The Catalonia climate-credit model, and what Ireland can learn from it

By Mike English, Founder & CTO, IMPT

Catalonia has shown that a regional government can stand behind an agricultural carbon credit and move real money to farmers for soil management. IMPT has direct experience of the framework.

The Catalonia precedent

Catalonia's regional government, through its Climate Change Office (OCCC), has run a government-backed voluntary “climate credit” system since 2015. It certifies credits from nature-based activity within the region — explicitly including agriculture and soil management — and sells them to companies meeting voluntary climate and corporate-responsibility commitments, with the funding directed into rural areas. IMPT has direct experience of that framework: a business connected to IMPT was certified into it in July 2026. The lesson worth passing on is not about the science, which is well established, but about the market: building corporate demand is the slow part, and it is the part an Irish scheme would have to plan for from the outset.

An EU standard now exists to certify against

At Union level, the Carbon Removal Certification Framework (CRCF), adopted in 2026, is the first EU-wide standard covering carbon farming and carbon removals, and agricultural soil carbon is in scope. That matters because it means an Irish credit need not invent its own rulebook or ask buyers to trust a private badge — it can certify against an official standard, which is exactly what corporate buyers now look for.

How an Irish Tillage Credit would work

The chain is short, and each link has to hold:

1. The practice. The grower moves from ploughing to minimum or no-till, grows cover crops over winter, retains residue, and reduces nitrogen where the agronomy allows. It is the combination that sequesters carbon; no single element does it alone.
2. The measurement. The additional soil carbon is quantified against an agreed protocol. Each verified tonne of CO₂ becomes one credit.
3. The certification. The credit is certified against the EU CRCF and an Irish protocol, establishing that it is real, additional and durable.
4. The sale. The credit is sold to companies seeking genuine, local, traceable removals rather than distant offsets of uncertain quality.
5. The payment. The value returns to the grower, per hectare, for each year of the contract.

The lesson for Ireland

Catalonia was among the first regions in Europe to encourage companies to report emissions voluntarily, so a buyer base existed before the supply did. The transferable lesson is about sequencing: build the demand side alongside the supply, or the credits sit unsold. Ireland has the shrinking tillage sector that needs it, a cold-temperate moist climate that supports carbon retention, the EU CRCF to certify it, and the institutions — Teagasc, the Department, Bord Bia and the EPA — to run it.

How this connects to what IMPT already does

IMPT is a hotel-booking platform that funds one tonne of verified carbon offset on every booking, with access to more than eight million hotels and apartments across 195 countries. It runs a one-partner-per-territory model in which each partner earns a share of IMPT's booking margin and every booking carries that tonne of offset. In other words, IMPT already puts corporate and consumer money behind verified carbon — the same demand-side that an Irish Tillage Credit would need. An officially-backed domestic removal credit for tillage is a natural extension of that thinking: local, traceable and measured, rather than a distant offset of uncertain quality.

Questions & answers

What is the Catalonia climate credit?

A government-backed voluntary carbon credit run since 2015 by the Catalan Climate Change Office (OCCC). It certifies credits from nature-based activity — including agriculture and soil management — and sells them to companies for voluntary climate and CSR commitments, directing funding into rural areas.

Is IMPT connected to the Catalonia framework?

Yes. A business connected to IMPT was certified into the Catalonia climate-credit framework in July 2026. That experience informs this analysis, particularly on how slow the market-building side can be.