German authorities have withdrawn carbon credits generated by 30 projects in China that were supposed to have reduced pollution from fossil fuel extraction. The authorities found the projects to be “suspicious”, to have overstated the number of carbon credits generated, or to be completely fake projects.
Bloomberg reports that ExxonMobil was among the companies that bought carbon credits from one of the projects.
The scandal was first exposed in 2024, by the German TV station ZDF. In 2018, the German government launched a carbon offsetting programme in China. Under the programme, oil companies could meet their emissions targets by buying carbon credits from “upstream emission reduction” (UER) projects.
The Federal Environmental Agency started investigations into the projects in August 2023. ZDF visited one of the projects in China. It had been audited twice by two German auditing firms: Müller-BBM Cert and Verico. It turned out to be an abandoned poultry farm. ZDF calculated that the project had raised €80 million from sales of carbon credits, which were paid for by German consumers when they bought petrol.
By September 2024, Germany’s Environment Agency had rejected more than 200,000 carbon credits.
In May 2026, Bloomberg reported that European companies had bought more than 2 million carbon credits from fossil fuel projects in China that had failed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Bloomberg visited some of the project sites and analysed drone footage and satellite images.
Bloomberg journalists Petra Sorge and Natasha White wrote that,
The projects did not appear to exist. One site was still under development and there was no sign of the equipment needed to trap emissions.
Freedom of information request
Bloomberg reports that it has obtained Germany Environment Agency dated mid-January 2026 via a freedom of information request. The report reveals that ExxonMobil was among the companies buying the carbon credits.
The copy of the agency’s report that Bloomberg obtained is heavily redacted. Of the 30 withdrawn projects, 24 were redacted because investigations are ongoing. “For the six named projects, decisions to revoke credits are now final, the Environment Ministry said in a separate letter,” Bloomberg reports.
The 30 projects that the German authorities withdrew claimed to have saved a total of 2.1 million tons of carbon dioxide. That’s approximately the same as the annual emissions from 500,000 cars.
The companies that bought the withdrawn credits to offset their emissions “have been ordered to compensate for the shortfall,” Bloomberg reports.
US$4.9 million on fake credits
An ExxonMobil company in Belgium bought 96,000 carbon credits according to a registration document seen by Bloomberg. The carbon credits cost about US$51 each, giving a total of US$4.9 million spent by ExxonMobil on fake carbon credits.
“A spokesperson for ExxonMobil said the company always acts in accordance with all legal requirements and does not generally comment on investigations,”Bloomberg’s journalist Petra Sorge writes.
The UER market was at one point considered a yardstick for carefully designed carbon markets. It was administered by European governments, while individual projects were verified by third-party auditing firms based in Germany. Dozens of energy companies bought credits within the system, which is now winding up.
In May 2026, a Bloomberg investigation found that Robin Wang was involved in several of the fake projects. Wang worked for both auditing firm Verico and for project developer Beijing Karbon.
The German Environment Agency’s report obtained by Bloomberg, states that Beijing Karbon had, “through deception, created the appearance of legitimate UER projects”. The company was the main developer of 45 project that the Agency considered “suspicious”.
Neither Beijing Karbon nor Verico responded to Bloomberg’s requests for comment.