ROYAL family events, major UK sporting occasions, airlines and English councils have used Scottish land to clean up their carbon emissions, despite claims such “offsets” are a “greenwashing scam” and harm land reform efforts.
Analysis by The Ferret has found carbon credits, or “offsets”, produced by trees planted in Scotland have been bought by events including motorsport rallies, Queen Elizabeth’s state funeral and her Platinum Jubilee.
Other buyers include British Airways, councils in Devon and Norwich, luxury fashion brand Burberry and the UK arm of a Silicon Valley tech firm.
Buying carbon credits theoretically “offsets” carbon emissions created by events and companies by funding tree-planting and peatland projects that absorb CO2 from the atmosphere. The credits are supposed to be used to mop up an organisation’s unavoidable emissions.
However, an MSP and a former boss of Scotland’s environment watchdog said buying carbon credits was the “easy, short-term option” for organisations, unless they had “exhausted all possibility of reducing their own emissions”.
The use of carbon credits is “a greenwashing scam” that “does nothing to cut carbon pollution”, one green campaigner argued.
Companies do not have to buy the credits and some do so because of a genuine commitment to protecting the environment. The firms and events who bought Scotland-generated credits told The Ferret that offsets were only a small part of the actions they were taking to reduce their climate impacts.
We found that Ascot Racecourse, in Berkshire, bought Scottish credits to compensate for emissions produced by a “net-zero enclosure” at its famous Royal Ascot event. The London Marathon purchased them to make up for pollution produced by international travel to the race.
Upmarket pizza oven company Ooni also bought credits, partly to make up for emissions produced by its own anniversary celebrations.
Once redeemed, each credit permits its owner to emit one tonne of CO2, because the equivalent amount has been absorbed. Some believe carbon credits will play an important role in tackling the climate crisis, by attracting money into projects to revive nature and capture carbon.
But in Scotland, there are also concerns about how competition for sites to produce the credits is driving up rural land prices, potentially shutting out local communities from owning land. A 2023 study found that ownership of Scotland’s forests is becoming increasingly dominated by wealthy estates, investors and absentee owners who live outside Scotland.
Swathes of land across the country are currently earmarked for tree-planting and peatland restoration projects which will generate offsets. Some landowners who sell carbon credits do so with the aid of millions of pounds of taxpayer subsidies and a wide range of tax relief, as we detailed in February.
Our new findings come from analysis of a public register of carbon credits assigned to organisations in the past three years.
The Ferret’s previous research, in 2022, found weapons manufacturers, the Labour Party and financial institutions that poured billions of pounds into fossil fuels were among those buying Scottish carbon credits. They were generated on land owned by Scotland’s richest man, private equity companies and property firms.
That followed the revelation in 2020 that senior Scottish Government forestry officials feared that a £5 million tree-planting deal with Shell – which earns carbon credits for the oil giant – could be viewed as “greenwashing”.
Most of the credits sold over the past few years are known as “pending issuance units” (PIUs), which cannot be used to offset emissions immediately because planted trees are not yet mature. In fact, some might not be ready until the early 22nd century. The average PIU was estimated to cost £23.30, according to the Woodland Carbon Code.
The register only includes the sale of credits to companies who agree to be named publicly, so some buyers may remain secret.
The number of trees planted to generate a credit depends on a range of factors including the location and tree type, but one European offsetting agency puts the number at 31 to 46 trees.
Who’s buying Scotland’s carbon credits?
THE biggest known buyer of carbon credits produced in Scotland since April 2022 is Sky Group – the parent firm of Sky News. It was assigned 49,400 credits set to be produced by a tree-planting project near Bridge of Ericht, Perthshire.
Sky says it is focused on cutting the emissions from its operations before it buys carbon credits and that it plans to reduce the amount it offsets as the company decarbonises.
Salesforce, a cloud-based software firm headquartered in Silicon Valley, bought 6507 credits from a tree-planting scheme on a former upland sheep farm in the Scottish Borders, called Talla and Gameshope, and Maryfield Farm near Banchory, Aberdeenshire.
Devon County Council secured 5151 credits from Woodland Trust plantations at Craigengillan, East Ayrshire, and Caplich, near Invergordon, while Norwich City Council bought 929 credits from the Moffat-based Selcoth Forestry.
Spanish-owned bank Santander acquired 3566 credits from a project at Delnadamph, part of the Balmoral Estate, which is owned by the King. It said buying offsets “play a role in mitigating” the bank’s pollution as it decarbonises and that emissions from its operations had more than halved since 2019.
Luxury fashion brand Burberry bought up 1599 credits from Scottish and English sites.
Credits produced by an East Ayrshire tree plantation will be used to offset emissions from the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee and state funeral in 2022, the 2023 Royal Ascot and “international travel” related to the 2022 and 2023 London Marathons.
The same forestry project, Montgreenan near Kilwinning, will generate credits sold to British Airways, a firm behind two music festivals in London, and the University of Glasgow.
‘Greenwashing scam’?
REACTING to our findings, James Curran, who was chief executive of the Scottish Environment Protection Agency between 2012 and 2015, argued that organisations should only use carbon credits “when they have exhausted all possibility of reducing their own emissions”.
“Otherwise, it’s just taking the easy, short-term option,” he said.
“Carbon markets, along with government grants and generous tax breaks, are driving some really bad practices – for example extensive Sitka spruce planting, an alien invasive species that offers very little nature benefit or amenity value,” argued Curran.
“Also, in many instances, there is less carbon uptake than might be expected.”
He called for “root and branch reform” of the carbon credit market, with more scrutiny from regulators.
Campaign group Friends of the Earth Scotland branded carbon credits and offsetting a “greenwashing scam”.
“Tackling the climate crisis requires all big polluters to rapidly cut their emissions but offsetting enables polluters to keep on polluting then simply pay for someone else to plant a few trees in their name,” argued the group’s head of campaigns, Caroline Rance.
“It is deeply alarming to see large swathes of land being designated or sold off for carbon offsetting – capturing rural land to protect corporate interest and pricing people out of their communities.”
Scottish Greens co-leader Patrick Harvie also raised concerns, claiming there was a “long history of carbon credits, offsets and other ‘workarounds’ being used instead of direct action to cut emissions”.
He added: “The simple reality is that we cannot all pay someone else to cut emissions for us, so reliance on carbon credits will always risk making inequality worse, by allowing the wealthy to keep polluting.”
Community Land Scotland said that while carbon credits can help to reach net zero and allow rural communities to generate income, some investors may use the initiative to avoid reducing their carbon footprint.
“The market for carbon credits is still fine-tuning its business model, but as these processes are refined, it is likely that there could be large numbers of organisations and events chasing a finite number of carbon credits on the moors and hillsides,” said a spokesperson.
“In turn, this could ultimately further increase land prices, effectively excluding the communities that live in these areas.
“Carbon credits need to be controlled and not used as a means to avoid more difficult environmentally-friendly choices.”
Those buying carbon credits generated in Scotland stressed they were making efforts to reduce their emissions.
Pizza oven-maker Ooni said it focuses on “reducing our carbon emissions at source”, invests in “credible, permanent carbon removals that are informed by science” and seeks “opportunities to create a positive social impact”.
The London Marathon said it was striving to reach net zero by 2030, primarily by reducing emissions, and had been recognised by the Council for Responsible Sport. A spokesperson said some emissions were more difficult to reduce, including travel, but a £31 levy on international participants had been introduced.
“This is then used in full to purchase high-quality carbon removal credits which is recognised as best practice by multiple climate action organisations and the UK Government’s net zero strategy,” they added.
Ascot Racecourse pointed to significant decreases in carbon emissions and waste at the site, and said its recycling rate had risen. Its website says the course is “constantly adapting” to become more sustainable.
All companies and events named in this story were contacted for comment.
