Are carbon offsets a useful tool on the road to net zero or simply another form of greenwashing?
A new investigation from The Guardian, Die Zeit and SourceMaterial leads heavily toward the latter conclusion. The report, published Wednesday, found that more than 90 percent of the rainforest offset credits offered by top carbon standard Verra are actually what The Guardian called “phantom credits” that don’t actually remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
“The implications of this analysis are huge,” Barbara Haya, who leads the Carbon Trading Project at the University of California, Berkeley, told SourceMaterial. “Companies are making false claims and then they’re convincing customers that they can fly guilt-free or buy carbon-neutral products when they aren’t in any way carbon-neutral.”
Verra currently certifies three-quarters of all carbon credits issued worldwide, according to SourceMaterial. This means that it considers a proposed carbon offset project–often the protection of at-risk forest–and issues it with a certain number of carbon credits equal to the tonnes of carbon dioxide it will remove or prevent from entering the atmosphere. These credits are then added to a global database that companies can purchase from to offset their emissions on the $2 billion voluntary carbon market. Verra certified one billion credits as of November of 2022, and these have been purchased by major companies including Gucci, British Airways, Disney, United Airlines, Air France,...
FDA and consumer protection officials suspended production at a Samut Sakhon canned fish factory after alleged false labelling Thai food and consumer protection authorities have ordered a canned f...