US-based improved forest management (IFM) project developer NativState has issued almost 5mn avoidance and removal credits across six projects. The company expects to generate over 40mn forest carbon avoidance and removal credits, based on current enrolled acreage and modelled baseline scenarios under the American Carbon Registry. Vice-president of partnerships Michael Casey spoke to Argus about high-quality and integrity markets for buyers, shifting baselines in IFM project development, and growing demand for long-term offtake.
How important are long-term offtake agreements to building a robust supply pipeline for IFM projects?
Long-term offtake agreements are critical to building a robust supply pipeline for IFM projects, particularly for projects that focus on small landowner aggregation. These agreements unlock demand and carbon revenue certainty over a 5–15-year horizon.
One of the key drivers of NativState's current scale is its long-term offtake agreements, and we expect continued growth through the execution of additional offtake agreements in the future.
What high-quality markers are of most interest to buyers?
Every buyer approaches the market with their own unique criteria and priorities. Broadly speaking, the factors that matter most to corporate carbon credit buyers are clear additionality, carbon accounting rigour, and dynamic baselines. Other key considerations include CCP [Core Carbon Principles] labels, investment-grade independent ratings, durability, and meaningful environmental and social co-benefits such as improved biodiversity and water quality.
Independent ratings also serve different functions for different buyer archetypes. For example, direct enterprise buyers typically do their own diligence, whereas smaller buyers or intermediaries may use ratings as a gatekeeping heuristic.
Across the board, companies remain focused on mitigating reputation risk and strengthening the credibility of both the project and the buyer's associated climate claims. Strong performance across the attributes mentioned earlier helps mitigate that risk, particularly when reinforced by a third-party stamp of approval such as CCP labels.
Could buyer demand cause developers to shift their IFM project pipeline from static to dynamic baselines?
Yes, this is a shift that is already under way. Methodologies with dynamic baselines have secured CCP labels for both avoidance and removals, and demand for these credits is increasingly outpacing demand for non-CCP labelled projects.
As one of the first developers to deploy IFM credits with dynamic baselines at scale, we've seen first hand that this approach is inherently more conservative and can provide greater confidence in both the project's carbon accounting and the claims ultimately made by the project or credit buyer.
How has demand from US buyers evolved during the Trump administration?
In 2026, the volume of demand observed by NativState has greatly outpaced what we saw during the same time periods in 2025 and 2024. Top US credit buyers are transitioning from annual spot purchases to long-term offtake to shore up supply and pricing certainty.
Buyers who completed no spot transactions in 2024 are now actively executing between the first and second quarters of 2026. Since the emergence of the ICVCM's CCP label, VCMI's Claims Code, and top buyers pioneering frameworks and best practices for sourcing high-quality carbon credits (for example, Microsoft's Criteria for High-Quality CDR), we certainly have seen an increase in demand for high-quality credits, regardless of the administration's posture on carbon and ESG-related topics.
What will be the key trends shaping demand in the voluntary carbon market in 2026?
The most significant structural shift is the move from transactional spot purchases to long-term offtake portfolios. Buyers that spent the past two years on the sidelines are now seeking multi-year supply certainty, and that changes the commercial conversation from price per tonne to counterparty quality and long-term delivery confidence.
At the same time, the definition of a "quality" credit is expanding beyond carbon accounting rigour to include where a project is located. At NativState, the majority of our projects are developed in the US south, the country's timber basket, which produces roughly 55-60pc of US timber. Focusing on a region of the US where harvest pressure is real creates a clear through line to additionality.
Regional co-location, or sourcing credits from forests near a buyer's operational footprint that deliver measurable benefits for water, biodiversity, and rural communities, is increasingly becoming a meaningful procurement criterion, and we expect that premium to continue to widen.
IFM is well-positioned to capture both trends, as one of the only nature-based-solution categories generating verified avoidance and removal credits at scale under CCP-labelled methodologies.
Another consequential near-term catalyst is SBTi's softening position on beyond-value-chain solutions. If high-quality credits can be applied toward near-term targets rather than only residual emissions, the addressable buyer pool expands significantly, and urgently.
