Everyday consumer activities are being rebranded as ‘genuine offsets’ – despite failing core integrity claims

A new carbon credit platform, Aetium, appears to be misleading consumers about the environmental benefits of its scheme. Promoted with slogans like “Got Solar – make it count”, Aetium’s credits fail basic integrity tests and cannot represent real emissions reductions. The platform issues credits for having solar, driving an EV or keeping trees, and sells them to individuals and businesses seeking to ‘offset’ their emissions.

Our analysis also exposes a deeper integrity gap in Australia’s carbon markets: an industry “Code of Conduct” that claims to uphold best practice while refusing to assess the integrity of the credits its signatories produce. By excluding core safeguards like additionality and permanence, the Code enables low-integrity avoidance credits to be marketed as genuine offsets — a structural failure that puts consumers and the market at risk.

Our Complaint to the ACCC and Ad Standards

We have made a complaint to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) and Ad Standards, asking them investigate whether Aetium’s claims – on their website and through social media advertising – are misleading or deceptive.

The complaint raises three serious issues:

  1. Fundamental absence of additionality

  2. Short-duration “permanence” claims

  3. Methodology inconsistencies and lack of recognised standards

We have also brought this to the attention of Carbon Markets Institute, Australian Carbon Industry Code of Conduct, and the Clean Energy Regulator.

ComplaintS to the ACCC and Ad standars

Potential misleading claims by Aetium

Letter to ACCC
Letter to Ad Standards

Key Integrity Failings

1. Fundamental absence of additionality

Aetium issues credits retrospectively for activities that are already occurring and overwhelmingly represent business-as-usual behaviour:

  • Electricity generated from established Solar PV systems, installed years prior to Aetium’s existence;

  • The use of existing electric vehicles, purchased independently of Aetium’s platform

  • Existing trees on private land with no demonstrated risk of clearing.

The definition of additionality adopted by Aetium— “additionality means the CO₂ reduction would not have occurred if the solar system, EV or forestry did not exist” — is not aligned with any recognised standard for voluntary certification scheme, as it lacks a requirement for activities to be new, additional to business-as-usual activities and additional to any regulatory requirements. 

It is also out of step with the additionality requirements adopted under the Emissions Reduction Fund for the issuance of ACCUs. 

This inversion of the concept by Aetium, effectively removes additionality as a safeguard entirely and the result is a crediting model that creates no new abatement, while producing units marketed as genuine emissions reductions.

2. Short-duration “permanence” claims

Aetium defines “permanent” as a 12-month guarantee, even for forestry where future deforestation removes the sequestration of today. No recognised carbon crediting system classifies 12-month durability as permanence.

For example: 

  • Permanence for crediting under the Kyoto Protocol is 100 years;

  • Australian ACCUs require 25 or 100 years;

  • Leading analysis shows even 1,000 years of storage can still result in warming over the long term.

Aetium’s redefinition risks materially misleading purchasers about the nature of avoided emissions and the very short timescale involved.

3. Methodology inconsistencies and lack of recognised standards

Aetium does not apply any recognised carbon crediting methodology from:

  • The Emissions Reduction Fund,

  • Verra

  • Gold Standard, or

  • ICVCM CCP requirements.

Instead, Aetium uses its own “PAVER” checklist—although its actual practices do not comply with PAVER’s definitions, particularly in relation to Permanence, Additionality, Verifiability and “Real” emissions reductions.

This creates material risk that consumers, and potentially businesses, will assume equivalence between TCUs and regulated or high-integrity voluntary credits when no such equivalence exists.

“An additionality test is a critical integrity safeguard in all major carbon credit standards, it assesses whether a project genuinely creates ‘additional’ emissions reductions, beyond ‘business as usual’ and which would not have occurred in the absence of the incentive.

Aetium’s credits fail to meet an additionality test because consumers signing up to the scheme would have bought and used their EVs or solar panels whether Aetium existed or not.”

Executive Director, Climate Integrity

Claire Snyder

The Illusion of Oversight in Australia’s Voluntary Carbon Market

Aetium is a signatory of the Carbon Market Institute’s (CMI) industry code of conduct, which states that its mission is; “To enhance the integrity, transparency and accountability of Australia’s carbon industry,...”, Climate Integrity has written to CMI to raise its concerns.

A response from the administrator of the Code of Conduct said that it does not regulate or assess the technical quality of carbon credits and that Climate Integrity’s concerns are outside of the scope of the code and would be more appropriately dealt with by a relevant regulator.

No Isolated Incident: EY’s History of questionable conduct

This case study is not an isolated incident for EY. The company has a history of producing and defending misleading and flawed modelling to serve its fossil fuel and political clients.

2019

EY acquires management consultancy Cadence.

Prior to the acquisition, Cadence produced an economic assessment for Gloucester Resources’ Rocky Hill open-cut coal mine which was subsequently slammed by a NSW Land and Environment Court judge as incorrect, lacking “evidentiary foundation”, and at odds with government guidelines. (2)

2021

EY’s team - including former Cadence personnel - used the same discredited modelling for SIMEC Group’s proposed expansion of the Tahmoor Coking Coal Mine.

EY’s economic assessment of the mine inflated the mine’s economic benefit by hundreds of millions, and its use of the discredited modelling ignored the prior court findings that such techniques were not aligned with assessment guidelines. (3) EY doubled down to defend the work.

EY worked for Santos while advising the NSW Government on Narrabri gas policy.

EY received a $67,375 NSW government contract to help shape the official “Future of Gas” statement – which endorsed Santos’s Narrabri gas development – without disclosing that it was simultaneously providing assurance services to Santos. (4)

2022

EY used flawed modelling for Glencore’s Glendell Continued Operations Project in NSW.

The NSW Independent Planning Commission’s review - conducted by the Department’s independent economic expert - produced an assessment showing the project would have less than one-fifth of the value to the NSW economy than EY’s valuation. The Department’s expert refuted EY’s assessment of the values attributed to coal price, company and payroll tax, worker and supplier benefits, and greenhouse gas emissions. (5)

EY fuels disinformation during the 2022 Federal Election.

EY used discredited modelling to serve the political interests of its client, Master Builders Australia. The report grossly exaggerated the economic cost of Labor’s plan to disband the Australian Building and Construction Commission. EY’s analysis was widely criticised, including by Senators and the University of Sydney economist, with numerous faults that rendered it “effectively anecdotal, empirically empty, and useless”. (7) (8)

Our engagement with EY

We have engaged with EY’s leadership on the findings of its report for AEP, and set out three key requests:

  1. Publicly acknowledge that the AEP report was inconsistent with its own climate objectives and to issue a statement recognising its shortcomings.

  2. Greater transparency by publishing EY Oceania’s internal screening process for contracts with fossil fuel companies and industry associations, alongside a clear commitment not to provide research or advice that promotes the expansion of coal, oil, or gas.

  3. Review its membership of AEP, given the group’s role as one of Australia’s most obstructive lobbyists on climate and the reputational risk created by EY’s ongoing association.

In our engagement, we shared our view that AEP’s use of the EY report raises serious concerns of potential misleading conduct, and that we had prepared a complaint to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC). We emphasised that this is an opportunity for EY to show leadership, align its services with climate science, and set a new standard for integrity in professional services.

While EY acknowledged our concerns and welcomed the dialogue, the firm has indicated that it will take no immediate action on the steps we have outlined.

Consultancies Must Account for Their Impact

Consulting firms like EY market themselves as climate leaders – but many still take on projects that enable fossil fuel expansion. The impacts are indirect but powerful: through modelling, branding and advice, consultancies help shape fossil fuel clients influence on the policies that decide whether new coal, oil and gas projects proceed.

These downstream effects are called serviced emissions – the climate consequences of professional services. EY didn’t drill a well or build a pipeline, but its modelling gave political cover for AEP to argue that new gas fields were “needed in all net zero pathways.” That makes EY part of the problem.

To restore integrity, we believe EY and all consultancies must:

  • Screen clients and projects for alignment with the Paris Agreement.

  • Align their modelling and advice with the Paris Agreement.

  • Disclose work in line with the Global Standard on Responsible Climate Lobbying.

Until that happens, consultancies will continue to quietly shape policy and public narratives in ways that fuel the climate crisis.

Professional Services Matrix

Developed by Oxford Net Zero and Exponential Roadmap, this Professional Services Matrix maps how consulting firms’ projects either accelerate fossil fuel expansion or enable Paris-aligned solutions. Firms like EY should be applying this kind of lens to account for their serviced emissions — the real climate impact of their advice and influence.