Sustainability teams have gotten good at the hard parts of this job — measuring emissions, setting targets, and building a climate strategy that holds up. Procurement is often the next frontier: how you secure the credits you'll need to meet those targets, and whether the ones you'll be willing to stand behind will still be available when you go looking for them.
For most companies, buying carbon credits is still treated as a purchase — something you do when the budget allows, in the year you need to report against a goal. For a company with a real 2030 commitment, that framing quietly creates a problem. You already know something concrete: roughly how many tons you'll need to close the gap between your achievable internal reductions and your target. What you don't know is how much those credits will cost or whether the quality you want will still be available on the market. That's nota purchase waiting to happen. It's a cost you can already see coming — and one many companies haven't yet built into their procurement strategy.
The real risk is access, not just price
The usual argument for acting early is that prices will rise. They might. But a price forecast is a shaky basis for a decision. The stronger reason to act has less to do with predicting the market and more to do with what you'll actually be able to buy when the time comes.
Because the bigger risk isn't only price — it's access. The supply of credits that a credible company will be willing to put its name behind is narrowing, and several trends are pushing in the same direction. Integrity initiatives are tightening the definition of a high-quality credit, shrinking the pool many buyers consider acceptable. Demand is concentrating around a smaller set of project types and methodologies — the ones that hold up to scrutiny. And those projects take years to develop before they issue a single credit.
Put it together and the constraint you hit toward the end of the decade may not be your budget. It may be that the credits meeting your bar are already spoken for. Securing supply early isn't only about beating the market on price. It's about making sure the quality you'll want to report against still exists.
Borrow a page from procurement
This is where it helps to think in terms of supply chain and procurement - the way the rest of your business already thinks about any thingit depends on.
Companies don't wait and hope when it comes to fuel, feedstock, or currency. They plan for known future needs and lock in a portion of their exposure in advance. Carbon can work the same way — and framing it in those terms tends to land better with the finance and procurement colleagues whose input you may need.
The tools become familiar once you see them that way. A spot purchase covers today's needs: buy, pay, take delivery. A forward offtake lets you commit now for delivery over future years, though it usually carries delivery risk — if a project under-delivers, you're back in the market to cover the shortfall. And a newer set of financing structures lets you do something the others can't: secure the credits and take delivery now, while spreading the cost over time.
None of these is the right answer on its own. The point is that you have a menu, and the companies getting ahead are using it deliberately— often securing a portion of what they'll need rather than going all-or-nothing.
Introducing, CarbonBridge
CarbonBridge is our version of the latter approach, and the clearest example of where we think the market is heading.
It lets a buyer lock in price today, take immediate delivery of the credits — eliminating the delivery risk that comes with a forward contract — and defer payment over a defined term. In plain terms, it's a financing structure: it carries a cost, and it's built for larger, creditworthy buyers, with a risk review before anything is finalized. It won't fit every organization, and it isn't meant to.
What it does do is solve the problem we hear most often: “I know we'll need these credits, I want to act, but the budget isn't there this year.” CarbonBridge separates the decision to secure supply from the timing of the cash, so a 2030 obligation doesn't have to wait on a 2026 budget cycle —and you lock in the quality you want before it gets harder to find.
The takeaway
For sustainability teams, procurement strategy is becoming as important as the target itself. The credits you'll need are a known future need, and known needs get planned for — not left to whatever the market happens to offer up at the last minute. The companies that treat it that way will have high-quality supply available at a known cost by the time their deadline arrives. Those who keep treating it as a year-end purchase may find themselves buying less of what they want later, for more.
Talk through your options
Every company's carbon strategy is different. Some are well served by spot purchases. Others benefit from long-term offtake agreements, or from financing structures that bring price and delivery certainty to future supply. Our role is to help you weigh those trade-offs and build a procurement approach that fits your commitments, budget, and corporate risk profile.
We do this with one of the most diversified, high-integrity portfolios of reductions and removals in the market, proprietary tools such as our Epoch dynamic baseline evaluation platform, and decades of experience in developing high-integrity credits. For qualified buyers, our CarbonBridge program can secure supply today while deferring payment over time.
If you haven’t yet procured credits you know you’ll need in the next few years, let's talk it through.