.svg)
Sustainability Goals
Their sustainability goals follow a phased approach:
- Their net-zero target year is 2040.
- They aim to reach carbon neutrality across their Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 2025.
To support these commitments, the company was looking to adopt a structured, high-quality carbon credit strategy, aligned with leading sustainability frameworks.
The Challenges
Growing Stakeholder Pressure
As a global leader in telecommunications, they faced increasing expectations to demonstrate concrete climate action. Public scrutiny around corporate sustainability claims was growing, leading to very strict requirements around the quality of their carbon credit investments. At the same time, they wanted to cement their position as a sustainability pioneer within the telecommunications sector by backing their net-zero commitments with high-integrity carbon removals.
Complexity in Carbon Credit Selection
While the telecommunications leader had previously purchased carbon credits, it lacked a structured approach to evaluate the quality of the projects it was looking to invest in. It needed a framework that assessed additionality, impact, and alignment with science-based principles such as the Oxford Principles, Core Carbon Principles, and ICROA. Without this, it risked investing in projects that did not meaningfully contribute to global decarbonisation.
Fragmented Carbon Market & Greenwashing Risks
The company had strict requirements to avoid projects that lacked transparency or had questionable climate impact. Navigating the voluntary carbon market to assess whether potential projects were susceptible to this is a big challenge for any company - especially without in-house carbon market expertise. This put them at risk of exposure to greenwashing claims that could damage their reputation and undermine investor confidence, making it a top priority to find a reliable partner to help avoid the potential risks.
Long-Term Procurement Strategy
The telecommunications leader needed long-term access to high-quality carbon removal credits, but lacked direct relationships with project developers. Securing a reliable procurement partner became a top priority to ensure consistent access to credits over the next four years. Managing multi-year procurement, locking in competitive pricing, and ensuring contract stability required expertise beyond their internal capabilities.
The Solution: Collaboration with Senken
Why They Chose Senken
The company selected Senken because of our rigorous, AI-powered Quality Framework, which evaluates carbon projects using 600+ data points to ensure scientific credibility. This level of due diligence provided confidence that only the highest-quality projects would be included in the company’s portfolio.
“Senken’s thorough AI Quality Framework gave us confidence that every project in our portfolio is truly high quality. This has saved us from reputational risks and ensured our carbon investments align with our long-term sustainability goals.”
— Sustainability Director, Global Telecommunications Leader
Strategic Portfolio Design
Senken worked closely with the company to create a balanced carbon portfolio that aligned investments with both long-term decarbonisation goals and the company’s regional footprint across Europe, North America, and Asia. The portfolio ensured relevance to the company’s key markets, while maintaining a diversified investment approach.
End-to-End Support
In addition to providing access to high-quality credits, Senken offered technical guidance, long-term contracting support, and assistance with compliance and reporting. This helped the company seamlessly integrate their carbon credit investments into their broader sustainability framework, while ensuring alignment with regulatory standards such as CSRD and investor reporting requirements.
Implementation and Experience
Seamless Onboarding
Many companies require a full strategy assessment, but this telecommunications leader had clear sustainability objectives and well-defined investment criteria from the getgo. They specified that they would only invest in carbon removal projects, outlining strict selection criteria to ensure credibility and alignment with their goals.
These criteria included:
- Permanence & additionality assurances to guarantee that credits represented real, long-term CO2 removal
- Geographic distribution to align with operations in key regions
- Competitive pricing while maintaining strict quality standards
- Compliance with the Oxford Principles & key climate policies to avoid reputational risks
By understanding these priorities, Senken was able to tailor their recommendations to match both sustainability targets and corporate governance requirements.
Procurement & Contracting
Senken streamlined the company’s entire procurement process, managing multi-year contracting to secure high-quality removal credits for the next four years. This ensured both price stability and long-term availability of the credits, reducing risks associated with fluctuating market conditions.
The Senken team went beyond just providing credits—they handled long-term contracting, ensured policy compliance, and provided full transparency on every project we invested in.
— Procurement Manager, Global Telco Leader
Results and Impact
Curated High-Quality Removal Portfolio
The final carbon portfolio met the company’s requirements by balancing long-term impact with financial and strategic priorities:
- Only carbon removal credits
- Geographic distribution, with projects across Europe, South America, and Asia
- Alignment with 10+ UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
- Four-year offtake strategy, securing long-term supply and mitigating procurement risks
Enhanced Reporting & Compliance
To simplify sustainability reporting and compliance, Senken provided:
- Machine-readable data outputs for seamless CSRD compliance
- Impact metrics aligned with investor and regulatory expectations
- Clear documentation to ensure full transparency in corporate sustainability disclosures
Their reporting automation has been a game-changer — no more manual tracking, just seamless data integration for our CSRD and investor reports.
— Sustainability Director, Global Telecommunications Leader
Operational Milestones Achieved
By integrating high-quality carbon removals, the company was able to:
- Achieve carbon neutrality for their Scope 1 & 2 emissions in 2025
- Remain on track for their 2040 net zero target
Key Takeaways
- The company transitioned their carbon credit strategy to a structured, high-quality portfolio aligned with their long-term decarbonisation strategy.
- Senken’s 600+ data-point Quality Framework ensured the company avoided greenwashing risks and only invested in scientifically verified projects.
- The portfolio balanced only removal credits, regional distribution (Europe, South America, and Asia), and impact (10+ SDGs) to meet sustainability goals.
- Senken’s automated reporting tools saved the sustainability team countless hours of manual work while improving stakeholder communication and ensuring compliance with regulations such as CSRD.