We and quite a handful of others in our field have been screaming (figuratively and not literally) on quality carbon credits.

Offsetting might not be the holy grail of net zero but it definitely is a powerful tool when the credits are vetted, verified, quality-assured, impactful and a bunch of other factors. Acceptance is another factor. You cannot tag a product as carbon neutral as a marketing ploy and expect today’s customers to sway to the same. You also cannot expect everyone to completely understand the idea of offsetting which itself is on an evolving path.

Case in point - Apple watches which were marketed as carbon neutral and Apple was accused of buying “faulty” carbon credits, which resulted in a lawsuit, filed on behalf of the people who purchased the same product. At least 7 people, as reported in the lawsuit, mentioned that they would not have bought the product had they known about the same.

Diving into the details of the offset project, it is the Chyulu Hills Project, located in Kenya, which is the textbook example of a avoided deforestation project gone haywire and wrong- It is generating carbon credits by preventing deforestation on a historically protected land. The other project called the Guinan Project, located in Guizhou Province, China, misappropriates a densely forested land as a barren land and claims afforestation on the same. Both of them, textbook examples of low quality carbon credit projects. Neither of them adhere to the basic parameter of additionality at the very first glance.

Carbon credits are truly a convenient way to offset a portion (I repeat, a portion of the emissions) but the trick has always remained in the quality of the credits. Faulty projects are everywhere, low quality projects willing to be sold at dime a dozen aplenty but they seldom do what they are supposed to do, which is actually offsetting GHG emissions. Merely buying carbon credits which are cheap and not vetted is just another case of greenwashing; but again, how far is the company responsible for this? It is only recently that the concept of carbon credits achieved a decent corporate acceptance. All these were as opaque as a piece of Osmium till only recently. Hence, holding a company solely responsible is probably not the ideal solution to this. A lot of corporate acceptance and awareness is yet to be done.

Additionally, of course, the importance of quality of carbon credits - why a proper vetting and quality assessment is required. Important to note that both the Chyulu hills project is registered with Verra and Verra has suspended generation of credit from the Guinan Project, thus questioning its integrity. According to Courthouse News Service, the plaintiffs argue that Apple cannot "hide behind Verra's certification of these projects," citing Federal Trade Commission regulations that state, "third-party certification does not eliminate a marketer's obligation to ensure that it has substantiation for all claims reasonably communicated by the certification.”

All these bring us to having a foolproof, humanised and robust assessment framework, rather than a tickmark approach by registries. A simple additionality check and a history check of these lands could have brought this flaw forward that this does not adhere to thai parameter.

We encourage companies to leverage carbon offsetting as part of their carbon management strategy, however, this should only be done in tandem with other decarbonisation efforts, there should be zero tolerance for low quality credits, and carbon credits should ideally be assessed by an independent company.