Microsoft to buy 1.5 million carbon credits from Indian project

US tech giant Microsoft, in partnership with UK-based offset seller Climate Impact Partners, has signed a deal to buy 1.5 million carbon removal credits from a 20,000-hectare afforestation project in India over the next 30 years.

The Panna afforestation project, which is financed by environmental commodities investment company Terra Natural Capital and is based in India’s Madhya Pradesh state, anticipates generating three million carbon removal credits.

The 20,000-hectares-span project has already planted 1.2 million mixed native trees. Upon completion, it will include, according to the offset seller, up to 11.6 million trees on farmer-owned and community lands.

“Panna forms an important part of our growing portfolio of carbon removal projects,” says Brian Marrs, Microsoft’s senior director energy markets. “[It is] our first in India and largest in the Asia-Pacific region.”

Co-benefits of the project, which uses Verra’s latest afforestation, reforestation and revegetation methodology, adds Climate Impact Partners, will include farmers benefitting directly from a share of carbon credit sales, sustainable agriculture training programmes, large-scale infrastructure that conserves water and improved biodiversity by focusing planting on native species.

The deal, for which no financial details have yet been announced, “empowers companies like Microsoft,” notes Sheri Hickok, the offset seller’s CEO, “to meet their ambitious climate targets, drive growth in the carbon removal market and bring benefits to communities most impacted by climate change.”