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Finance teams approve energy efficiency projects on payback. Carbon credits call for a different case. Abatable's Climate Strategy Manager Holly Nicholson sets out how sustainability managers can build one that finance can forecast and procurement can tender, and why SBTi's new standard makes it easier to put a number on.
Ask a finance team to fund an internal energy efficiency project and the conversation is usually short. A chiller upgrade pays for itself in four years, and the savings appear on an energy invoice. Ask the same team to fund carbon credits supporting a cookstove project in Malawi, and the first question tends to be about the return.
The two purchases do different work, which is why the comparison rarely helps. Efficiency reduces a cost the company already pays. Credits deliver an outcome the company has already publicly committed to, and the timing of that spend remains open.
The good news? Updates over the past year makes that case considerably easier to put on paper than it once was.
SBTi has attached numbers to ongoing emissions
The Science Based Targets initiative published its Corporate Net-Zero Standard Version 2.0 on 11 June 2026. It takes effect on 1 February 2027 and becomes mandatory for all target submissions from 1 February 2028. Its Ongoing Emissions Responsibility framework gives credit purchases a defined place inside the most widely used corporate target standard for the first time.
The framework sets three voluntary recognition levels. Engaged covers at least 1% of ongoing Scope 1, Scope 2, and Scope 3 emissions. Advanced covers all Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions plus enough Scope 3 to reach 10% of the total. Leadership covers 100%. SBTi points to $20 per tonne of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO₂e) for contribution budgets at the lower levels and $80/tCO₂e at Leadership, which it describes as the lower end of science-based carbon price estimates.
From 2035, companies above roughly €450mn turnover or 1,000 employees must purchase carbon removal credits covering at least 1% of ongoing emissions, rising to 100% by their net-zero year.
SBTi has also costed the entry point. Its November 2025 paper on the framework estimates that reaching the 1% level by 2035 would take around 0.4% of annual profit in emissions-intensive sectors such as chemicals, and roughly 0.1% in lighter sectors such as food and drink.
Participation is a disclosed decision
Under the SBTi’s requirement CNZS-C38, every company validating a target must indicate whether it intends to take part in the recognition programme. SBTi sets out the purpose plainly: 'to encourage participation in the recognition program by making companies' intent publicly visible, creating a clear signal that differentiates participating and non-participating companies to drive engagement'.
The decision therefore becomes visible to anyone reading the register – investors and customers included. That puts it in a different category from an internal budget request, and it is worth presenting to a board as such.
What engaging early buys
SBTi's own case for early engagement rests largely on hedging. Its framework paper argues that companies funding emerging mitigation and removal technologies now reduce their exposure to future cost and regulatory change, and it also cites capital access, supply chain resilience, and social licence. Buyers contracting now secure scarce removal supply ahead of the demand that mandatory requirements will create after 2035, and build the due diligence and contracting capability they will need by then.
Finance teams sometimes raise the concern that credits displace real reduction work. The statistics indicate that companies tend to do both. Ecosystem Marketplace found that buyers were 1.8 times more likely to be cutting their own emissions year on year and 3.4 times more likely to hold an approved science-based target, with the median buyer investing three times more in reductions inside its own value chain.
Abatable’s own carbon pricing data, based on real carbon market transactions, shows that credits that carry the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market’s Core Carbon Principle label are consistently associated with higher prices. Depending on the modelling approach, the price premium observed sits between 8% and 14%.
Supply timelines compound this. High-quality projects take years to develop, validate, and issue credits, and this will be even more the case under new, higher-integrity methodologies, so volumes needed in 2030 can be contracted well in advance. Strategic buyers plan earlier, run multiple procurements across the year, or adopt a continuous sourcing approach. They also use forward, option, or offtake contracts to secure long-term access.
Where that leaves the conversation
Carbon credits do not produce a payback in the same way an energy efficiency or renewable energy project does. But the carbon credit ROI question is now different from what it was a year ago. Under SBTi credit spend now comes with defined volumes, a date in the calendar, and a public position to declare. This gives finance something (and a counterfactual) to forecast, and procurement something to tender.
To see how experienced carbon credit buyers structure this process, our report What leading carbon credit buyers do differently sets out nine lessons we’ve learned from helping sophisticated credit buyers procure 55mn tonnes of high-quality carbon credits.
Read more on carbon credit portfolios under SBTi in our report, How to structure your carbon portfolio under new net-zero standards.
