"“Shameful”: Shell uses carbon credits under investigation to meet climate targets", 2 February 2023

"Oil and gas giant Shell is counting discredited carbon credits towards its climate goals, drawing accusations of “bad faith” and “malintent”.

Last month, Shell used rice farming carbon credits to offset a chunk of its annual emissions, claiming to reduce the “carbon intensity” of its fossil fuel products.

But experts have long argued that the sellers of these offsets are over-counting their emissions reductions and using accounting tricks to evade checks, as a Climate Home investigation showed last year.

These accusations led leading carbon standard Verra to suspend the projects early last year and launch an investigation. Shell took them off its website as a result.

But, although Verra’s review continues, on January 9 Shell quietly retired over a million credits produced by the suspended projects, meaning it counts the claimed emissions reductions towards its climate targets....

Carbon Market Watch’s Jonathan Crook said Shell should have at least waited until Verra’s review had ended to see if there were problems with the offsets.

If the offsets do have problems then, he added, they “have no value from a climate perspective and using them towards net carbon intensity targets is totally inappropriate”.

Shell did not reply to detailed questions on these particular offsets. But a spokesperson said that the credits the company buys are “certified in accordance with independent standards and further screened through our due diligence process”....

The spokesperson said Verra does not comment on specific projects under review to avoid influencing the outcome of the investigation.

“The steps in a review, as well as the timeline for completing the review, depend on the underlying facts and circumstances, the complexity of the issues, the cooperation of third parties and other factors”, they said.

“A review may take several weeks or months to complete,” they added, “while every review is different, Verra aims to conduct an appropriately scoped review as expeditiously as possible.”

A spokesperson for Shell said: “We retire credits to compensate emissions, including those associated with the energy our customers use in transport, homes, producing goods and providing services. This approach complements our activities to avoid and reduce emissions from our own operations”."