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This month, we take a closer look at Air Canada and Consortium PerGenova Breakwater, highlighting two buyers with distinct approaches to engaging in the voluntary carbon market. Combining AlliedOffsets data with wider research, we explore how their VCM activity, credit preferences, and decarbonization strategies are evolving over time.
Air Canada is a fairly new entrant to the VCM, having made its first retirement in October 2023. Since then, however, the airline has been a paragon of consistency, retiring credits on a quarterly basis.
In March, Air Canada retired over 215,000 credits, with more than half of those facilitated by CHOOOSE. The broker and the airline partner to offer fliers the “Leave Less Travel Program”, where customers have the voluntary option to purchase carbon offset credits for their flight.
While the current activity is purely voluntary, the airline appears to be harmonizing its offsetting strategy with the upcoming airline compliance scheme. Of the credits retired in March, a third were aligned with CORSIA First or Second Phase. While it remains to be seen which credits end up being fully eligible for CORSIA, Air Canada is starting to secure supply of credits that it may be able to use for its compliance obligations in the future.
Air Canada Credit Portfolio Breakdown | March 2026
In addition to its carbon offsetting, Air Canada has also sourced millions of liters of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) from Neste, a Finnish oil refiner.
One of the larger new entrants to the market last year was Consortium PerGenova Breakwater, retiring 224,000 credits in March 2025. This March, the buyer once again retired credits, offsetting 96,000 tons last month. The Consortium is renovating the Port of Genoa to make it suitable for bigger vessels – a large infrastructure project in northern Italy.
The works are prioritizing circular economy and sustainability. To that end, the project is reusing as much material as possible and is working with the local aquarium to preserve the local aquaculture.
The project retired using vintage credits 2013 from Mai Ndombe REDD+ project in Congo – same credits as last year. The project’s credits have been retired by companies like Eni and Shell in the past.
The Consortium’s approach is to source credits from a single project, which is typically not advisable for the market. In this case, the credits are perceived as containing a level of reputational risk due to them being sourced from a project type that has been criticized in the past.
Credits Retired by Risk Category
