Singapore has opened the second stage of a selective tender to buy at least 12 million internationally transferred mitigation outcomes, Carbon Pulse reported on September 7, the largest single procurement signal yet from a government buying credits under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement. The ITMOs are intended to help meet the city-state’s 2030 and 2035 climate targets, and the tender’s scale, roughly five and a half times Singapore’s first Article 6 purchase, turns sovereign demand from a framework story into a volume story. For project developers, host countries and intermediaries, the question is no longer whether governments will buy at scale, but who can deliver authorized tonnes in time.
What the Tender Puts on the Table
The procurement is structured as a selective tender, meaning Singapore pre-qualifies sellers rather than running an open auction, and the process has now moved into its second stage. The headline commitment is a floor, not a ceiling: at least 12 million ITMOs, earmarked against both the 2030 Nationally Determined Contribution and the newer 2035 target.
Full eligibility criteria, delivery schedules and pricing mechanics have not been made public, consistent with how Singapore ran its first request for proposal. What is clear from the first round is the shape of what qualifies: credits must be authorized under a bilateral Implementation Agreement, carry a corresponding adjustment, and use methodologies whitelisted by both Singapore and the host country.
From Pilot Purchase to Bulk Procurement
The first tender cycle shows how far and how fast this has moved. Singapore launched a request for proposal for nature-based Article 6 credits in September 2024 and announced the award a year later: 2.175 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent from four projects, contracted for around S$76 million for use across 2026 to 2030. That works out to an implied average near S$35 per tonne, the closest thing to a sovereign price benchmark the Article 6 market has produced.
The awarded portfolio was deliberately diversified. It spans two Peruvian REDD+ projects, Kowen Antami and Together for Forests, the Boomitra Grassland Restoration project in Paraguay, and the Kwahu Landscape Restoration reforestation project in Ghana, a 40-year initiative covering 51,000 hectares with a lifetime sequestration target of up to 33.5 million tonnes. Three of the four projects use Verra methodologies (VM0047, VM0048 and VM0042), each subject to bilateral whitelisting before credits can flow.
A tender for at least 12 million tonnes is a different order of magnitude. It signals that the pilot satisfied the government on integrity, delivery risk and price, and that procurement is now a standing instrument of national climate policy rather than an experiment.
The Demand Math Behind the Number
Singapore’s domestic abatement options are structurally thin. The country targets net zero by 2050 and a reduction to around 60 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent by 2030. Its second NDC, submitted in February 2025, sets a 2035 target of 45 to 50 million tonnes. As a dense island state with limited land for renewables, it has been explicit that Article 6 credits are a necessary complement to domestic measures such as solar deployment, renewable energy imports and carbon capture.
Demand comes through two channels. Since 2024, taxable facilities can use eligible international carbon credits to offset up to 5% of taxable emissions under the carbon tax regime. Government procurement, the channel this tender sits in, operates on top of that, buying directly against the national inventory gap. The government has also committed S$15 million to expand Article 6 market capacity, split between readiness support for partner countries and financing for Singapore-linked credit supply, and now counts around 150 companies in its carbon services and trading sector.
What It Means for Sellers and Host Countries
For developers, a 12-million-tonne sovereign buyer with a published quality bar is bankable demand, but only for supply that can clear the authorization gate. The binding constraint is the same one shaping CORSIA: credits must sit under an Implementation Agreement and receive host-country authorization with a corresponding adjustment. Singapore now has twelve such agreements, the latest signed with Lao PDR in early September, each carrying a 5% share-of-proceeds contribution to host-country adaptation and a 2% cancellation of authorized credits for overall mitigation in global emissions.
For host countries, the tender sharpens a strategic choice. Authorizing ITMOs converts domestic mitigation into export revenue, but the adjusted tonnes no longer count toward the host’s own NDC. Governments that have built authorization capacity early, Peru, Paraguay, Ghana, Rwanda, Vietnam, Thailand and now Lao PDR among them, are positioned to compete for the largest confirmed Article 6 buy order on record. Those still drafting frameworks risk watching the procurement window pass.
For the wider market, sovereign tenders of this size compete directly with CORSIA buyers and corporate offtakers for the same pool of authorized supply. A standing government buyer with multi-year delivery needs also puts a floor under forward contracting, which is how developers finance projects ahead of issuance.
What to Watch Next
Three markers will show how this tender reshapes the market. First, the awarded volume and any disclosed pricing, because the first round’s implied S$35 per tonne is currently the only sovereign benchmark and a second data point would start to define a curve. Second, the final eligibility list, particularly whether the tender stays nature-based or opens to engineered removals and other categories, which would redirect developer pipelines. Third, replication: if Singapore’s multi-stage procurement delivers at scale, other NDC buyer governments have a working template, and Article 6 demand starts to look like a procurement market rather than a series of one-off deals.
Singapore spent two years building agreements and testing a pilot purchase. With a 12-million-tonne tender now in its second stage, the build-out phase is over. The Article 6 market has a sovereign buyer of scale, and supply will reorganize around it.
