UK companies can now buy carbon credits through Amazon

Amazon has opened its carbon credit service to UK companies, marking the first time the programme has been available anywhere outside the United States since it launched there in March 2025.

The service runs through Amazon’s Sustainability Exchange and is aimed at businesses that have already committed to cutting their emissions and want to offset what they cannot eliminate.

To qualify, a UK company must have set a net-zero target for no later than 2050 covering Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions, and must measure and publicly report its greenhouse gas emissions on a regular basis.

Amazon said those conditions are deliberate, intended to ensure credits sit alongside genuine emission cuts rather than replacing them.

The expansion lands as UK firms face tightening regulatory expectations around the country’s 2030 climate targets.

Many want to buy high-quality credits to complement their own efforts, but the voluntary carbon market, worth billions globally, has long been dogged by questions over credibility and whether funded projects deliver the climate benefits they claim.

Kara Hurst, the company’s Chief Sustainability Officer, said the market has struggled with transparency and quality, making it difficult for companies to invest with confidence.

Amazon argues that its scale and technical resources let it vet projects more rigorously, and says only a small fraction of credits on the voluntary market meet its standards.

Several UK organisations are among the first to use the service internationally, including Aether Compliance, BizClik Media, Co-op Live, euNetworks, Moss UK, and Winston Taylor LLP.

Amazon said buyers get access to a portfolio spanning several approaches.

These include credits that fund efforts to reduce deforestation in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana, projects restoring native forests, direct air capture technology that stores carbon underground, and “superpollutant” credits that fund the destruction of old refrigerant gases and cut methane from rice paddies.

The service also offers lower-carbon fuel “insets” – credits tied to renewable alternatives to diesel, including shipping fuels, within a company’s existing supply chain.

Amazon handles the administrative side, managing multi-year purchase agreements, absorbing buyer-side risk, and providing retirement tracking and reporting. Signatories to its Climate Pledge receive discounts on credits.

The company said it has set its own goal of reaching net-zero carbon across global operations by 2040, and launched the Sustainability Exchange in 2024 to share decarbonisation tools and guidance with other businesses.

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