How Permian Global embedded BeZero's rating as a contractual obligation in offtake and option agreements

Permian Global engaged with BeZero in 2023 for an assessment of the Kuamut Rainforest Conservation Project. It was the market’s first ever ex ante carbon rating, later converted into an ex post rating. The delivery of that initial rating set the foundation for a bigger commercial opportunity for the project developer.

The Katingan Mentaya Project was already one of the largest Nature-based Solutions projects in the market and one of the highest-rated by BeZero. But to issue credits at the large-scale volumes the project generated, Permian Global had to attract buyers from a wide range of sectors and jurisdictions, each bringing their own internal frameworks, risk appetites and definitions of quality.

Buyers paying a premium for a project of this calibre wanted assurance that performance would continue to meet expectations over the life of the contract. Permian Global needed a single, independent reference point that could travel across every buyer type and sit inside their contracts as a measurable, enforceable benchmark.

Writing the rating into the core commercial terms has turned an external quality signal into a shared operating language between Permian Global and its buyers. Instead of each counterparty running its own bespoke diligence against each delivery, both sides work from the same independent benchmark and the same escalation path if performance changes.

That has three practical effects:

• Buyers across sectors and jurisdictions can transact against a reference point they already recognise, which lowers the friction of placing credits at scale.

• The replacement unit mechanic gives buyers an enforceable guarantee of quality over time.

• Permian Global can showcase ongoing performance to buyers and broader stakeholders in a single language, rather than translating project data into each counterparty's own quality framework.

The same quality signal has also played out independently in the secondary market. Following the Katingan Mentay Project’s rating upgrade from ‘A’ to ‘AA’ in Q1 2025, price reporting agency Fastmarkets observed vintage 2020 Katingan credits rising from $4.50-5.00 to $7.40-8.00 per tCO₂e within months, with prices reaching around $12 per tCO₂e by late 2025. 

Beyond ratings, Permian Global also uses BeZero’s analytics platform to benchmark their projects against peers. Tools such as the in-platform AI assistant help them surface risks in similar NBS projects in their sector, drawing from BeZero’s assessments of thousands of projects. They also use the Corporate Retirements tool to see which projects are being retired and by whom, surfacing trends in buyer appetite across sectors which in turn supports their commercial prospecting activities.