Reading: Yes / No / Not Given: Question 6

Voluntary carbon-offset markets, in which companies pay for tree-planting or renewable-energy projects to compensate for their own emissions, have expanded rapidly over the past decade, driven largely by corporate pledges to reach "net zero." Proponents present offsetting as a pragmatic bridge, allowing firms to fund emissions reductions elsewhere while they gradually decarbonise their own operations. This defence, however, does not withstand scrutiny. Independent audits of several large offset registries have found that a significant proportion of credited projects would have proceeded regardless of the additional funding, meaning the emissions they claim to have prevented were never genuinely at risk in the first place. A carbon credit sold on that basis represents no real reduction at all, yet it is treated by the purchasing company as equivalent to cutting a tonne of its own emissions.

More troubling still is the incentive structure the market creates. Once a company has purchased enough credits to declare itself "carbon neutral," the pressure to redesign supply chains, switch to cleaner energy sources or curb output largely evaporates; offsetting becomes a substitute for structural change rather than a supplement to it. Some environmental economists have countered that offsetting at least channels capital toward forest protection and renewable infrastructure that would otherwise struggle to attract investment, and that imperfect funding is better than none. That may be true in isolated cases, but it does not justify the market's current scale or the confidence with which "carbon neutral" labels are marketed to consumers.

None of this means every offset project is worthless. Schemes independently verified against rigorous additionality standards, where funding demonstrably enables a project that would not otherwise exist, do deliver genuine reductions and deserve support. The distinction that matters is not whether offsetting occurs but whether a specific project can prove the emissions cut was additional. Regulators have so far been reluctant to mandate such proof, preferring self-reported disclosures that offset providers themselves design. Until independent verification becomes compulsory rather than optional, voluntary carbon markets will keep providing companies with a reputational shortcut that does little to reduce the emissions actually entering the atmosphere.

Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer? Write YES, NO or NOT GIVEN.

1. The rapid growth of voluntary carbon-offset markets has mainly been fuelled by corporate net-zero commitments.
2. Audits found that only a small minority of credited offset projects would have proceeded without the offset funding they received.
3. Buying enough carbon credits tends to reduce a company's incentive to make deeper structural changes to its own operations.
4. Renewable-energy offset projects receive more funding worldwide than forest-protection offset projects.
5. Environmental economists first proposed the concept of carbon offsetting in the 1990s.
6. Regulators currently require independent proof that an offset project's emissions savings are additional before credits can be sold.
7. Offset projects that are independently verified against rigorous additionality standards can deliver genuine emissions reductions.