Buyers use carbon offsets to compensate for their emissions, but analysis shows at least half of those bought last year likely fail to do that job.
Photographer: Krisztian Bocsi/BloombergCompanies Are Dropping Carbon Offsets, But Still Buying the Worst Ones
Purchases of carbon offsets fell for the first time in at least a decade last year, according to an analysis of 260,000 publicly available transactions.
Carbon offsets once looked primed for unstoppable growth. Analysts had forecast that the credits, which claim to wipe out a ton of emissions, would be worth hundreds of billions of dollars in the coming years. But companies are starting to cool on the market as it faces increasingly sharp criticism from scientists and experts.
Purchases by banks, airlines, industrial heavyweights and other businesses fell for the first time last year, according to Bloomberg Green’s analysis of data in three public registries covering more than 260,000 transactions since 2010. The 17% drop in demand for all offsets in 2022 from 2021 doesn’t reflect the impact from more negative events this year, such as the collapse of the world’s second-biggest project and revelations of questionable practices within the unregulated industry.