Salesforce's new marketplace wants to make it easier for companies to integrate carbon credits into their climate-action strategies

Patrick Flynn, the global head of sustainability at Salesforce, explained how it used its existing products to launch the Net Zero Marketplace.

• Salesforce has a new marketplace for carbon credits, also known as carbon offsets.
• Companies can use their carbon credits on projects designed to help alleviate the climate crisis.
• This article is part of "Enterprise Tech Blueprint," a series exploring the strategies leading-edge companies use to innovate and grow.

More companies are embracing carbon credits to offset their greenhouse-gas emissions and fulfill their commitments to fight climate change.

Carbon credits are certificates representing amounts of greenhouse gases removed from or kept out of the air, but it's often difficult for organizations to find them and verify their quality. Salesforce is attempting to solve these problems with its new Net Zero Marketplace.

The marketplace, which launched in October and is built on the Salesforce Commerce Cloud, connects organizations and eco-conscious entrepreneurs and offers a catalog of carbon credits and an e-commerce platform for purchasing them. The company says the credits undergo independent verification against global standards.

Patrick Flynn, a senior vice president and global head of sustainability at Salesforce, told Insider that the goal is to streamline carbon-credit purchases and help grow the carbon-credit market. McKinsey has estimated that the carbon-credit market could be worth $50 billion by 2030.

"The planet needs more organizations to look at the role carbon credits can play as a means for adding another tool to their climate-action strategy," Flynn said.

Insider spoke with Flynn about how Salesforce used its existing products to launch the marketplace.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Why is Salesforce's Commerce Cloud a natural fit for the Net Zero Marketplace?

The world urgently needs bold climate action and smart solutions to address the climate crisis. That's why we leveraged our own Commerce Cloud — including its standard features like catalog, order management, and inventory management — to bring Net Zero Marketplace to the market faster.

The flexible platform is a starting point and by no means the end. We assembled a cross-functional team of engineers, marketing, sustainability, product development, and communications in our ecosystem with the expertise to drive this vision forward. We've also included our partners to help build this product.

What new workflows or adjustments were added to Commerce Cloud to create the marketplace?

Carbon credits as product stock-keeping units require a set of unique attributes that weren't available in the out-of-the-box product. We did customizations to capture carbon registries, third-party ratings, and project timelines to support the carbon-project catalog.

To ensure we only serve trusted carbon-credit buyers, we've added a corporate buyer registration flow as part of Salesforce's Know Your Customer process. Buyers on Net Zero Marketplace must commit to buy carbon credits as part of a comprehensive climate-action strategy — not as a substitute for absolute reductions. Buyers must also acknowledge that they will not trade their credits with other third parties.

The marketplace also integrates Stripe's software for easy online payments for buyers and seamless payout experiences for sellers. Elements of Salesforce's Service Cloud are also integrated into the marketplace to enable better customer service.

We leveraged Salesforce Order Management to make order flows more efficient. This allowed us to heavily customize a solution that fits well with the unique requirements of the carbon-credit marketplace with complex global buyer and seller engagement.

How will the marketplace inspire growth opportunities for Salesforce?

We are in an "and" era where we need multiple innovations to make climate-action strategies impactful. Reducing emissions is the most important thing everyone can do today. Salesforce has set a bold target to halve our emissions by 2030 and sequester carbon through nature and carbon-removal technologies. We need every solution and innovation to get us to the shared goal of a 1.5-degree world, the Paris agreement target.

The path to purchasing carbon credits can be complex, and buyers want to trust that the carbon-credit projects they are purchasing from have a positive impact. Providers of carbon credits don't always have the traditional sales and marketing tool kits needed to successfully bring credits to the market.