Microsoft is almost single-handedly responsible for propping up the voluntary carbon credit market. Some estimates claim that the company is responsible for 87% of all carbon removal credit purchases. Earlier this year, reporting from Bloomberg indicated that the company was pausing carbon credit purchases. This apparent pause ended the following month when the company announced a direct capture deal with BioCirc. However, despite the BioCirc deal, Bloomberg now reports that the company slowed carbon credit purchases by 80% in 2026:
“Microsoft Corp. dramatically cut back investments in carbon removals in the first half of the year, as it ratchets up spending on artificial intelligence. The company bought 8.55 million metric tons of carbon removal credits in the year through mid-July, which is about 80% less than it purchased over the same period in 2025, according to calculations by BloombergNEF. That puts Microsoft on track for its first retreat since 2023 from a market it entered in 2020.”
This reporting advances the idea that Microsoft is abandoning carbon credits in exchange for AI investment. However, the 80% figure may not tell the full story. This is a measure of how many tons of carbon removals the company purchased, not how much the company spent on carbon removals. As we saw in the BioCirc deal, Microsoft appears more interested in direct capture and sequestration projects. These projects produce some of the highest quality removal credits, but also cost more than any other method of carbon removal. In fact, direct capture CCS credits can cost more than 10x the going rate of nature-based offsets. This raises the question: has Microsoft slowed carbon credit purchases? Or is the company prioritizing quality over quantity?
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