Why the most credible climate strategies go beyond buying carbon credits
Director of Sustainability Marketing
10 min read
Introduction
Most businesses that engage with the voluntary carbon market focus on one thing: buying carbon credits to match some or all of their emissions on a tonne-for-tonne basis. That is an important part of a credible climate strategy, but it is not the whole picture.
Beyond Value Chain Mitigation (BVCM), the framework endorsed by the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) for how businesses should contribute to global climate action outside their own value chain, has two goals, not one.
Goal 1 covers the tonne-for-tonne component: buying and retiring high-quality carbon credits aligned with the Oxford Principles.
Goal 2 is different in kind. It asks businesses to drive additional finance into climate solutions that go beyond what the carbon credit market can currently fund or measure.
This article focuses on Goal 2: what it is, what qualifies, how to size and allocate your budget, and why ignoring it leaves your carbon credit strategy incomplete.
What is BVCM Goal 2?BVCM Goal 2 is defined by the SBTi in their 2024 Above and Beyond report, and asks businesses to drive additional finance into the scale-up of nascent climate solutions and enabling activities to unlock the systemic transformation needed to achieve net-zero by mid-century globally. Unlike Goal 1 - which focuses on buying and retiring verified carbon credits on a tonne-for-tonne basis - Goal 2 covers a broader range of climate investment: impact funds, nature restoration, early-stage carbon removal technology, climate adaptation, biodiversity projects, and enabling activities like policy advocacy or environmental legal defence. The impact does not have to be measured in tonnes of CO2e. Businesses report financial contributions made and the anticipated outcomes of the projects they support. Goal 2 sits alongside Goal 1 within an overall BVCM budget set using a science-based carbon price. It is not optional and it is not secondary. |
A note on timing: this article relates to current SBTi guidance from their 2024 Above and Beyond report. The V2 of the SBTi Corporate Net-Zero Standard is currently in its second consultation draft (you can read Ecologi’s response to the draft here). The final version, expected later in 2026, will introduce a new framework for Ongoing Emissions Responsibility (OER), which will provide updates that supersede and expand on BVCM. We have included high-level analysis of OER in this article, but will update this guidance in full when the new standard is published.
Why contribution beyond tonne-for-tonne matters
Scaling technologies the carbon market cannot yet fund
The voluntary carbon credit market as it exists today is good at funding projects with measurable, verifiable outcomes - forest protection, methane capture, certain types of carbon removal. What it is less well suited to is funding early-stage climate technologies and approaches that do not yet have the methodological frameworks to generate tradable ex-post credits.
Direct air capture, enhanced weathering, ocean-based carbon removal, and other nascent carbon dioxide removal technologies all need significant capital to develop and scale. Without private-sector investment at this stage, the pipeline of high-quality removal credits that businesses will need in the 2030s and 2040s, as the Oxford Principles for Net Zero Aligned Carbon Offsetting require portfolios to shift towards removals with durable storage, simply will not exist in sufficient volume or at accessible prices. Goal 2 investment today is, in part, an investment in the supply of credible climate solutions your business will need later.
Adaptation and the limits of mitigation alone
There are two necessary components to climate action: mitigation and adaptation. Mitigation - reducing and removing greenhouse gases - is essential, but it does not address the impacts that are already locked in. Adaptation is about helping communities, ecosystems and infrastructure adjust to a changing climate, and is a critical and chronically underfunded area of global climate action.
Goal 2 explicitly includes activities that support climate adaptation and address loss and damage. For businesses, this matters for two reasons. First, the communities and ecosystems that are most vulnerable to climate impacts are often connected to global supply chains and natural systems that businesses depend on. Investing in their resilience makes strategic sense. Second, adaptation funding is increasingly recognised by frameworks like the TNFD as part of credible corporate nature and climate strategies.
Biodiversity and the broader picture
Climate and nature are deeply interconnected. Many of the most effective nature-based carbon projects, such as forests, wetlands, seagrass meadows, peatlands, also deliver significant biodiversity benefits. But biodiversity cannot be reduced to carbon. Ecosystems that are healthy and biodiverse are more resilient, store carbon more effectively over the long term, and provide the natural infrastructure that human economies depend on.
Goal 2 creates the space to fund nature restoration and biodiversity projects that may not generate tradeable carbon credits but deliver substantial co-benefits for climate, nature and people. In a world where mandatory biodiversity disclosure is expanding, this kind of investment also has growing strategic value for businesses.
What qualifies under BVCM Goal 2
Goal 2 is broader and more flexible than Goal 1. The SBTi defines it as driving additional finance into the scale-up of nascent climate solutions and enabling activities to unlock the systemic transformation needed to achieve net-zero by mid-century globally. In practice, this covers a wide range of activities.
Impact funds
Impact funds pool capital from multiple corporate contributors and deploy it across a portfolio of climate and nature projects. They are one of the most practical routes into Goal 2 for most businesses, offering diversification across project types and geographies without the operational complexity of managing individual philanthropic relationships.
Well-designed impact funds like Ecologi's own Forest and Landscapes Restoration Fund and UK Nature Fund are outcome-focused rather than input-driven. They are assessed on the basis of their benefits to climate, nature and people rather than simple metrics like trees planted. They also spread risk: if one project in the portfolio underperforms, the overall fund continues to produce impact across the remaining projects.
Philanthropy and direct project funding
Businesses can also contribute directly to climate charities, environmental legal defence organisations, research institutions working on climate solutions, or community-based adaptation programmes. These contributions do not need to be measured in tonnes of carbon. Under Goal 2, it is sufficient to report the financial contribution made and the anticipated outcomes of the projects supported.
This flexibility is important. Some of the most valuable climate work - policy advocacy, legal defence of environmental protections, community-led adaptation - does not lend itself to carbon accounting. Goal 2 makes explicit that these activities count, and that businesses should fund them as part of a complete climate strategy.
Enabling conditions
The SBTi's framing of Goal 2 also includes enabling conditions: activities that support the systemic changes needed for a net-zero economy. This could include funding climate-related research, supporting standards development, contributing to industry coalitions working on sectoral decarbonisation, or investing in the institutional infrastructure that makes high-integrity climate action possible at scale.
For businesses with the scale and influence to participate meaningfully in these activities, they represent some of the highest-leverage climate investments available.
What does not qualify
Goal 2 does not include anything and everything. Activities that are primarily about managing your own emissions - energy efficiency investments, renewable energy procurement, fleet electrification - do not qualify. These are valuable, but they sit within, not beyond, your value chain and count towards your reduction pathway, not your BVCM contribution. Goal 2 funding must be genuinely additional: directed at climate action beyond your own operations and supply chain.
How to allocate your Goal 2 budget
Start with Goal 1
Goal 2 budget allocation begins after Goal 1 has been addressed. Your overall BVCM budget is set by applying a science-based carbon price to your unabated emissions for the year. A minimum credible science-based carbon price is likely to be in the region of £20-60 per tonne, though the right figure depends on your sector, emissions profile and decarbonisation trajectory.
The SBTi guidance suggests that Goal 1 (the tonne-for-tonne component) should cover quantified mitigation outcomes equivalent to at least 50% of your emissions. Once that portion of the budget is allocated, what remains is available for Goal 2. In practice, this means that the size of your Goal 2 budget is directly connected to the cost of your Goal 1 portfolio, which in turn depends on the quality and composition of the carbon credits you are buying.
As your Goal 1 portfolio shifts towards higher proportions of carbon removal and durable storage over time, per-tonne costs are likely to increase. Planning your Goal 2 allocation with this trajectory in mind, rather than treating it as a fixed percentage, will give you a more realistic and sustainable budget over the medium term.
Risk diversification
One of the practical advantages of Goal 2 investment is that it diversifies your overall climate portfolio away from the risks inherent in the carbon credit market. Even high-quality carbon credits carry project-level risks: permanence risk, regulatory risk, and methodological revision. Goal 2 activities, particularly those channelled through impact funds with broad project portfolios, carry a different and generally lower risk profile.
A well-structured BVCM strategy that combines a robust Goal 1 portfolio with thoughtfully allocated Goal 2 contributions is more resilient overall than one that concentrates all climate investment in carbon credits alone. It is also a more complete and defensible story to tell to investors, customers and reporting bodies.
Deciding what to fund
The most impactful Goal 2 spending tends to share certain characteristics: it addresses areas that are genuinely underfunded by the carbon market; it produces co-benefits beyond carbon, including for nature and communities; it is transparent about the outcomes it expects to achieve; and it connects to the systemic changes needed for a net-zero economy rather than delivering isolated project outcomes.
For most businesses, a combination of an impact fund (for breadth and ease of reporting) and one or two direct contributions to organisations or causes with a close connection to the business's sector or supply chain (for depth and authenticity) is a practical and credible approach.
The risks of ignoring Goal 2
Underfunded innovation
The carbon removal technologies that net-zero pathways depend on are not going to develop without sustained private sector investment. If businesses collectively treat Goal 2 as optional or secondary, concentrating all their climate finance in the established carbon credit market, the pipeline of durable, high-quality removal solutions that the market will need in the 2030s and 2040s will be underfunded.
This is a systemic problem for the climate, but it’s also a practical risk for any business building a long-term carbon credit strategy. The Oxford Principles require portfolios to shift substantially towards carbon removal with durable storage as the net-zero target date approaches. If that supply does not develop at the required pace and scale, the credits that businesses need will be scarce and expensive. Early investment in nascent removal technologies through Goal 2 is, in part, a hedge against that supply risk.
Narrow portfolio exposure
A corporate climate strategy built entirely on tonne-for-tonne carbon credit purchases is a narrow one. It is exposed to the specific risks of the voluntary carbon market (price volatility, quality variation, methodological revision) without the diversification that Goal 2 contributions provide.
It is also increasingly insufficient from a stakeholder expectations perspective. Investors, customers and accreditation bodies are beginning to look at the breadth of a business's climate contribution, not just the number of credits retired. A strategy that includes structured Goal 2 investment signals a deeper level of engagement with the systemic challenge of climate change and is harder to dismiss as a box-ticking exercise.
Falling short of emerging standards
The SBTi's draft V2 Corporate Net-Zero Standard, published for consultation in late 2025, signals that BVCM-style requirements (including the contribution component that mirrors Goal 2) are moving towards being formalised. The direction of travel is clear: what businesses do voluntarily today under Goal 2 is likely to become an expected component of certified net-zero strategies in the years ahead.
Businesses that have already built a structured Goal 2 programme will adapt to these requirements with relatively little disruption. Those that have not will face the prospect of building it under time pressure, potentially at higher cost and with less market access to the most credible opportunities.
BVCM Goal 2 Case Study: How giffgaff & MG OMD integrate nature recovery into their advertising & media ecosystem.
In late 2023, giffgaff and MG OMD established the Up To Good Fund, a pioneering new mechanism to embed UK nature recovery into their media campaigns. Since its inception, 11 media owners have joined the Fund, proving that UK nature recovery can sit alongside campaign performance. Endorsed by Ad Net Zero, the fund provides a blueprint for more brands, agencies & media owners to collaboratively fund high impact UK climate and nature projects, supporting recovery at scale. See their full case study here.
What this means for your strategy next
BVCM Goal 2 is the part of your climate investment that funds the solutions the carbon market cannot yet reach - the technologies, the ecosystems, the communities and the systemic conditions that a net-zero world depends on.
Designing your Goal 2 allocation does not need to be complicated. Start with what your overall BVCM budget allows after Goal 1 is funded. Identify the types of climate solution that resonate with your business's sector, values and stakeholder expectations. Choose vehicles, whether impact funds, direct philanthropy or enabling contributions, that are transparent, outcome-focused and credible to the frameworks your investors and customers are using to assess you.
The businesses that will look back on this decade with credibility are those that used their climate budgets to do more than the minimum. Goal 2 is where a carbon credit strategy stops being a risk management exercise and starts being a genuine contribution to the systems change the climate needs.
Work with Ecologi
Designing the contribution component of a BVCM strategy - sizing Goal 2 appropriately, identifying the right projects and vehicles, and integrating it with a credible Goal 1 portfolio - is where many businesses need the most support.
Ecologi helps businesses build complete BVCM strategies that go beyond carbon credits, with carefully curated impact funds, expert guidance on budget allocation, and a transparent approach to reporting outcomes. If you want to ensure your climate investment is working as hard as it should be, speak to one of our climate experts to get started.