Banks Are Being Advised by Lawyers to Avoid Carbon Credits (2)

Banks are being advised to avoid using carbon credits to offset their financed emissions, as lawyers warn that new regulations in Europe will make greenwashing litigation a lot easier to pursue.

Banks already face an uphill battle to make sure their green claims “stand up to scrutiny,” said Tom Black, a London-based lawyer in the financial-services disputes group at Eversheds Sutherland. “If you’re then relying on offsetting, it’s another link in an already very complicated chain,” especially because “offsetting can have links within links within links,” he said.

The warning comes roughly a month after the world’s main verifier ...