Amazon Opens Sustainability Exchange to UK Carbon Buyers

Amazon’s Sustainability Exchange has opened to businesses in the United Kingdom, giving eligible UK companies access to a vetted range of carbon credits for the first time.

The programme—launched in the United States in 2025—now offers UK businesses credits covering forest protection, ecosystem restoration, direct air capture carbon removal, methane reduction, and lower-carbon fuel insets linked to supply chains.

Companies must meet specific criteria to qualify. They must hold a net-zero target no later than 2050, report on Scope 1, Scope 2, and Scope 3 emissions, and make those reports publicly available. Amazon says these requirements ensure that carbon credits add to a company’s own reduction work and do not substitute for it.

One feature of the platform is its inclusion of carbon insets alongside standard neutralisation credits. Insets target emissions within a company’s own value chain—for example, lower-carbon fuels used in logistics, or emissions reduction projects linked to agricultural suppliers. Neutralisation credits support projects outside a company’s direct operations. Amazon offers both types to give buyers a broader range of options.

Amazon co-founded The Climate Pledge in 2019 and set a net-zero target for 2040, ten years ahead of the Paris Agreement timeline. More than 550 organisations have since joined the initiative. The company’s latest sustainability report records a carbon intensity reduction of more than 40% since 2019. Amazon was the world’s largest corporate purchaser of renewable energy for the fifth consecutive year in 2024 and had deployed more than 31,000 electric delivery vans globally by the end of that year.

Kara Hurst, Amazon’s chief sustainability officer, said: ‘The voluntary carbon market has struggled with transparency and quality, making it hard for companies to invest with confidence. But the science is clear: we need to protect forests, restore ecosystems, and remove carbon at scale. We’re using our size and technical expertise to make high-quality credits available to ambitious UK companies already doing the hard work of cutting their own emissions and wanting to go further.’

Market forecasts for the verified carbon market remain significant. Ecosystem Marketplace reported approximately $535 million in transaction value in 2024, with activity concentrating in higher-quality projects and carbon removal solutions. The Taskforce on Scaling Voluntary Carbon Markets estimates the market could reach $50 billion by 2030, with McKinsey & Company forecasting that demand may grow more than 15 times over the same period.