The world’s biggest greenwasher: South Pole

Profiting from false solutions to the climate crisis amounts to climate denial

South Pole says it is “firmly against greenwashing”.

But South Pole is the world’s largest carbon trader. As such, it is the world’s biggest facilitator of greenwashing.

South Pole works with some of the biggest polluters on the planet: Total, Shell, Chevron, Saudi Arabia’s Basic Industries Corporation, Russia’s Gazprom. In 2022, Total signed a non-disclosure agreement with South Pole.

Profits before climate action

A new investigation by investigative journalists Follow the Money, and SourceMaterial reveals that earlier this year more than 80 South Pole employees signed a letter stating that profits are more important to the company than addressing the climate crisis.

The letter suggests setting up a task force that would “re-centre purpose and impact in South Pole’s decision-making”.

The employees wrote that,

Towards the public, our message is: “true climate impact for everyone”, “improving the carbon market”, “more transparency”, etc. However, we see less and less of this reflected in our core strategy and day-to-day actions...

Right now, doubts persist on the prioritisation of impact over profit at South Pole, specifically relating to our carbon credits activities...

There is a lack of transparency about the redistribution of profit among shareholders, employees and reinvestment in South Pole...

South Pole needs to walk the talk, or else risk its credibility (and that of the carbon market) and reputation, as well as the loyalty of its [employees] who are questioning whether our priority is still impact over profit.

Saudia Arabia

A South Pole employee, speaking on condition of anonymity, gave Follow the Money and SourceMaterial an example. In 2021, South Pole’s CEO Renat Heuberger went on a business trip to Saudi Arabia. When he returned, he enthusiastically briefed South Pole staff about the visit and the possibility of lucrative contracts there.

One employee asked, “Saudi Arabia has an authoritarian regime, right? They even dismembered a journalist.” That’s a reference to Jamal Khashoggi, who was victim of a Saudi Arabia state assassination.

SourceMaterial reports, based on what the anonymous employee told them, that Heuberger said the Saudis had their conservative side but were looking to the future, and that on his recent trip, some of his tour guides had even been women.

“It was infantile,” the employee said.

Kariba REDD+ Project in Zimbabwe

In January 2023, Follow the Money reported on South Pole’s biggest carbon project: the Kariba REDD+ Project in Zimbabwe. Follow the Money revealed that South Pole had massively inflated the number of carbon offsets from the project and as a result the project led to an increase in carbon emissions.

Several people have left the company “out of dissatisfaction”, Follow the Money writes. More have since left. One ex-employee told Follow the Money and SourceMaterial that,

“People asked me why I left. Time to move on played a role, sure. But my personal values also played a role. A senior colleague responsible for selling carbon credits once told me that he knew that most transactions have no real impact.”

Follow the Money and SourceMaterial gained access to messages on South Pole’s internal chat channel.

In May 2023, an employee wrote,

I have some questions about the business side of South Pole that don’t let me sleep. Especially in the context of recent press coverage and journalist investigations. I feel that I still lack a lot of clarity on South Pole’s values and rules of engagement. I don’t think my doubts are isolated, either. Recently, our team lead left the company, and he gave his lack of trust in South Pole’s values as his main motive. I also don’t think it is the only such case.

In another chat message, a South Pole employee raised concerns about Heuberger’s reaction to Follow the Money’s investigative report into the Kariba REDD+ Project:

In the same argument, South Pole claims that Kariba is a flagship project, estimates were made using the best scientific knowledge and executed with due diligence, and that we should be proud, and management warns that the Kariba estimates may have actually been unreliable, they carried no guarantee, and huge overestimations were actually possible, but we can’t even know how huge because benchmarking them is kind of impossible, but that’s fine because we will compensate for overestimation by reducing issuance in the future. So which one is it?

In 2019, fashion company Gucci announced that “Gucci is entirely carbon neutral”. According to Follow the Money, 60% of Gucci’s carbon neutral claim came from offsets bought from the Kariba REDD+ Project.

In May 2023, Gucci quietly removed its carbon neutral claims from its website, and The Guardian reported that Gucci “was no longer working with South Pole”.

The reality, at this stage of the climate crisis is that profiting from false solutions like carbon offsets is not only immoral. It is a form of climate denial, which is making things worse by legitimising the fossil fuel industry’s continued destruction.

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