Since 2022, Shell has sold more than 20 cargoes of liquefied natural gas (LNG) as “carbon neutral” under a new industry-led standard. Climate Home News and Dialogue Earth can now reveal that this scheme has relied in part on “phantom” carbon credits that failed to cut emissions as claimed.
The energy giant shipped the fossil fuel to buyers in East Asia and beyond, some of whom in turn pitched the gas as a “net zero solution” to their customers thanks to Shell’s ‘green’ label.
Throughout its life-cycle – from extraction through transport and final use – LNG produces vast amounts of planet-heating carbon dioxide and methane emissions. But, using nearly 5 million carbon credits, Shell claimed to have cancelled out – on paper – the total carbon footprint of at least 23 of its LNG shipments delivered up to the end of 2023.
The projects propping up the oil and gas giant’s “carbon neutral” marketing drive included six that claimed to slash releases of methane gas from rice paddies across eastern China.
The emissions – purportedly avoided by introducing an improved crop irrigation method in the region – were meant to offset an equivalent amount of greenhouse gases caused by Shell’s LNG operations.
But earlier this year it became clear that the rice cultivation projects had not delivered the promised climate benefits. Leading carbon credit registry Verra axed them – along with 31 other similar schemes – in August after finding a string of failures in their implementation.
Now, new evidence gathered by Climate Home and Dialogue Earth casts serious doubt on whether any emissions-cutting activities were carried out on the ground at all.
Chinese local authorities meant to have played a crucial role in the schemes either denied their involvement or said no such efforts had taken place, according to statements made in response to disclosure requests submitted by a risk analysis firm and seen by Climate Home.
In addition, Dialogue Earth interviewed three rice farmers based in some of the project areas in China who said they had never heard of the carbon offset programmes and contradicted the project developers’ claims that new irrigation techniques had been rolled out there.
Recurring scandals
The findings raise questions about Verra’s broader ability to verify claims made by offset developers and to ensure the integrity of the thousands of projects issuing carbon credits on its platform, especially as the registry cuts back its workforce.
Jonathan Crook, a policy expert at Carbon Market Watch, an independent research group, said the “recurrence of such scandals in the market point to systemic and persistent issues”.
“Clearly there’s a major problem when projects actively manipulate data, which a supposedly rigorous audit process fails to detect, thereby erroneously generating millions of phantom credits for Shell to greenwash its LNG,” he told Climate Home.
A spokesperson for Verra said it had taken “decisive action at every level at which concerns were identified” with the rice farming projects. “Verra is committed to continual improvement, particularly as we address issues arising from inappropriate conduct,” they added.
Shell did not answer specific questions about Climate Home and Dialogue Earth’s findings in China, nor about its use of the suspect credits to deliver “carbon neutral” LNG. “We carefully source and screen the credits we purchase and retire from the market,” a spokesperson said, commenting more generally. “We’ve always been clear that carbon credits should have a verifiable carbon benefit and also deliver positive ecosystem and community impacts.”
Plan to curb methane from paddies
China’s eastern province of Anhui, a network of plains and hills traversed by the Yangtze River, is one of the country’s main rice-producing areas. Growing paddy crops provides a vital income for local farmers and strengthens the country’s food security.
But rice cultivation also has a significant negative impact on the climate. The flooding of paddies during growing seasons encourages the formation of bacteria. As the microbes feed on the organic matter abundant in the fields, they emit vast quantities of methane – a potent greenhouse gas.
To combat this problem, scientists came up with a relatively simple solution capable of cutting emissions by up to a half: instead of keeping the paddies flooded at all times, farmers could drain the fields periodically and, as a result, curtail the methane-releasing activity of the bacteria.
Farmers till rice fields and transplant rice seedlings in Anqing city, Anhui province, China, June 4, 2023. (Photo by CFOTO/Sipa USA)
In 2017, a Chinese agricultural technology company called Hefei Luyu launched a venture to roll out this climate-friendly irrigation method across Anhui province. It partnered with Shanghai-based consultancy Libra (now known as Search CO2), an early pioneer of China’s carbon market, and together they devised a plan to sell carbon credits from at least 10 rice cultivation projects.
Starting in late 2021, Shell got involved and gained what was described as “full agency” over the projects, becoming a broker of the credits generated by the activities after striking a series of deals with the developers.
Climate Home first revealed Shell’s role in the rice farming schemes in March 2023, alongside their risk of generating worthless offsets due to integrity problems such as over-counting emissions reductions and questionable practices used in their development.
Farmers deny involvement
One of the projects is located in the city of Tongcheng, where farmers were informed of the benefits of intermittent flooding and of the carbon credit scheme funding the innovation, according to documents submitted by Libra in 2021 when the developers registered the projects with Verra. Over 16,000 local farmers signed up to the scheme, Libra said.
But one farmer based in the project area told Dialogue Earth he had never heard of the carbon credit programme. He said local authorities did promote intermittent paddy flooding, alongside the rollout of a drought-resistant strain of rice, but the aim was simply to cope with limited access to water.
”No one mentioned emissions reduction or trading ever,” the farmer said, adding that the new method had not caught on widely in the area because of the lower rice yields it produces. Climate Home and Dialogue Earth granted anonymity to the farmers interviewed for this story due to the sensitive nature of the topic.
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In addition, the developers of the carbon credit scheme said cement ditches and reservoirs needed for the new irrigation method had been built in Tongcheng by early 2018, when the carbon crediting period started. But the farmer told Dialogue Earth that was not the case and the government hardened the channels only five years later, in 2023.
In nearby Yatan Town, which falls under a separate project linked to Shell, a different farmer said his village still uses traditional mud channels, despite the project documents claiming cement ditches were in operation there since 2017.
Government rejects developers’ claims
In all the project areas, developers including Hefei Luyu said they worked closely with local government bodies to sign up farmers to the initiative, provide training on the new irrigation technique and build key infrastructure, among other things.
Agricultural bureaus – an influential part of China’s state machinery – acted as the “main manager” in the construction phase of the different projects, according to near-identical documents submitted by Libra for the schemes.
But, when local authorities were asked about their involvement, a very different picture emerged. Ecoptima, an AI-driven risk intelligence agency, contacted more than 70 government authorities across China after its data analysis identified anomalies with the projects.
One of the responses sent by Chinese local government authorities
In written responses obtained by Ecoptima and seen by Climate Home, some local government agencies denied their involvement in the rice cultivation projects registered with Verra, while others said they had no knowledge of them.
Tongcheng’s Bureau of Agriculture and Rural Affairs said in July 2024 that it was “not currently included in this project, nor had authorisation been granted for the development of related enterprises”. It added that it held no records about the scheme.
The agricultural office for Wangjiang County, which has jurisdiction over Yatan Town, said it had “not carried out carbon reduction and measurement work related to rice production, and [had] not authorised enterprises to develop” any project.
Verra imposes sanctions
The evidence gathered by Climate Home and Dialogue Earth contrasts not only with the information supplied to Verra by the project developers, but also with assessments made by auditors responsible for verifying that the information provided is true and in compliance with the carbon standard’s rules.
Four auditing firms greenlit a total of 37 rice cultivation projects – including the Shell-linked ones – through to February 2023, when Verra suspended the schemes and started a review after becoming aware of concerns with how the rules were being applied.
More than 200 additional Chinese rice farming projects had also sought registration with Verra, but had not completed the process before Verra took action on those that had already been approved.
A farmer works on transplanting rice seedlings following days of heavy rainfall in China. REUTERS/Tingshu Wang
A Verra spokesperson told Climate Home that its subsequent 17-month investigation had brought to light an “unprecedented situation”. The carbon standard identified a long string of “serious issues”, including concerns about the accuracy of the baseline used to calculate emissions reductions and about the project activities claimed to have been implemented.
Verra also found weaknesses in the audits of the projects, with the companies that carried them out unable to fully explain how they had verified “independently and objectively” the credibility of the information provided by the project proponents.
The failures were so grave that, at the end of August this year, Verra revoked all the rice cultivation projects and announced “significant sanctions” against the project developers and the auditing firms involved.
The Verra spokesperson told Climate Home that if the auditors do not put “sufficient plans in place to prevent recurrence of these issues”, it may suspend them from conducting audits of other projects.
“Flawed” carbon market
Commenting on the case, Chauncey Wang, co-founder of Ecoptima, said it exposes “critical weaknesses” in the current system and pointed to the failure of auditors as “symptomatic of a deeper, persistent market flaw”.
“We’ve placed our trust in supposedly independent parties only to find that true independence is elusive in this market,” he told Climate Home.
Wang added that Ecoptima’s investigation into the rice projects revealed implementation challenges that could have been addressed through early detection.
Verra axing of Shell’s rice-farming carbon credits in China fuels integrity fears
Lambert Schneider, research coordinator for international climate policy at Germany’s Oeko-Institut, said the “limited oversight” of auditors is a “key concern” in the voluntary carbon market. Verification bodies are currently hired and paid directly by the project developers.
“Naturally, auditors do not want to lose their clients and this creates a conflict of interest,” Schneider told Climate Home. To tackle this, he suggested that carbon standards could themselves hire the auditors and the costs could be covered by project developers through carbon credit registration and issuance fees.
Greenwashing Shell’s emissions
By the time Verra cancelled the Chinese rice projects, more than 1.6 million credits generated by the projects had been used to offset the equivalent of the annual CO2 emissions of four gas-powered plants, according to a calculator provided by the US Environmental Protection Agency.
Shell emerged as the largest single user of the credits. In January, while Verra’s investigation was ongoing, the oil and gas major quietly retired over a million credits issued by the troubled projects. A carbon credit is retired when its owner declares that it has been used to mitigate emissions.
At least half of those retired credits helped prop up the company’s “carbon neutral” LNG campaign, according to a document published in June by Shell, which stated that the carbon credits “represent genuine and additional GHG [greenhouse gas] emissions reductions”.
Laurie van der Burg, global public finance manager for advocacy group Oil Change International, said it is “misleading” to claim LNG activities are “carbon neutral” by using carbon offsets. “It is simply an act of greenwashing,” she added.
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Other users of the phantom rice farming credits include Chinese state-owned fossil fuel firm PetroChina, Singapore-based DBS Bank and UK energy supplier OVO Energy.
A spokesperson for Verra said it had requested “full compensation” from developers for “all issued credits” from the revoked projects. Some compensation has already been “completed”, they added, without giving further details.
In response to a request for comment from Climate Home, Shell repeated a statement it first made in August, which said the company was “disappointed to learn of the issues Verra identified with these projects during their recent review” and indicated it would “continue to work closely with Verra to understand the impact of their findings”.
Industry ‘can’t be trusted’
Shell was not simply a final user of the sham credits but also had a direct stake in the projects. Starting in late 2021, the firm took on the role of “authorised representative” for the 10 schemes in Anhui, meaning it acquired all “applicable rights and responsibilities” equivalent to those of the project proponent, according to contracts seen by Climate Home.
But, in mid-October this year, nearly two months after Verra’s decision to cancel the credits, Chinese agritech firm Hefei Luyu sent a letter to the carbon standard notifying it of the “termination” of Shell’s role in the projects.
Shell has publicly signalled a broader intention to pull back from its direct involvement in carbon credit projects. Bloomberg reported last month that the company is looking to sell the majority of its carbon offsets business.
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Experts told Climate Home this latest scandal further undermined the carbon market’s credibility as a way of offsetting still-rising emissions from the extraction and consumption of fossil fuels.
Van der Burg of Oil Change said Shell had been caught out using “what in essence are fake carbon offsets” as “dangerous escape hatches” to justify the growth of its LNG business.
“This is yet another example showing that we really cannot trust the industry to make sure that those carbon credits are actually reducing emissions, and, instead, we should force them to address their pollution at source, by curtailing their fossil fuel production and sales,” she added.
This story was published in partnership with Dialogue Earth. Additional reporting was done by Shi Yi and Yuhan Niu.
(Reporting by Matteo Civillini; editing by Sebastián Rodríguez and Megan Rowling)
The post How Shell greenwashed gas with sham Chinese carbon credits appeared first on Climate Home News.
Amira Odeh Quiñones is a hydrologist and Caribbean organiser for the 350.org climate campaign group
El Niño, likely to be one of the strongest in modern history, has arrived on Caribbean shores.
Drought is slowly creeping up on our islands. But unlike the fiery wildfires ravaging parts of Europe, there’s no smoke signalling the damage being done, no sirens to warn of the danger. Only announcements from public health officials to stay indoors and remain hydrated — as if outdoor workers and farming communities have the luxury to heed such advice.
During El Niño, strong atmospheric winds alter rain patterns and trap heat across the Caribbean. But while we have experienced El Niño many times before, it has become very visible in recent years how climate change is making this natural phenomenon worse.
Across the Greater Antilles, temperatures are soaring past 38°C (100°F), with real-feel indexes reaching a gruelling 43°C in parts of Puerto Rico where I live. Cuba has it worse. Widespread power outages mean that methods for cooling down are unavailable for most of the day, leaving millions of vulnerable people at risk of heat stroke when temperatures hit 38°C.
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During the last strong drought a decade ago, I had water only two days a week in my home. Today, there are many families whose taps are about to run completely dry. Water authorities have already begun strict rationing in some municipalities, with more on the list scheduled for rationing if conditions don’t change.
Water rationing is far more than an inconvenience; it is an immediate health risk. This means thousands of people need to constantly haul heavy buckets up flights of stairs just so they could bathe, cook, stay hydrated – the basics of survival.
Heat causes health problems
Puerto Rico is home to roughly 300,000 elderly residents. Many live alone, isolated and without support. They risk severe physical injury when carrying heavy water containers, and are wont to suffer from silent heat exhaustion in unventilated rooms.
Furthermore, when water shortages force residents to store water in open household containers, it inadvertently creates breeding grounds for Aedes aegypti mosquitoes. Paired with scorching temperatures that tend to shorten the mosquito breeding cycle, the region is facing explosive outbreaks of dengue fever that endanger our most vulnerable: children and the elderly.
The economic fallout is equally devastating. Dry fields mean millions of dollars in lost crops, forcing small agricultural businesses to collapse, needing urgent government relief to survive. Extreme fuel shortages have already paralyzed Cuba’s agricultural sector, cutting food output by 60% – the El Niño dry spell threatens to decimate it.
At sea, warmer ocean waters fuel massive influxes of sargassum seaweed. Rotting sargassum chokes our beaches, destroying the local tourism industry that so many working families rely on. Tangled seaweed also damages nets and boat engines, slashing fish catches and driving up equipment costs for local fishers.
In the south of Puerto Rico, the coastal town of La Parguera is currently witnessing a historic amount of sargassum on its shores. This has halted most of the boating activity in the area, which is the seaside town’s main tourist draw and economic driver.
All over the Caribbean, from town halls to local group gatherings, the story I hear is always the same: constant headaches, lost work hours, failing health, and a sense that quality of life is silently being stolen. The compounding effects of heatwaves, drought, and marine destruction are exhausting our people, our islands.
Climate change to blame
Climate change makes each El Niño year hotter and more damaging. Higher baseline global temperatures increase the energy and moisture available for extreme weather. Latest projections show that El Niño may push the monthly global average temperature past 2°C of warming for the first time in early 2027. In the Caribbean islands, that will not just be breaking records – it’ll be breaking lives.
Recently, I had the opportunity to share a panel with climate scientists behind what is known as the field of “attribution science” – or the science that compares today’s climate conditions to what the Earth’s climate would be like without human activity, particularly burning fossil fuels. They’re unequivocal: it’s no longer a question of whether extreme weather is caused by climate change, it’s just a question of how much.
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Attribution science recently got a boost from the U.S.’ top scientific advisory body. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine recognized that researchers’ methods have advanced considerably in recent years, resulting in better assessments on how much extreme weather can be attributed to human-caused climate change. It noted that attribution findings could be relevant in some types of legal cases, including those seeking damages from oil companies for climate impacts.
This crisis, which is already taking a heavy toll on our communities’ survival, needs real, urgent, and structural action that goes beyond aid. With similar droughts now gripping parts of Asia and Africa, we’re falling into the familiar narrative of treating the looming humanitarian crisis as if no one was to blame, as if it is being caused solely by a natural phenomenon we can’t control.
It’s not. The world was already on fire before its regular visitor, El Niño, came. While we need humanitarian action, we need climate action too, in order to permanently put out the flames.
The post When taps run dry in the Caribbean, it’s not enough to blame El Niño appeared first on Climate Home News.
When taps run dry in the Caribbean, it’s not enough to blame El Niño
China has released a five-year plan dedicated to addressing climate change.
The 15th five-year plan for a national response to climate change is the latest in a series to outline in-depth climate and energy targets for the 2026-2030 period.
These include five-year plans for “building a Beautiful China”, developing a “new-type energy system” and developing renewable energy.
There are also separate “action plans” for the 2026-2030 period, such as for peaking carbon emissions.
China has pledged to peak its emissions before 2030 and reach carbon neutrality before 2060.
The new plan does not include any major new targets, instead consolidating and reaffirming existing policies.
Nevertheless, it includes significant signals on key policy areas, such as non-carbon dioxide (CO2) greenhouse gases, global climate governance and carbon markets.
Below, Carbon Brief examines some of the notable elements in the latest five-year plan and what it reveals about China’s policy direction through to 2030.
What does the climate plan cover?
The Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE) released the plan in late July, in unison with 18 other government departments. These include the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), China’s top economic planning agency, and the National Energy Administration.
The document covers a range of topics, including CO2 emissions, other greenhouse gases (non-CO2 GHGs), carbon markets, carbon footprints, climate adaptation and international cooperation on climate change.
For the first time at the five-year plan level, the plan creates a comprehensive target system covering all areas of climate policy, say officials in a MEE Q&A.
They describe it as “the main policy instrument” for advancing China’s climate action during 2026-2030.
China rarely issues high-level multi-year policies dedicated to “responding to climate change”. In 2014, the NDRC published a plan on the topic running through to 2020, but this was not linked to a five-year plan period.
Qin Yan, principal analyst at ClearBlue Markets, tells Carbon Brief that the plan shows that China’s climate governance has reached “an unprecedented strategic level”.
She adds that the plan creates an “all-encompassing target system” to support China’s Paris Agreement climate pledges for 2030 and 2035.
In its 2030 pledge, China aimed to peak emissions “before 2030” and reduce carbon intensity – its emissions per unit of GDP – by more than 65% from 2005 levels.
Last year, president Xi Jinping personally announced China’s 2035 pledge to cut China’s greenhouse gas emissions to 7-10% below peak levels by 2035, while “striving to do better”.
The five-year plan marks a new phase in China’s climate policy, according to researchers at CIB Research, an economic research body affiliated with the Industrial Bank, whose largest shareholder is the Fujian provincial government.
Their analysis adds that the plan represents a broad effort to strengthen China’s climate-governance system, implementation mechanisms and underlying capacity.
Nevertheless, several headline targets and policies in the document simply reiterate already established plans.
These include:
- Cutting carbon intensity by 17% across the five years
- Reducing carbon intensity per product in industries under China’s carbon market by 3%
- Substituting fossil fuels with renewables
- Strengthening climate adaptation
- Supporting the “free flow” of cleantech
What does the plan say about non-CO2 GHGs?
The plan also goes into detail on China’s approach to non-CO2 GHGs. This includes reaffirming a target of an emissions “reduction capacity” from these gases totalling 30m tonnes of CO2 equivalent (MtCO2e) by 2030, although the baseline is unclear.
The target previously appeared in the overarching five-year plan, as well as the plan for building a “Beautiful China”.
The goal refers to emissions reductions, which can be realised through implementing current non-CO2 emissions reduction policies and projects, says Chen Meian, programme director and senior analyst at the Institute for Global Decarbonization Progress (iGDP).
She adds that it is “relatively achievable”, with sources including increasing the number of coal-mine methane utilisation projects.
She points to an MEE explanatory note for a draft methodology under the China Certified Emission Reduction (CCER) scheme, China’s voluntary carbon-credit market. Chen says the note suggests that projects using ventilation air methane and coal-mine methane with concentrations below 8% alone could deliver around 20MtCO2e of reduction by 2030.
The note states that, currently, such projects are estimated to be able to “generate annual emission reductions of approximately 4.5MtCO2e”.
In addition, Chen says, measures targeting industrial nitrous oxide (N2O) and hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) could help make up the remainder needed to meet the target.
According to iGDP analysis of biennial reports submitted by China to the UNFCCC, China emitted around 14,000MtCO2e of GHGs in 2021, excluding land use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF).
Non-CO2 GHGs accounted for around 2,700MtCO2e, or 19%, of the total, the majority of which was methane, as shown in the figure below.
China’s plans to curb these super-pollutants in the five-year period include coal-mine methane utilisation projects, end-of-pipe destruction technologies for HFCs and guidance on the use of catalysts to reduce N2O emissions.
The plan also calls for the recovery and replacement of sulphur hexafluoride (SF6) in power equipment.
For Chen, the plan’s focus on SF6 control is particularly noteworthy. She says the gas is “finally receiving policy attention” and that proactive action is “timely and will help avoid future emissions growth” as China’s power system expands.
What does the plan say about global climate governance?
One of the plan’s clearest objectives for international cooperation is for China to play a more active role in global climate governance.
By 2030, it says China should markedly increase its “influence, guiding power, shaping power and moral appeal” in this area.
It says China’s climate action could also feed into the Global Governance Initiative, a policy initiative aimed at reforming the global governance system.
China will also aim to “build a new narrative on climate governance”, it adds.
Prof Thomas Hale, a professor in public policy at the University of Oxford’s Blavatnik School of Government, writes on LinkedIn that the plan “marks a major rhetorical shift” towards China being increasingly willing to “lead and shape” global climate action.
Another clear focal point for international cooperation is in carbon markets.
The plan calls for China to expand the global influence of its carbon market, such as through international rule-setting, cooperation on standards and by hosting the China Carbon Market Conference.
Qin says China’s more active role in global carbon pricing is already evident in the launch of the open coalition on compliance carbon markets with the EU and Brazil. This coalition is expected to adopt a work plan at the China Carbon Market Conference in September.
Qin also notes that China “could become the world’s largest [carbon] offset buyer” as its energy transition progresses.
The country would, therefore, “benefit from helping shape global rules under the Article 6 framework [for carbon trading under the Paris Agreement]”, she adds.
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The post Q&A: What is in China’s new five-year plan for climate change? appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Q&A: What is in China’s new five-year plan for climate change?
About a quarter of the countries signed up to the Paris Agreement are still breaching its rules by failing to submit a new national climate plan, 18 months after the February 2025 deadline.
Forty-five nations had not submitted a plan known as a nationally determined contribution (NDC), according to the Paris Agreement Implementation and Compliance Committee’s (PAICC) newly-published report of its 7-10 July 2026 meeting. One, Oman, has published it since the meeting.
Twelve countries ignored the committee’s repeated attempts to find out why they had not yet produced a climate plan, the report said. They will be invited to the committee’s next meeting, from September 1-4, so it can identify the challenges and constraints they face.
Members of the committee are divided, as they were at their last meeting, on whether to name those countries publicly and will debate the question again in September.
The PAICC does not have any power to punish governments, as building these powers into the Paris Agreement was thought to be so controversial that it could have stopped some governments from joining, experts have previously told Climate Home News.
A key requirement of the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement is that governments publish a more ambitious NDC every five years, setting targets to reduce their planet-heating emissions and outlining their policies to adapt to climate change, in order to meet the accord’s goals on limiting global warming and protecting people from its effects.
The latest set – the third round of plans, with new targets for 2035 – was due in 2025.
Some medium-sized emitters
Countries without an updated NDC include Egypt, Vietnam, Argentina and the Phillippines, all of which rank among the world’s 40 largest greenhouse gas emitters. The rest of the countries are smaller, poorer nations, with many in Africa or the Caribbean.
Some nations have argued that they cannot put together an NDC – which requires a significant amount of work in tracking emissions and consulting on how to curb them across the economy – because of exceptional circumstances. For example, a letter from a Sudanese official to the PAICC committee, seen by Climate Home News, says that the country’s civil war has led to the suspension of its NDC preparation.
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The US and Iran are not signed up to the Paris Agreement, although the US submitted a 2035 NDC under the Biden administration before Donald Trump pulled the US out of the UN climate accords.
The committee also expressed concern that the UN’s NDC registry continued to label the climate plans of countries that are no longer party to the Paris Agreement as “active”, according to its report. The US submission has since been archived.
Since the last PAICC meeting in March, ten countries have published NDCs. The committee did not name them but they include India, Algeria, Cameroon and Guyana.
The post Quarter of countries still missing UN climate plans 18 months after deadline appeared first on Climate Home News.
Quarter of countries still missing UN climate plans 18 months after deadline
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