The Voluntary Carbon Market Company (VCM) and Enowa, NEOM’s energy and water arm, have struck a landmark deal to deliver at least 30 million tonnes of high-integrity carbon credits by 2030. This long-term agreement shows Enowa’s promise to offset its unavoidable emissions. It also supports global climate action. This is especially true for projects in the Global South, which gain stable, long-term funding. The first delivery occurred in December 2024.
VCM launched Saudi Arabia’s first carbon credit exchange in November 2024. It was founded by the Public Investment Fund (PIF) with 80% ownership and the Saudi Tadawul Group with 20%.
The platform offers top-level carbon trading, clear price discovery, global registry access, and aims to support Islamic finance structures. It also operates an auction system and will introduce spot trading in 2025.
This agreement highlights the growing demand. The global voluntary carbon market is expected to rise from $2 billion in 2020 to $250 billion by 2050. This growth is fueled by both companies and projects.
A Game-Changing Carbon Credit Pact
The VCM–Enowa agreement is a big step in voluntary carbon markets. It moves from one-time purchases to a long-term approach. Under the deal, Enowa will secure 30 million tonnes of high-quality carbon credits by 2030—about 3 million tonnes annually. This steady volume helps stabilize the market for everyone. It also unlocks vital funding for climate projects worldwide.
For developers, especially in the Global South, such long-term offtake agreements mean:
- Reduce risk,
- Support scalability, and
- Allow for better project planning.
As VCM CEO Riham ElGizy noted:
“The long-term agreement between VCM and Enowa to facilitate the delivery of over 30 million tons of carbon credits by 2030 marks a significant moment in Saudi Arabia’s journey to drive growth in global voluntary carbon markets. It helps Enowa compensate for today’s emissions while creating sustainable infrastructure for the long term.”
Enowa, already active in previous VCM auctions, becomes the first company in Saudi Arabia to enter such a long-term deal. Acting CEO Jens Madrian said it reflects their commitment to NEOM’s goal of 100% renewable energy. NEOM’s green infrastructure vision aligns closely with Enowa’s emissions management strategy.
This deal is huge: 30 million tonnes over ten years equals the yearly emissions of a mid-sized industrial country. This sets a high standard for corporate climate action in the area.
Building a Mature Carbon Market in Saudi Arabia
The VCM–Enowa deal also strengthens Saudi Arabia’s growing carbon trading ecosystem. Launched in November 2024, VCM’s voluntary carbon exchange is the Kingdom’s first institutional-grade platform. It provides key market tools such as auctions, RFQ features, block trades, and a new spot market. These tools improve price transparency, boost liquidity, and give access to a global registry.
Through successful auctions in 2022, 2023, and 2024, VCM has transacted over 4.7 million tonnes of carbon credits with buyers from 15+ countries. Projects include reforestation, soil carbon, clean cookstoves, and renewables. These show a strong demand for quality credits in many regions.
VCM stands out by aligning with both international standards and regional needs. It is creating Shariah-compliant infrastructure. This allows more MENA-based investors to use ethical finance tools. Its support ecosystem helps project developers in Africa and the Middle East. It includes advisory services and registry integrations. This way, developers can gain visibility and find long-term buyers.
This platform arrives as voluntary carbon markets face scrutiny over credibility. Backed by PIF and Tadawul, VCM provides a transparent, high-integrity marketplace. As ICVCM and COP29’s Article 6.4 advance global standards, VCM is positioning itself to lead regionally and globally.
Saudi Arabia aims to replicate its energy market leadership in climate finance. VCM’s success could channel billions into emerging economies and close the climate finance gap—estimated at $1.5–$2 trillion annually by the UN and World Bank. Voluntary carbon markets are increasingly vital to this mission.
Enowa and NEOM: A Blueprint for Net Zero
Enowa, the energy and water subsidiary of NEOM, plays a central role in advancing Saudi Arabia’s carbon neutrality goals. As part of the futuristic NEOM development, Enowa is building a 100% renewable-powered energy system that relies on solar, wind, green hydrogen, and cutting-edge digital infrastructure. This carbon-free framework is central to NEOM’s ambition to become a global model for low-emission urban living.
Enowa’s long-term agreement with VCM reflects its strategy to tackle unavoidable emissions through high-integrity carbon credits, complementing its broader sustainability efforts.
The company is actively involved in deploying smart grid technologies and water recycling systems that support circular economies. Its approach aligns with international net-zero frameworks, aiming to drastically reduce operational emissions while fostering innovation in climate resilience.
$250B and Counting: Why Voluntary Carbon Markets Are Booming
Voluntary carbon markets are set for explosive growth. Reports predict an increase from $2 billion in 2020 to $250 billion by 2050, with interim estimates ranging from $45 billion to $100 billion by 2030.
MSCI forecasts market expansion from $1.4 billion in 2024 to potentially $35 billion in high-demand scenarios by 2030. Around the world, projects that cut or eliminate carbon are getting more funding through voluntary carbon credits. There is strong demand for credits that also support community development and protect biodiversity.
Why Corporate Commitments Demand Certainty
Companies—especially those in tech, energy, and manufacturing—seek reliable offsets to meet net-zero goals. Long-term purchase agreements like VCM–Enowa’s offer greater credibility and transparency than spot buys.
They make sure that top-quality credits come from projects in developing countries. This aligns emissions cuts with sustainable development. In turn, these agreements help build carbon market capacity in the Global South.
Challenges and the Path to Integrity: Fixing Trust in Carbon Credits
However, voluntary carbon markets face credibility issues. High-profile cases, such as problems in Kenya’s Northern Rangelands project—backed by Meta and Netflix—have sparked concerns. With Verra reviewing the project amid legal and environmental scrutiny, trust in carbon credits has taken a hit.
New rules from COP29’s Article 6.4 and efforts like ICVCM’s framework seek to enhance market integrity and transparency.
VCM’s institutional focus, long-term contracts, and integration with recognized standards are designed to reduce these risks by ensuring quality and oversight.
Saudi Arabia’s Big Carbon Bet Has Global Stakes
Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia’s move through VCM positions it at the forefront of voluntary carbon market expansion in the Middle East. Globally, Asian and South American countries are also scaling their own platforms and frameworks. Deals involving multinational firms and sovereign or semi-sovereign buyers lend scale and legitimacy to these markets.
This shift supports climate finance goals:
- Global climate funding currently stands at roughly $120 billion annually for low‑ and middle‑income countries, well short of the $300 billion yearly target by 2035 agreed at COP29.
Carbon markets like VCM can help fill that gap, particularly in driving private investment.
The VCM–Enowa agreement sets a new standard in voluntary carbon trading—long-term, high-volume, and high-integrity. Voluntary markets will likely grow a lot in the coming decades, and deals like this build trust and stability. They also provide financial security for climate projects in developing economies. With improved standards in place, voluntary carbon credits can become a powerful tool in global efforts to reach net-zero.
The post Saudi Arabia’s Carbon Ambition: NEOM’s Enowa and VCM Ink 30M Tonnes Carbon Credit Deal appeared first on Carbon Credits.
Most businesses that decide to act on their net-zero targets reach the same point of friction. Buying carbon credits has meant tracking down brokers, sitting through sales calls, and requesting a quote just to learn a price, sometimes with limited proof of what you are buying.
The earnings calls that quietly reframed climate from sustainability question to operating risk.
Three earnings calls in the last 18 months tell the story without any help from a press release.
Hershey, May 2024: cocoa price exposure compresses margin, and the company attributes part of the cost shock to West African weather. Olam, July 2024: coffee climate exposure quantified in the annual report. JBS, January 2025: supply chain climate disclosures expanded materially in response to investor pressure and regulatory expectation. None of these companies issued the announcement as climate news. They issued it as financial news. The climate-linked supply chain risk did not arrive with a sustainability framing; it arrived as a P&L line.
You are probably reading this article because you suspect the same thing is happening to your business. This piece walks through what is showing up on which earnings calls, how procurement and finance leaders are quantifying the exposure, and what serious corporates are doing about it before the regulator asks.
Where climate risk has already appeared in earnings
The pattern is consistent across resource-intensive sectors. A weather event compresses supply, the price spikes, the cost flows through the income statement, and the analyst on the call asks whether the event is anomalous or structural. Increasingly, the honest answer is the second one.
Cocoa is the cleanest example. The 2023 to 2024 West African harvest fell sharply on the back of erratic rainfall and disease. Cocoa futures more than tripled. Companies with concentrated West African sourcing absorbed the cost; companies with diversified sourcing absorbed less. The exposure was not climate as ESG topic. It was climate as cost of goods.
Coffee follows the same pattern. Brazilian and Vietnamese harvests have moved on weather more sharply across the last several seasons. Roasters with long-tenor supplier relationships and origin diversification have managed the volatility; roasters with spot-market exposure have not. Wheat, sugar, palm oil, beef: the same dynamic in different commodities, a pattern the IPCC AR6 Working Group II report projects will intensify across agricultural systems through mid-century.
What this means: climate risk is no longer a footnote in the 10-K. It is a line item the CFO has to explain on the call.
The three commodity exposures that hit margin first
For most companies with material Scope 3 exposure, three exposures dominate the near-term P&L risk.
- Concentrated single-origin sourcing in a climate-vulnerable region. If your tier-one supply for any material commodity sits in one geography, you have a concentration risk that climate amplifies. Diversification across origins is the obvious hedge, but it takes years to build and requires relationships you cannot acquire by tender.
- Supplier financial fragility under climate stress. Smallholder farmers, who supply a large share of the global cocoa, coffee, and palm oil market, do not carry the balance sheets to absorb yield shocks. When yields collapse, they exit. When they exit, your supply base shrinks, and the surviving suppliers raise prices. The risk is structural, not cyclical.
- Logistics and storage exposure to extreme weather. Hurricane disruptions to Gulf shipping, drought-driven Panama Canal restrictions, flooding in European inland waterways: each of these has moved input costs in the last three years, a pattern documented in Munich Re’s natural catastrophe data. The exposure shows up as a one-quarter event in the financial press but accumulates over time on the cost line.
TCFD and ISSB disclosure changes
The disclosure architecture has now caught up with the risk. The Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures, whose recommendations are now embedded in the ISSB’s IFRS S2 climate standard, requires companies to disclose climate-related risks across physical and transition categories, with quantification where possible.
For physical risk specifically (the climate-linked supply chain risk you are reading about), the disclosure must address both acute exposures (extreme weather events) and chronic exposures (gradual changes in temperature, precipitation, and growing seasons). The disclosure must address the time horizon over which the risk is material, the parts of the value chain exposed, and the financial impact under different scenarios.
The CSRD imposes similar requirements under European law, with double materiality (both financial and impact materiality) embedded in the assessment. The practical effect: your auditors and your investor relations team now need a defensible answer to the climate-linked supply chain risk question, and the answer needs to be quantified.
What procurement and finance can do now
Three actions matter near-term.
Map your exposure. Most companies do not have a clear view of which tier-one and tier-two suppliers sit in which climate-vulnerable geographies. Without the map, you cannot quantify the risk, and without the quantification, you cannot disclose it credibly. The map is the foundation, and World Resources Institute climate risk research provides useful public tooling to start.
Diversify and deepen, in that order. Diversification across origins reduces concentration risk, but the deeper move is to invest in the resilience of the suppliers you already have. Regenerative practices, agroforestry, soil health interventions: these reduce yield volatility under climate stress and protect your input cost trajectory.
Embed the climate spend inside procurement, not outside it. Treating climate risk as a sustainability cost line subordinates it to the ESG budget. Treating it as a procurement and resilience investment puts it in the budget that matters, which is the cost-of-goods budget that the CFO defends quarterly.
Nature-based supply chain investments are the asset class designed for exactly this purpose. They sit inside the value chain, they reduce climate-linked supply risk, they generate verifiable Scope 3 reductions, and they produce the documentation an auditor and a regulator can both test.
If you are quantifying climate-linked supply chain risk in advance of the next earnings cycle or the next disclosure period, the carbon and sustainability experts at Carbon Credit Capital can help you map your exposure and structure a Dual-Value Model response that addresses reduction, resilience, and disclosure-readiness in a single program. Schedule a consultation.
More and more small and medium-sized businesses are hearing the same question from their larger customers: What is your carbon footprint? That question now travels down entire supply chains, and it arrives next to tender requirements, certification criteria, and rising customer expectations.
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