Carbon offsets have only sometimes worked. Investigations starting in 2023 found that a major credit registry's rainforest offset credits were largely ineffective, with most not representing genuine additional emission reductions. The problem isn't fringe but affects the bulk of offsets being sold.
Did offsets ever actually work? Now, the question I get asked the most often is, did offsets ever actually remove carbon in the first place? The honest answer: sometimes. Not always. And the gap between the two has been the whole problem. Investigations from 2023 onwards into rainforest credits from one of the world's biggest credit registries found that the large majority of those credits did not represent real additional emission reductions. Read that again. The majority, not a fringe minority, the bulk of what was being sold.
