Apple buys 100,000 carbon credits from Guyana

Technology company, Apple, recently bought 100,000 of Guyana’s carbon credits as part of efforts to reduce its corporate and product emissions footprint for 2024.

The credits bought from Guyana were retired by Apple. This means that the 100,000 credits issued to Apple have been removed from circulation and cannot be traded or used again.For years, Guyana worked on a mechanism to monitor, report, and verify the carbon stored in its trees, and that amounted to over 19 gigatonnes. Under an international mechanism called ART TREES, credits are issued based on the carbon stored in forests.

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Guyana entered the voluntary carbon market in 2022, wherein countries or companies can invest in environmental actions that compensate for the harmful carbon their operations emit into the atmosphere.

The American oil firm Hess Corporation was to first to support the venture, buying one-third of the carbon credits issued to Guyana at a cost of about USD$750 million.

Apple has now bought credits from Guyana’s 2019 stock; the move is said to contribute directly to Apple’s corporate climate goals.

“The jurisdictional program includes all 18 million hectares of forest in Guyana — about 85 percent of the landmass — and enables the country to benefit from its historically low deforestation rate, while funding low-carbon development priorities,” Apple said in its 2025 Environmental Progress Report.