroforestry removal available for retirement now is not the same thing as a future removal that has yet to be delivered, or a credit from protecting a forest against expected loss. All three may appear in a carbon-credit proposal. The project, timing, evidence and claim are different.
C Level sells carbon credits, so I want to state the limit plainly. They do not erase your Scope 1, 2 or 3 footprint. Your business still has to avoid and reduce emissions inside its own operations and value chain. Credits let you finance additional climate action while that work continues.
For the wider picture of what that money funds, see our guide to carbon offsetting for business.
At C Level, we direct that finance into community-led regeneration: restoring forests, mangroves, soils and livelihoods, with local people paid to carry the work for years rather than appearing in a brochure as beneficiaries.
A common buyer situation looks like this. The annual report is due in six weeks. Your footprint is 1,000 tonnes, the board has authorised funding and a supplier presents three projects with enough volume. The prices and project stories look clear. If the annual report is what set that deadline, the energy and emissions figures inside it follow their own rules. I have set out what a UK company has to disclose under SECR, including why buying a credit does not change the number that gets published.
I would not begin by choosing the one with the best photographs. I would put the supplier deck aside and compare the registry record, the applicable methodology and the latest monitoring and verification documents. I want to know which tonnes are removals, which are avoided emissions, whether the units are already issued and verified, and what claim the annual report is trying to make. Until those points line up, you do not yet have three comparable options.
This guide takes those decisions in the order you will meet them: where carbon credits fit, what your business is buying, how C Level chooses projects, what evidence you should receive and how to describe the funding accurately.
Already have a footprint or budget? Explore C Level’s carbon projects. Need to work out what fits? Talk to us about project selection.
Where carbon credits fit in a business climate plan
Carbon credits sit after measurement and alongside reduction. You do not have to wait until every difficult emission has disappeared before funding work elsewhere.
In practice, a company may use credits to take responsibility for residual emissions in the current year, provide climate finance beyond its value chain or build long-term support around a particular project and landscape. None of those actions changes the gross emissions in its greenhouse-gas inventory.
The working sequence is:
- Measure the emissions inside your organisational and reporting boundary.
- Reduce the emissions you can influence, with clear targets and a practical plan.
- Fund credible climate action beyond your value chain while work on the remaining emissions continues.
- Report the two honestly: your gross footprint and the additional climate contribution.
The UK Government’s principles for voluntary carbon and nature markets use the same basic logic. Credits should sit alongside ambitious action within the value chain, not replace it. The principles also expect businesses to use high-integrity credits, disclose how they use them and make accurate claims.
I do not see this as a choice between cutting emissions and funding nature. A business can keep working on energy, travel, products and suppliers while financing removals now. Those are separate budgets and separate claims, but the work can proceed at the same time.
What carbon credits change in your accounts and claims
| Aspect | What it can do | What it cannot do |
|---|---|---|
| Finance | Fund a measured removal, reduction or avoided emission outside your value chain | Replace action to cut emissions inside your value chain |
| Accounting | Be reported separately as a climate contribution | Be deducted from your gross Scope 1, 2 or 3 inventory |
| Targets | Support beyond value chain mitigation and additional climate finance | Count as progress towards SBTi near-term or long-term targets |
| Claims | Support a specific, evidenced statement about what you funded | Automatically make your business, product or service carbon neutral |
This separation is not a technical nicety. It is what stops a climate contribution becoming a misleading accounting claim. The same test applies to the badges that Shopify sustainability apps put on online shops.
The GHG Protocol keeps a company’s greenhouse-gas inventory distinct from project-based reductions and credits. The Science Based Targets initiative also states that carbon credits do not count as reductions towards near-term or long-term science-based targets. Its Corporate Net-Zero Standard version 1.3.1, the version used for 2026 submissions, recommends beyond value chain mitigation as additional action while companies reduce emissions across their own operations and value chains. Version 2.0 was published in June 2026 and opens for submissions in 2027. It treats high-integrity credits as a complement to those reductions, not a substitute for them. Our guide to SBTi carbon credits sets out what the new Standard allows and what it does not.
What your business is actually buying
Once you understand where credits sit in the plan, the next decision is which tonnes are fit for the job.
The project sits underneath the unit: the methodology and baseline, what was measured, who validated and verified it, when the outcome occurred, whether the units are issued, where they sit on the registry, how reversal risk is handled and who must keep the work going. Those details determine what happened and what your business can reasonably say about it.
For a nature-based project, I would also ask who controls the land, how local people participate in decisions and where the money goes. A technically plausible carbon calculation is not enough if the project treats the community as scenery.
C Level works with community-led projects certified under the Plan Vivo Standard. Plan Vivo carbon credits carry a requirement that at least 60% of the income from the sale of certificates goes back to participating communities. That is not a charitable add-on to the carbon. It is part of how the project survives.
Why we lead with removals and regeneration
Most corporate buyers now want carbon removals: projects that take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and store it. C Level’s portfolio includes agroforestry, woodland restoration, mangrove restoration and soil-carbon work.
Nature-based storage is not geological permanence. Trees can burn, mangroves can be damaged and soil carbon can be lost. Good standards manage those risks through long project periods, monitoring, conservative accounting, buffers and rules for reversals. They do not make biological risk vanish.
Some projects create avoided emissions by protecting carbon that would otherwise be released, for example by preventing deforestation. We still work with exceptional protection projects where the evidence and community model justify it. We do not blur an avoided emission into a removal.
For a buyer, the distinction affects project choice, price, durability and the claim you can reasonably make. What a business should actually budget is a separate question, and I have set out carbon credit prices in 2026 across UK woodland, peatland and the global voluntary market. Every carbon project page states which of the three that project produces.
How C Level selects carbon projects for businesses
We are not a general marketplace carrying hundreds of interchangeable credits.
C Level was founded in 2000 and has spent more than twenty-five years working with nature-based carbon projects and business buyers. We work primarily through Plan Vivo because it was designed for community-led land projects rather than retrofitted around them. Several of the organisations and project teams in our portfolio are people we have known and worked with for years.
That experience changes the questions we ask.
We check the carbon outcome and methodology, but we also look at land tenure, community governance, benefit sharing, monitoring history, biodiversity safeguards and the project’s ability to keep operating after the first sale. Our guide to high-integrity carbon credits sets out the checks in full.
The current portfolio contains eleven community-led projects. They include CommuniTree in Nicaragua, where smallholder agroforestry restores degraded land; Mikoko Pamoja in Kenya, the world’s first community-led blue-carbon project; Scolel’te in Mexico, the longest-running Plan Vivo project; and Khasi Hills in India, where Indigenous communities protect and restore forest.
The project pages show what each project does and which projects are currently available to fund. Availability, vintage, unit status and price can change, so those details belong in the written proposal for the actual purchase rather than in a generic promise on this page.
What evidence should your business receive?
A glossy certificate is not the underlying proof.
Before committing, your business should know:
- the named project and project country;
- whether the carbon outcome is a removal, reduction or avoided emission;
- the standard and applicable version;
- whether the units are forecast, pending, issued and verified, or already retired;
- the credit vintage and volume;
- the price and what it includes;
- when retirement will happen, where relevant;
- what registry record, serial numbers and retirement evidence you will receive;
- the principal project documents and latest available monitoring or verification evidence;
- what public claim the purchase is intended to support.
We put those details into the proposal for the specific project and units. If a tonne has not yet been issued and independently verified, we do not describe it as a verified credit.
Carbon credits, retirement and business claims
Buying, issuing and retiring are different events.
An issued credit exists as a tradable unit on a registry. Retirement permanently takes that unit out of circulation so it cannot be sold or used again. A supplier’s own certificate may be a useful summary, but the registry record and serial numbers are stronger evidence.
Not every form of project funding produces a retired credit immediately. Your contract and proposal should state what is being funded, whether the relevant units already exist and what evidence will follow.
Be equally precise in public communications. “We funded 1,000 tonnes of verified carbon removals from [project]” is a different claim from “our business is carbon neutral”. The second is broader and may imply far more about the company’s footprint, reduction plan, boundary and use of credits.
The UK’s Green Claims Code and Advertising Standards Authority guidance require environmental claims to be clear, accurate and supported by evidence. Name the action you actually took. It is usually the stronger story anyway. In the EU, offset-based carbon neutral product claims are now banned outright; our guide to the EU green claims rules explains what changed.
What the C Level buying process looks like
Start with the footprint or budget
Some companies come to us with a verified carbon footprint and a defined volume. Others have a contribution budget, a climate-finance commitment or a particular region or project type in mind.
If the footprint itself is uncertain, use our business carbon footprint calculator or talk to our carbon footprint consultancy team before choosing a volume.
Decide what the funding needs to achieve
The right shortlist depends on whether you prioritise removals, community ownership, biodiversity, geography, a particular Sustainable Development Goal, a multi-year relationship or a specific reporting framework.
There is no honest “best carbon credit” detached from the buyer’s purpose. Our guide on how to buy carbon credits sets out the full sequence, from the brief to the retirement record.
Review a project shortlist
We identify projects that fit the brief and show the carbon outcome, standard, unit status, evidence and commercial terms. For larger or multi-year commitments, this may include direct discussion with the project organisation.
Agree the evidence and communication before purchase
The project, volume, price, unit status, retirement route and intended claim should be clear before money changes hands. That is considerably easier than trying to repair the wording after a sustainability report or campaign has been approved.
Carbon credits for a small business
A smaller business does not need an enterprise procurement exercise to take credible action.
You still need a sensible emissions estimate, a project you can identify and honest language about what the funding did. The amount can be modest. The evidence should not be.
Our online calculators are designed for straightforward footprints and individual journeys. For larger volumes, annual programmes or businesses that need project due diligence and reporting support, speak to the project-selection team.
Work with C Level
We help businesses fund community-led nature regeneration through projects we know, under a standard we have worked with for decades.
You will see the project, the carbon outcome, the people doing the work and the evidence behind the units. You can then make a contribution claim that says what happened without pretending your own emissions disappeared.
Explore our carbon projects, or book a 20-minute carbon programme call.
Sources and evidence
All sources checked 22 August 2026.
- UK Government, principles for voluntary carbon and nature market integrity. Source.
- GHG Protocol, Corporate Standard and the Corporate Value Chain (Scope 3) Standard. Source and source.
- SBTi Corporate Net-Zero Standard, version 1.3.1 and version 2.0. Source and source.
- SBTi, beyond value chain mitigation. Source.
- Voluntary Carbon Markets Integrity Initiative, Claims Code of Practice. Source.
- Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market, Core Carbon Principles. Source.
- Plan Vivo Foundation, PV Climate and the community revenue-sharing requirement. Source.
- Competition and Markets Authority, Green Claims Code. Source.
- Advertising Standards Authority, guidance on carbon offsetting and carbon-neutral claims. Source.