Advancing community-driven restoration with science-backed management strategies.
CDR Type
Reforestation
Location
Brazil
Focus Areas
Analyzed potential to operationalize large-scale reforestation and generate high-quality carbon dioxide removals.
Evaluated long-term plans for maintenance of reforested stands and mitigation of leakage.
Assessed nursery capacity and seed supply needs.
In May of 2024 and January of 2025, Microsoft signed memoranda of understanding for up to 3 million tonnes and 3.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide removal with re.green, respectively. re.green is a Brazil-based company specializing in reforestation and ecological restoration. This deal represents re.green’s largest carbon dioxide removal deal to date.
In total, re.green will deliver up to 6.5 million carbon dioxide removal credits through the restoration of native species across Brazil with a focus on the Atlantic Forest. As the most deforested biome in Brazil, restoration within the Atlantic Forest involves reverting degraded lands back into natural ecosystems with measurable outcomes for biodiversity, ecosystems, and livelihoods. In total, re.green proposes to restore 33,000 hectares of forest across two of Brazil’s major forests — the Amazon and the Atlantic — with native species.
While ambitious tree-planting initiatives aim to sequester enormous quantities of carbon, if not executed with science-backed management strategies and extensive monitoring, they risk increasing carbon emissions, and negatively impacting ecosystems and communities in the long-term.
"Projects like those undertaken by re.green are an important part of our carbon removal portfolio. Working with Carbon Direct to conduct a comprehensive technical diligence assessment directly informed our decision to procure from re.green, and advance vital nature-based solutions for carbon, ecosystem, and community impacts."
Brian Marrs
Senior Director, Energy and Carbon Removal, Microsoft
Carbon Direct Diligence
Carbon Direct’s landscape decarbonization experts visited Atlantic Forest parcels that will supply the majority of Microsoft’s tonnes, as well as the project’s main seedling nursery in São Paulo and satellite nurseries in Bahia, conducting interviews with key stakeholders and re.green representatives. Carbon Direct’s technical diligence team also conducted a commercial de-risking analysis to identify and provide recommendations to address any credit delivery risks, and assess the current level of project capitalization in a comprehensive report.
“In our work, we bring a data-driven, analytical approach to evaluate proposed carbon removal projects against the Criteria for High-Quality Carbon Dioxide Removal.”
Dr. Letty Brown
Senior Forest Scientist, Carbon Direct
Behind the Credit
How re.green removes carbon dioxide
re.green has developed proprietary spatial analysis methods using satellite imagery, drones, and cloud-based machine learning models to identify and prioritize degraded lands for restoration. Once suitable parcels of lands have been selected, re.green engages local communities through skills development and training to permanently sequester carbon from the atmosphere using native tree species. re.green then validates carbon capture outcomes through scientifically proven measurement and verification methods.
Alongside the carbon benefits of the Atlantic Forest project, re.green focuses on developing community-driven restoration value chains, including local economic opportunities and jobs in the production of seedlings in the nursery stage and seed collection. This approach generates income for local communities and supports original, biodiverse ecosystems for long-term impact. In addition, re.green’s restoration is done exclusively with native species, many of which are regional; at the time of the technical diligence, re.green’s species list contained 300 native species.
“We value the science-led innovation that re.green brings to reforestation,” says Annie Guo, Origination and Nature-based Solutions Lead for Carbon Removal at Microsoft. “Nature-based solutions are vital to climate change mitigation, as well as biodiversity and community well-being. We are excited to pursue this offtake deal with re.green, and are confident in their ability to deliver high-quality outcomes based on Carbon Direct’s technical diligence assessment and validation.”
What’s next
Looking ahead, re.green is scaling its work in both the Atlantic and Amazon forests to restore tropical forests at scale while ensuring positive benefits for the ecosystem, livelihoods and climate.
“Our company is positioned to meet the demands of a market that requires the highest-integrity standards,” says Thiago Picolo, CEO of re.green. “We consider Microsoft’s carbon dioxide removal program to be a global benchmark for high-quality carbon dioxide removal, and this collaboration is evidence of the significant potential for growth in Brazil.