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Hello and welcome. You are listening to Patrick Boyle on Finance, a podcast exploring

ideas from quantitative finance, examining events occurring

in markets right now and financial history to see what lessons can be taken away, including

interviews with some of the most interesting people in the world of finance. To learn more about

the podcast, visit onfinance.org.

Europe's largest oil and gas company Shell was accused in an investigative report from Greenpeace Canada of selling millions of carbon credits tied to CO2 removal that never took

place.

Carbon offsets are tradable certificates linked to projects or activities that lowered the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.

Each credit is supposed to represent one ton of carbon that's been removed.

The idea is that by buying these certificates

and individual or business can fund projects that reduce atmospheric CO2 and they do this to offset

their own carbon emissions rather than cutting back themselves. The certificates offset the buyer's CO2 emissions by paying

someone else to reduce the amount of CO2 being released. The idea is that the polluter pays and

the cleaner earns. The idea of offsets emerged in 1989 when applied energy services was building a series of

coal-fired power plants around the United States.

The CEO was concerned about the environmental damage associated with burning coal and at first

...