Early last month, the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York announced yet another, this one involving executives of a company involved in a carbon credits program based on providing clean cookstoves to people in developing countries.The case caught my attention because I am familiar with the scheme, and had interacted with the main organization that supports it, called the Clean Cooking Alliance.
In the announcement of the indictment, the US Attorney took great care to note that CQC itself has not been charged 'in light of CQC's voluntary and timely self-disclosure of misconduct, full and proactive cooperation, timely and appropriate remediation, and agreement to cancel or void certain VCUs.'This case highlights a couple of troubling aspects of the concept of carbon credits, with the opportunities for massive fraud that many program models provide being just one of them.