Amazon announced the launch of a new service, providing access to high-quality carbon credit investments to companies in its value chain with net zero climate targets.

According to Amazon, the new service aims to utilize its scale and resources to help companies to start investing and securing high-quality carbon credits, addressing issues adding complexity to the market, such as a lack of transparency and quality. Amazon outlined its approach to carbon credit quality, which includes working with third-party experts to monitor, measure, and ensure the validity and integrity of projects, and utilizing a “first principles approach” to identify or develop rigorous impact evaluation methodologies, rather than default to current standards, and to continually revisit the science as technologies and new advancements are made.

Amazon’s carbon credit investments currently focus on supporting three key priorities, including deforestation, restoring forests, and advancing technological carbon removal.

The new service is being launched as an expansion of Amazon’s Sustainability Exchange resource hub, launched last year as a platform to offer companies – particularly those in Amazon’s supply chain – with free access to sustainability tools and resources used by Amazon to decarbonize its operations, to help them to address their own climate footprints.

Amazon said that it remains committed to reducing and eliminating emissions across its global business, while also investing in initiatives that have impact outside of its operations to help scale carbon removal and channel private sector funding to projects that will help companies achieve their sustainability goals. The company said that in order to be eligible for the new service, companies will be required to have set net zero targets covering Scopes 1, 2 and 3 emissions, to measure and publicly report their carbon footprint on a regular basis, and to commit to implementing decarbonization strategies in line with the latest climate science.

The service will be available to Amazon suppliers and enterprise customers, and to signatories to The Climate Pledge.

Kara Hurst, Chief Sustainability Officer at Amazon, said:

“The voluntary carbon market has been challenged with issues of transparency, credibility, and the availability of high-quality carbon credits, which has led to skepticism about nature and technological carbon removal as an effective tool to combat climate change. However, the science is clear: We must halt and reverse deforestation and restore millions of miles of forests to slow the worst effects of climate change. We’re using our size and high vetting standards to help promote additional investments in nature, and we are excited to share this new opportunity with companies who are also committed to the difficult work of decarbonizing their operations.”