06 March 2026
Boston, United
States — An investigation published today in the
Wall
Street Journal reveals that more than 140 corporations
were allowed to claim carbon offsets credits from one of the
world’s largest projects hosted by Verra in Brazil,
despite the fact that the project was under investigation
for claims regarding its legitimacy. Corporations such as
BlackRock, Mastercard, and Phillip Morris
International were allowed to retire and count
these credits towards their emissions-reducing activities
while the project was suspended. Evidence suggests that the
project may have been illegitimate from its establishment,
due to claims that it was located on public lands where it
did not have a legal right to operate. The Wall Street
Journal investigation was based in part on research
conducted by Corporate Accountability.
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Additional research
by Corporate Accountability released today reveals that
over 70% of all carbon credits recently retired in Brazil
are “problematic” and cannot be counted on to deliver
their promised emissions reductions. The researchers
examined the top 50 carbon offset projects in Brazil between
January 2024 and June 2025 — which are also among the
largest projects globally — and found that millions of
these problematic offsets were retired by multinational
corporations and counted towards their emissions reductions
despite not being likely to deliver.
The research
shows that 32 of the top 50 carbon offsets projects in
Brazil are unlikely to reduce emissions. These projects
retired 15.7 million carbon offsets credits between January
2024 and June 2025. This means that a substantial portion of
the offsets from these projects that corporations were
counting towards their emissions reductions were likely
doing little to nothing to reduce emissions. All of this
while communities around the world face worsening
floods, droughts, and extreme weather — as well as
systemic violence fueled and enabled by some of the
world’s largest corporate polluters in places like Palestine,
Sudan,
Venezuela, Iran
and elsewhere.
Verra,
the world’s largest carbon credit certifier, hosts 23 of the
32 problematic projects in Brazil, which accounts for 12.8
million carbon offsets credits retired between January 2024
and June 2025. Despite promises of reform amidst repeated integrity
concerns, Verra appears to continue to host projects
that are not proven to deliver real and lasting emissions
reductions. The Clean Development Mechanism hosts the
remaining nine problematic projects, accounting for 2.9
million offsets retired during this period. The Clean
Development Mechanism has a history of hosting projects that
lack real emissions reductions and has been estimated to
actually increase global emissions by 6.1
billion tons of carbon dioxide through approval of empty
offsets.
“Carbon offsets have failed to lead to
a decrease in global greenhouse gas emissions,” said
Rachel Rose Jackson, Director of Climate Research and Policy
at Corporate Accountability. “Meanwhile, the claims of
harm to communities and ecosystems caused by these projects
continue to pile up. Yet again, the evidence suggests that
those promoting and profiting off these projects cannot be
counted on to help protect the planet. With life at stake,
who is liable for the continued failures of these projects
and the carbon market more broadly? And how many more times
do we need to see evidence of their failure before we
reorient towards more meaningful and proven solutions that
reduce emissions and keep fossil fuels in the
ground?”
Corporate
Accountability’s research also revealed that many
major international corporations across sectors have retired
offsets from these problematic Brazil-based projects.
Petrobras retired nearly 200,000 credits
from these problematic projects during the research period.
Shell retired approximately 66,500 credits,
and Equinor nearly 21,000.
BlackRock retired 137,000 problematic
credits from these projects.
Consulting firms also
made significant use of these questionable offsets.
EY retired nearly 179,000 credits from
problematic Brazil projects. BCG retired around 90,000
credits. KPMG and Deloitte
each retired around 5,500 credits. Other corporations using
these problematic offsets include Barilla, Philip
Morris, Uber, SWIFT, Mastercard, S&P Global, Engie,
Yamaha Motor, and Dell.
The voluntary carbon
market is predicted to grow significantly in coming years.
Climate advocates, academics, communities, and experts are
calling for immediate action to reverse the harms and
failures of the carbon market, and to course-correct to real
solutions that will put us on a proven pathway to Real Zero
emissions.
Carlos Augusto Pantoja Ramos, a Forestry
Engineer and PhD student at the Amazonian Institute of
Family Agriculture, Federal University of Pará in Brazil,
has worked extensively with communities impacted by carbon
offsets projects. He explained that it is not the
communities near projects like Pacajaí that have benefitted
from these projects. “The attempt to capture public and
common goods, such as land, by projects…such as Pacajaí,
can intensify the concentration of income in the hands of a
few corporations and institutional investors, deepening the
severe social inequality in regions like the Amazon. This
reveals disproportionate gain relationships between the
parties involved, many of whom lack the structure and/or
technical knowledge to assert their rights.”
The
briefing expands upon the findings of “Built
to Fail?: World’s Largest Carbon Offset Projects Unlikely to
Deliver Promised Emissions Reductions Despite Reforms”
and looks specifically at the largest carbon offsets
projects located in Brazil. Despite their failures, carbon
markets continue to be promoted as a central pillar of
climate action. “Built
to Fail?“ found that 47.7 million problematic
offset credits were retired through 43 of the world’s
largest offset projects in 2024. That volume represents
nearly one-quarter of the entire voluntary carbon market in
2024. Many of the largest offsets projects in Brazil are
also some of the largest offsets projects in the voluntary
carbon market
globally.
