SINGAPORE- Big oil and gas companies in China and elsewhere are using low-quality carbon offsets to “greenwash” their imports of natural gas while failing to make strong emissions cutting commitments, environment group Greenpeace said on Monday.
Firms like PetroChina and CNOOC Gas and Power have signed long-term contracts with Shell to buy “carbon neutral” liquefied natural gas (LNG), which uses “forest offsets” to balance out carbon emissions.
Greenpeace, which has long opposed fossil fuel producers counting carbon offsets toward their emissions reduction goals, said the “carbon neutral” branding was misleading the public.
“For oil and gas companies in particular, carbon offsets are a smokescreen to obscure their continued, redoubled carbon emissions,” said Li Jiatong, project leader with Greenpeace in Beijing.
PetroChina didn’t respond to a request for comment. CNOOC Oil and Gas’s parent company said it was not itself involved in LNG purchases. Shell declined to comment on Greenpeace’s report.
Many of the offsets were not being measured consistently and sometimes were being double counted, Greenpeace said. And some forests tied to offset schemes were vulnerable to fires that could turn them into a carbon source, rather than a carbon sink.
Greenpeace said credits from 15 forestry carbon sink projects in China, involving Shell, PetroChina, CNOOC and other companies, have already been banked, but 80 percent of the projects planted trees that are at medium- to high-risk of burning down. – Reuters
