Global Charities Say Using Companies’ Carbon Offsets to Lower Emissions Undermines Climate Targets
Greenpeace, Amnesty International and Oxfam are among over 80 charities arguing that using carbon offsets delays climate action
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More than 80 global charities and climate industry bodies are voicing their opposition to the use of carbon offsets by companies and countries to lower their carbon emissions, saying that implementing those projects only delays climate action.
Charities including Oxfam, Greenpeace and Amnesty International as well as industry bodies and pressure groups like the European Federation for Transport and Environment and NewClimate Institute signed a letter on Tuesday urging companies to stick to scientifically backed methods to lower carbon emissions and in particular for the Science Based Targets Initiative and the Greenhouse Gas Protocol to continue to exclude carbon offsets from their methodologies on how companies can lower emissions.
“Climate targets must focus primarily on reduction of greenhouse gas emissions within companies’ and countries’ own boundaries, including the phasing out of fossil fuel production, transport, sale and use,” the letter said.
“An urgent scale-up of financial support from both public and private actors is needed for this. But allowing companies and countries to meet climate commitments with carbon credits is likely to slow down global emission reductions while failing to provide anything like the scale of funds needed in the Global South, and reducing pressure to develop large-scale mechanisms such as ‘polluter pays’ fees on emission-intensive sectors,” it added.
Scrutiny of carbon offsets has grown in recent months after the SBTi, a nonprofit organisation that helps companies set targets for lowering emissions, said in April it was considering allowing carbon offsets to be part of the tool kit companies could use to reduce their impacts on the environment. That decision had been in opposition to its longstanding policy of excluding offsets, resulting in backlash from within the organisation itself as well as partner companies like Hennes & Mauritz , better known as H&M.
However, companies in industries from technology to mining argue that offsets are key to reducing private-sector emissions and moving to net zero. Microsoft for example has spent hundreds of millions on carbon offset projects, arguing that without doing so the company wouldn’t be able to move to net zero, especially over its indirect emissions.
“It is about creating a market for high-quality high-integrity durable carbon-removal assets,” said Melanie Nakagawa, Microsoft’s chief sustainability officer in a recent interview . “Think about sequestering carbon into the soils using enhanced rock weathering or rocks that are absorbing carbon that is being turned into concrete. Or Mombak, which is a large forestry project in Brazil. These are the ways that we think about applying it.”
In May, the U.S. government also gave its backing for the voluntary carbon market , saying that “high-integrity” voluntary carbon markets can play a role in reaching net-zero emissions globally.
The letter added that offsetting “at best, doesn’t reduce the concentration of GHGs in the atmosphere, it simply moves emission reductions from one place to another.” The charities also argued that allowing offsets to grow means that high-emitting activities are able to carry on.
To add to this, the charities and industry bodies said that there are only so many high-quality projects that can be used to reduce emissions, meaning that demand is likely to outstrip supply. They also questioned offsets’ effectiveness, saying that their use could just lead to deforestation in other areas or lead to social and environmental harm.
“The science clearly shows that offsets fail to deliver additional emissions reductions and are an unreliable tool for fighting the climate crisis,” the groups added.
A spokesperson for SBTi said that the organisation is still in the research phase of its policy revision. “The Corporate Net-Zero Standard hasn’t been changed, and it cannot and will not change until the Standard Operating Procedure for the revision of the Corporate Net-Zero Standard has been completed,” the spokesperson said.
Microsoft didn’t respond to a request for comment.
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Gold miners are emerging as a compelling way to navigate market uncertainty, with analysts pointing to strong cash flows, attractive valuations and rising profit margins. As gold prices stabilize above US$4,000 an ounce, mining stocks could offer investors both downside protection and long-term upside.
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Gold is one of the market’s go-to hedges in rocky times. Don’t forget that gold miners’ stocks are too.
The stock market’s gains in 2026 belie the rocky macroeconomic picture: elevated inflation, heightened geopolitical tensions, and jitters about the artificial-intelligence trade. That backdrop, in theory, should be the time for gold to shine. Instead, the price of the yellow metal has tumbled more than 5% so far, after last year’s blistering 65% rally. In part, the U.S. dollar’s recovery has stymied gold, which benefited from the greenback’s weakness in 2025.
Even with the precious metal’s recent weakness, gold mining stocks could be the best way to profit from this year’s uncertainty.
Gold miners “are a valuable hedge against macro risks that would likely be damaging for equities,” BCA Research’s Noah Weisberger and Rishabh Shah wrote this week.
Concerns about the Federal Reserve’s next moves to tackle inflation, the increasingly crowded AI trade, and steep valuations for tech stocks are just some of the drivers that could help gold’s price get on even footing— and lead to even bigger gains for miner stocks.
These stocks’ prices tend to outpace gold’s moves, because the companies have fixed operational costs. So when gold’s price rallies, their profit margins soar, and vice versa. For instance, the VanEck Gold Miners GDX +7.39% exchange-traded fund has fallen 11% this year as the metal has slumped.
Now, gold’s price just needs to stabilize to help miners’ stocks take off, and that seems to be happening. The precious metal has recently found support above the $4,000 level, and has stuck in a narrow range since the end of June. But its price rose ever so slightly in July, ending a four-month losing streak for the metal. Technical analysis also suggests that gold is due for a comeback.
Barron’s recently wrote that the pullbacks for both gold miners and the metal itself are overdone. Senior technical analyst Doug Busch noted that the VanEck ETF is on the “verge of a breakout” and has the potential to hit $11o in early 2027, up more than 40% from its current price.
Gold miners also have more than their role as a market hedge going for them. Their fundamentals are solid, too, says Chris Mancini, portfolio co-manager of the Gabelli Gold Fund.
“Precious metals miners are generating substantial amounts of free cash flow given profit margins of over $2,000 per ounce, and are returning this cash to shareholders through buybacks and dividends,” he said in an email.
“Buying the miners is a cheap way to get exposure to the price of gold,” he added. His fund owns Newmont NEM +6.71%, a Barron’s stock pick last year, and Agnico Eagle Mines as top holdings, as well as miners Northern Star Resources, Endeavour Mining, and Kinross Gold K+8.59%.
Miners are better businesses than they used to be, the BCA team added.
“Capex is more disciplined, margins are high and rising…and they are largely independent of the AI story,” Weisberger, BCA’s head of equities, and Shah, a senior analyst, wrote.
That last part is key. AI is disrupting the software industry and many other services and information-oriented businesses, and investors have piled into AI stocks. But ChatGPT, Claude, Grok, and other large-language models aren’t going to replace the need to mine for metals.
“Equity portfolios can benefit from exposure to quality that is uncorrelated to AI risk, and gold miners fit the bill,” the BCA team said.
They recommend that investors buy the VanEck Gold Miners ETF, which owns top miners such as Agnico, Barrick Mining ABX +7.24%, and Newmont.
An important bonus for big gold miners’ stocks is that their valuations are attractive after the gold’s pullback, too. The VanEck ETF is now trading at just a little more than nine times next year’s earnings estimates. That’s a big discount to its five-year average price-to-earnings ratio of 14, according to FactSet.
What’s more, the ETF is currently valued at a more than 50% discount to the S&P 500 SPX -0.17%, which is trading for about 19 times earnings estimates for 2027. Mining stocks have typically traded at just a 25% discount to the broader market over the past five years. So there is significant upside for the group if valuations move back toward normal levels.
One factor that complicates mining stocks as a market hedge, of course, is if stocks bounce back, which has been the case so far in August.
But both the market and economic outlooks remain cloudy, and investors remain nervous about the Fed’s next moves and AI stocks. Gold miners should do just fine, even if the anxious mood on Wall Street persists.
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