With voluntary carbon markets, it’s still buyer beware

IN 2012, before it became trendy for companies to make “net-zero” or “carbon-neutral” promises, Jebsen & Jessen Group was already buying carbon credits to voluntarily offset its carbon footprint.

The Singapore-based industrial group’s chairman, Heinrich Jessen, a biologist by training, had championed it as an extension of the family enterprise’s long-running efforts to cut the business’ impact on the environment to a minimum.

But despite having spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on these voluntary offset carbon credits since, Jessen confessed that there is “always that little devil at the back of (his) head” questioning if these credits – each supposedly representing a tonne of carbon that has been permanently avoided or removed from the atmosphere – are bona fide.