As Europe’s major oil and gas firms scaled back investments in renewables, UK-based Shell led the global voluntary carbon market with the most carbon credits retired in 2024, according to carbon market data providers.
Shell, other multinational energy firms, technology, and fashion giants have been increasingly leaning on carbon credits as one way to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and meet their net-zero corporate goals.
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Companies use the so-called carbon credits to remove, reduce, or save a ton of carbon dioxide (CO2). This is easier than investing in renewable energy solutions, which Shell and BP have scaled back in recent months.
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MSCI Carbon Markets data showed that Shell retired as many as 14.9 million credits last year, the Financial Times reports. Shell’s offsets were twice as many as those of the next energy company on the list, Italy’s Eni.
Shell also led in separate data analysis from Allied Offsets, whose recent report showed that the oil and gas supermajor retired nearly three times more carbon credits than the second-largest player on the voluntary carbon market, Microsoft.
The size of the global carbon credit market remained frozen last year, at around $1.4 billion, MSCI Carbon Markets said earlier this month.
Credit demand, that is credit retirements, was pretty much flat over 2023 while average spot prices fell 20%.
As of the end of 2024, there were more than 6,200 carbon projects registered across the 12 largest international crediting registries, MSCI Carbon Markets said.
A total of 180 million tons of CO2e of these credits were “retired” last year, which means that they were permanently removed from the market, typically because a corporation has voluntarily used them as part of their climate strategy.
MSCI Carbon Markets analysts see some signs of a coming thaw on the market, such as the continuing rise in the number of companies setting ambitious climate commitments and a number of positive policy and market developments.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
