Brussels’ latest climate debate has thrown cold water on one of the EU’s more convenient illusions — that it can meet its ambitious climate targets without doing most of the heavy lifting at home through “International Offsets”.
A new report from the European Scientific Advisory Board on Climate Change (ESABCC) could not be clearer: international carbon offsets are no substitute for real, domestic emissions cuts.
It’s a damning assessment, not just of policy but of political courage.
As Europe eyes a 90–95% cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2040, the temptation among some Member States to reach for international credits — in effect, paying others to reduce emissions on their behalf — is as strong as it is misguided. But the science is now definitive. Offsets are, to borrow the Board’s own phrasing, a “significant risk” to environmental integrity. Worse, they’re mostly ineffective. Of all credits issued globally, just 16% have delivered genuine emissions reductions. The rest? Creative accounting at best, outright fraud at worst.
The report doesn’t mince words. Relying on these dubious schemes, the ESABCC warns, would not only undermine Europe’s climate credibility but also shortchange its own economic transition. When money is funnelled abroad to buy paper emissions reductions, it is not being invested in modernising Europe’s energy systems, greening its infrastructure, or equipping workers with the skills needed in a post-carbon economy.
This, perhaps, is the central point: climate action isn’t just about carbon. It’s about sovereignty, competitiveness, and future-proofing European industry. Every euro spent on a dodgy offset in a developing country is a euro not spent on upgrading a steel plant in the Ruhr, electrifying transport networks in France, or building green innovation hubs in Eastern Europe. Outsourcing our emissions cuts means outsourcing the opportunity to lead the world in green technology — and squandering the geopolitical and economic dividends that come with it.
There is also the uncomfortable moral question. Europe has historically been one of the largest emitters of greenhouse gases. While recent decades have seen significant reductions, the continent’s cumulative emissions remain among the highest globally. Asking poorer nations — many of whom have contributed far less to climate change — to continue cutting emissions on Europe’s behalf, in exchange for funds, smacks of the same old colonial logic, repackaged in green wrapping.
The ESABCC goes further still. Offsets not only fail to deliver environmental integrity, but they also risk skewing the global climate effort. If developing nations see a financial advantage in keeping emissions high today in order to sell cuts tomorrow, the entire premise of global cooperation collapses. Why rush to decarbonise when polluting more now means more cash later? This is not climate leadership; it is climate freeloading.
For the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), which welcomed the report, the takeaway is simple: the EU must walk the talk. “Most international offsets aren’t worth the paper they’re written on,” said Michael Sicaud-Clyet of WWF EU. “Why should we pay other countries when we could be investing it in making our own industries more competitive?”
Indeed, to persist with international offsets is not just bad climate policy; it’s bad economics. Europe has every reason to double down on domestic action. It will spur innovation, reduce reliance on imported fossil fuels, and give European firms a head start in what will be the defining industrial race of the 21st century.
Moreover, the report’s conclusion that even a 95% reduction by 2040 would still fall short of the EU’s “fair share” in global mitigation efforts is a sobering reminder that ambition cannot stop at targets. Pace matters too. The EU must not fall into the trap of postponing real action until after 2035 — the equivalent, in the words of Sicaud-Clyet, of “a student spending the year partying, convinced a last-minute cram session will somehow make up for months of missed lectures.”
The warning signs are there. Some MEPs and Member States are already floating the idea of backloading climate ambition — a politically expedient move, no doubt, but a disastrous one for both credibility and climate. Postponement only increases the cost of action and deepens the scale of disruption required later.
Europe has always prided itself on being a global leader on climate. But leadership demands integrity, not illusion. It’s time for Brussels to make the hard choices: reject offsets, invest at home, and ensure the EU’s green transformation is not just a story of targets and treaties, but of real, tangible change.
Because in the end, no amount of accounting trickery will stop the planet warming. And no certificate bought abroad will cool the air in Europe’s cities, decarbonise its factories, or prepare its people for the challenges ahead. The only path that counts is the one we build ourselves.
