Carbon ratings agency BeZero has published ex ante ratings covering 14 carbon dioxide removal (CDR) projects backed by Microsoft, offering unique insights into how this major buyer assesses carbon credit risk before issuance.
Located across Argentina, India, Peru, and the United States, the included projects work with approaches such as biochar, improved forest management, soil carbon, biochar and agroforestry.
According to BeZero, this collection of ratings of projects backed by Microsoft is one of the most comprehensive published analyses of a single buyer’s CDR portfolio.
Microsoft continues to lead carbon removal buyers charts, surpassing other active purchasers on the market by a vast margin of millions of CDR tonnes.
In the fiscal year of 2025 alone, the tech corporation purchased more than 45 million tonnes of carbon dioxide removal.
Microsoft already published its own Criteria for High-Quality Carbon Dioxide Removal in partnership with Carbon Direct, and the use of independent assessments further fortifies the scrutiny of its internal procurement standards.
The published assessments show ex ante ratings, which evaluate the project before credit issuance rather than based on the performance after credits reach the market.
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BeZero’s comprehensive assessment approach
BeZero’s carbon risk evaluation looks into additionality, carbon accounting and permanence, while its project execution analysis looks at the operational and delivery risks that could impact whether expected credits are issued.
Additionally, some of the reports also include evaluations of the wider environmental and community risks and benefits.
To develop this assessment approach, Microsoft’s Carbon Removal team worked with BeZero’s Beyond Carbon experts, and this offering has since been included in BeZero’s broader portfolio of services.
By covering a range of different nature-based and tech CDR approaches, these evaluations could give investors and buyers a more streamlined framework for assessing opportunities with very different methodologies.
The full reports are available to over 1,000 BeZero Carbon Markets platform users, while approximately 10,000 freemium BeZero subscribers can access headline ratings and project execution risk scores.
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