When a person, company or country offsets their emissions, this means they purchase carbon credits as a way to “compensate” for part of their carbon footprint by paying someone else, outside of their own value chains, for the emissions reductions or carbon dioxide removal they erroneously claim to have achieved themselves.

Companies around the world have labelled their activities as carbon or climate neutral, have set net-zero emissions targets or have otherwise sought to green their image by buying carbon credits from climate projects and using them to offset their emissions. 

This is an extremely problematic practice. At a time when the science shows that the emissions of advanced economies like the EU need to fall by 65% by 2030, offsetting does nothing to reduce the actual internal emissions of the offsetter, it simply shifts the problem onto someone else’s shoulders and risks even delaying the offsetter’s own decarbonisation.

Moreover, the climate impact of projects financed through the sale of carbon credits is unclear. A huge number of studies and investigations have shown the  climate impact of many carbon credit projects to be grossly exaggerated.