by Dr. Spencer Meyer, Chief Ratings Officer, BeZero Carbon
The keen-eyed carbon market enthusiasts amongst us will have noticed a recent push from large corporates away from avoided carbon emissions credits towards carbon removal credits to meet their climate targets. But this debate is wasting precious time — the urgency of the climate crisis demands an all-of-the-above solution.
As far as carbon pollution goes, carbon atoms in the atmosphere are fungible, but carbon credits for mitigating that pollution are not. It’s the underlying quality, or conversely risk, of a carbon project to deliver climate benefits that matters; not whether it avoided new emissions from entering the atmosphere, or if it removed carbon that was previously emitted.
Carbon removal technologies, both nature and industrial versions, are a nascent but high-potential sector — there is no doubt it requires an immense level of capital to scale and remove carbon from the atmosphere at the rate required. As large multinationals flood the market by the dozen to invest in the carbon removal sector brimming with potential, they shouldn’t neglect the opportunity to take action that is available today at scale.
The climate is in crisis and to meet global climate targets we cannot afford to abandon emissions avoidance efforts. Some buyers are renouncing avoidance-based carbon credits altogether. For others the debate between avoidance and removal rages on, slowing much-needed action. And as long as corporates and governments — now pivoting to carbon markets since Article 6 was operationalised at COP29 — remain locked in a theoretical debate about which is more effective, climate action is stalled.
It’s clear where concerns around the avoidance sector stem from, and buyers are right to be skeptical. Carbon markets have faced a turbulent couple of years, drawing scrutiny from the media on first-generation carbon projects. At first glance, the credits that have faced the harshest criticisms in the court of public opinion are generated by emissions avoidance projects.
For new investors afraid of reputational risk, carbon removals may at first seem much easier to get on board with. Only last year BeZero Carbon awarded its highest-ever rating of ‘AAA’ (denoting the highest likelihood of avoiding or removing a tonne of CO₂) to a direct air capture with carbon storage (DACCS) project which removes carbon from the atmosphere. This signals an effectiveness in some removals that may resonate with a market of buyers anxious about the quality of carbon credits.
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But let’s take a closer look at the numbers: as of February 2025, at BeZero Carbon we have rated 487 projects in total. Of those, 391 are categorised as avoidance, spanning sectors like avoided deforestation, renewable energy, and waste management. By contrast, just 69 are removal-only, and a further 26 are classed as a hybrid.
What critics of avoidance projects miss is that these projects have been earlier to market and are easier to scale than removal technologies, with fewer financial and technological barriers to implementation. That means the sheer number of avoidance projects available and the number of credits they generate entirely eclipses the number of removal ones. Indeed, the spectrum of quality in the removal sector is yet to reveal itself.
When it comes to credits BeZero Carbon rated ‘BBB’ or above (at the higher end of our ratings scale), there is one hundred times the number of avoidance credits in the market compared to removal ones. In other words, even though newer carbon removal projects receive on average higher ratings than avoidance projects, there remain 100 times more highly-rated, low-risk avoidance projects selling credits which allow businesses to deliver genuine climate action right now.
The real question we should be asking isn’t about which broad sector or methodology is better. We should question which individual projects deliver real and measurable carbon benefits today. In reframing our approach to carbon credit purchasing, we discover that many low-risk avoidance projects have earned an ‘AA’ rating, which shows a very high likelihood of achieving climate claims. Such a project-level, risk-based approach helps corporates invest in the best of what’s available today while infusing the market with capital to support the future supply of removal credits.
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It’s scientifically disingenuous to claim there are meaningful distinctions that make one sector inherently superior to the other in terms of climate return on investment. In my line of work as a scientist and as the Chief Ratings Officer for a carbon ratings agency, what matters to the climate is how effective a carbon project is — whether it’s an avoidance or removal project. The risk of any given project not delivering on its climate claims is the most significant, and arguably the only, measure that matters to buyers.
That’s why our approach at BeZero Carbon has always been to conduct rigorous, project-level analysis, rather than assuming systemic differences between avoidance and removal. In our ratings process, we assess risks unique to both approaches.
If we dig into individual risk factors, we see that risks are spread across both removal and avoidance projects. On the one hand, our analysis reveals the two sectors have similar risk profiles for over-crediting. For instance, 32% of avoidance projects have significant over-crediting risk while 36% of removal projects have significant risk. Meanwhile, 44% of avoidance-categorised projects have ‘little risk’ of leakage, whereas 54% of removal ones pose leakage risk.
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I like to sail. If my boat sprung a leak, bailing with a bucket would buy me some time; but it’s plugging the hole to keep more water from coming in the boat that will save my life. The climate is the same — if we don’t reduce and avoid emissions today, the problem tomorrow will be too overwhelming for removals alone to solve.
Carbon markets, and the planet, do not have the luxury of waiting for this debate to conclude. We need solutions that already work today. Project-level analysis is critical to channelling investment towards the projects with the greatest likelihood to meet climate targets, be they avoidance or removal. As climate professionals, we should be focused on giving market actors the tools they need to identify the least risky, most impactful projects. Only then can we unlock the investment required for effective climate action.
