Anew Climate Expands European Forest Carbon Portfolio Through Ten-Year Agreement with Sweden's EKEN

Anew Climate Expands European Forest Carbon Portfolio Through Ten-Year Agreement with Sweden's EKEN

Partnership brings Swedish improved forest management credits, developed under Verra's VM0045, to Anew's corporate buyers.

Anew Climate (Anew), one of the world’s largest developers and marketers of carbon credits, announced a ten-year agreement with EKEN Financing Value Added Forestry (EKEN) to bring Swedish improved forest management (IFM) credits to corporate buyers worldwide. The agreement extends Anew's European forest carbon portfolio, which it maintains alongside millions of acres of managed forestland across North America.

Under the collaboration, Anew will serve as the exclusive commercialization partner for credits generated from projects developed by EKEN, handling purchaser engagements, structuring, and portfolio integration for corporate buyers in Europe and internationally.

EKEN is preparing the project for development under VM0045, Verra's methodology for improved forest management using dynamic matched baselines from national forest inventories. While many conventional forest carbon baselines rest on a projection of what a landowner would hypothetically have done in the absence of a carbon project, VM0045 constructs baselines using statistically matched forests observed through national forest inventory data, allowing project outcomes to be evaluated against the measured performance of comparable forests. In August 2025, the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market approved VM0045 v1.2 as meeting its Core Carbon Principles, making v1.2 one of the first two improved forest management methodologies to earn the designation.

Sweden is particularly well equipped to support that approach. The Swedish National Forest Inventory has monitored the country's forests since 1923 through a nationwide annual sample inventory, providing the long-running observed forest data the methodology relies on.

"Corporate buyers are not short of forest carbon options. What they often lack is forest carbon they can defend with up-to-date real-world data. Additionality is the hardest question buyers face. Dynamic baselines address this by replacing static assumptions with the measured performance of comparable forests. Sweden's century-long forest inventory provides exactly the kind of data this methodology requires. Adding dynamically derived Swedish IFM supply, alongside our extensive North American portfolio, gives buyers meaningful geographic diversification without lowering the bar on quality," said Joshua Strauss, President of Environmental Products at Anew Climate.

EKEN combines Swedish forestry expertise, climate science and climate finance to develop forest carbon projects that pay landowners for the additional carbon stored when harvest is deferred, creating a revenue stream that sits alongside, rather than in place of, traditional timber income.  

"Verified carbon credits give Swedish forest owners something they have never had: a way to be paid for the carbon a forest holds, not only for the timber it yields. Together with Anew Climate, we are opening an international market for that. Our long-term aim is a Swedish forest economy where a greater share of what the forest produces ends up in long-lived, value-added products," said Erik Ottosson, founder and CEO of EKEN.

The project is expected to generate between 30,000 and 65,000 credits from currently enrolled forestland between 2027 and 2031, subject to registration and verification, with first issuance expected in the fourth quarter of 2027. Volumes are expected to grow as additional landowners enroll.