‘Worthless’: Chevron’s carbon offsets are mostly junk and some may harm, research says - The Guardian

A new investigation into Chevron’s climate pledge has found the fossil-fuel company relies on “junk” carbon offsets and “unviable” technologies, which do little to offset its vast greenhouse gas emissions and in some cases may actually be causing communities harm.

Chevron, which reported $35.5bn in profits last year, is the US’s second-largest fossil fuel company with operations stretching from Canada and Brazil to the UK, Nigeria and Australia.

New research by Corporate Accountability, a non-profit, transnational corporate watchdog, found that 93% of the offsets Chevron bought and counted towards its climate targets from voluntary carbon markets between 2020 and 2022 were too environmentally problematic to be classified as anything other than worthless or junk.

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Many of Chevron’s offset purchases focus on forests, plantations or large dams.

According to the report shared exclusively with the Guardian, almost half of Chevron’s “worthless” offsets are also linked to alleged social and environmental harms – mostly in communities in the global south, which are also often the most affected by the climate crisis.

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Chevron’s projected emissions between 2022 and 2025 are equivalent to the emissions from 364 coal-fired power plants annually – and dwarf the total emissions of 10 European countries combined for a similar three-year period: Austria, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Denmark, Lithuania, Slovenia, Estonia, Latvia and Iceland.

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Earlier this year, a Guardian investigation revealed that the forest carbon offsets approved by Verra, the world’s leading certifier which is used by Disney, Gucci, Shell and Chevron, are mostly junk and could make global heating worse.

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