How Wren made a BeZero Carbon Rating a condition of purchase

What they said

Defined a credit quality threshold of 'BBB' BeZero-rated or above
Signed a multi-year offtake agreement with an 'A' rating as a direct precondition
Pushed deals over the line with hesitant buyers using BeZero’s analytics and benchmarking tools
Exited or re-evaluated projects following BeZero downgrades

About Wren

Role in market: Climate platform and carbon intermediary
Location: United States
Sectors: Nature-based and tech-based solutions

"Ratings are third-party data I can point buyers to and say: this isn't just our opinion, but the opinion of experts. And for project developers, if they can show me an 'A' rating from BeZero, it opens the door to multi-year offtake deals that would not happen otherwise

Sophie Westover, Head of Climate at Wren

Challenge

Carbon markets present buyers with a difficult problem: project quality varies enormously, but the tools to distinguish good from poor have historically been opaque or inconsistent. For companies like Wren - a climate platform that helps individuals and businesses fund high-quality carbon projects - this creates real reputational and financial stakes. Purchasing a credit that later proves low-integrity would waste money and undermine the trust of the subscribers and business customers that Wren has built its model on.

Wren needed a credible quality marker. One that discerning and sceptical buyers alike could trust, and that was backed by evidence beyond Wren's own word.

Solution

Wren uses BeZero's ratings as a quality threshold as part of its due diligence process. The team has set an internal bar of 'BBB' or above for projects it funds, and monitors the platform regularly to track new ratings and re-evaluations of existing ones.

Ratings also play a direct role in Wren's B2B sales activity. When working with buyers hesitant to engage in the market, Wren uses BeZero ratings as third-party evidence of project quality, pointing to the ratings distribution across its portfolio, or filtering by methodology to show where projects sit relative to peers. BeZero's analytics features allow Wren to show buyers trends across rated projects, giving those conversations an expert-informed foundation that goes beyond Wren's own view.

Impact

A clear demonstration of BeZero's influence on Wren's decisions came from the cookstove sector. Wren was reluctant to purchase credits from a clean cooking developer in East Africa, given broader concerns about cookstove project quality. Sophie Westover, who leads carbon project sourcing and due diligence at Wren, told them directly: if they could show her an 'A' rating from BeZero, she would consider buying. When their project then received the 'A' rating, Wren signed a multi-year offtake agreement. They subsequently told Wren that the long-term offtake had enabled negotiations for a forward contract covering all of their emission reductions through 2030.

Ratings have also informed Wren's decisions to exit projects. When new information about a project Wren had previously funded came to light, resulting in a downgrade from 'BBB' to 'BB', the change directly prompted Wren to discontinue funding. A separate downgrade from 'AA' to 'BB' triggered a re-evaluation of the same developer's wider portfolio, with Wren indicating it would likely exit unless quality issues from the downgraded project were demonstrably absent in the developer's other projects.

Reaffirmed ratings have had an equally concrete effect in the other direction. A project that has maintained a 'BBB' rating across two consecutive re-evaluations has remained a cornerstone of Wren's portfolio since 2023.

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