Offsets and carbon-neutral claims under EU green claims rules

Show achieved emissions performance separately from offsets. The Green Claims proposal says future environmental performance should prioritise improvements inside the trader's own operations and value chains rather than relying on offsetting. The Council text goes further for climate-related claims by describing offsetting as a risk when it deters reductions in a trader's own operations and value chains.

Before approving a carbon-neutral or compensated claim, require a reduction file that shows the actual emissions boundary, period, lifecycle stage, reduction actions, remaining emissions, and any unresolved data gaps. Offsets can then be described, if at all, as separate supporting information rather than as proof that the product itself has no climate impact.

For climate-related explicit environmental claims, the Commission proposal would require greenhouse gas emissions offsets to be separated from greenhouse gas emissions as additional environmental information. It would also require the trader to say whether offsets relate to emission reductions or removals and to describe how the offsets are high-integrity and correctly accounted for.

Do not collapse this into a single badge or headline. A consumer-facing page should show the emissions result first, then a clearly labelled offset or carbon-credit section that states the quantity, type, period, whether the credit is for a reduction or removal, and how it is accounted for. If those fields are unavailable, the claim should be narrowed or held back.

Directive (EU) 2024/825 has been adopted and requires Member States to add a blacklist item for claiming, based on greenhouse gas offsetting, that a product has a neutral, reduced, or positive greenhouse gas impact. Member States had to adopt and publish implementing measures by 27 March 2026 and must apply them from 27 September 2026. The recital gives examples including climate neutral, CO2 neutral certified, carbon positive, climate net zero, climate compensated, reduced climate impact, and limited CO2 footprint.

Before 27 September 2026, assess an offset-based product neutrality claim under the current UCPD and the relevant national law. From that date, the national implementing measures must apply the new blacklist item. State the product's actual lifecycle impact separately from any investment in environmental initiatives or carbon-credit projects, and do not imply that those investments change the product's own impact.

Future climate claims promise performance that current evidence cannot yet prove. From 27 September 2026, national measures implementing Directive (EU) 2024/825 must treat future environmental performance claims as potentially misleading where they lack clear, objective, publicly available, and verifiable commitments in a detailed and realistic implementation plan with measurable and time-bound targets, resources, and regular independent third-party verification.

For a net-zero, climate-neutrality, or emissions-reduction-by-year statement, require the implementation plan to be published or otherwise accessible with the consumer claim. The plan should identify the baseline, target year, milestones, resources, technical dependencies, responsible owner, reduction pathway, and the third-party monitoring output. A generic ambition statement should not be used as product marketing.

The Green Claims proposal would require substantiation before communication and would make information about the product or trader, the substantiation, and a clear summary available together with the claim through physical information, a web link, QR code, or equivalent. For offset-backed climate claims, the consumer summary cannot be a technical annex only specialists understand.

The substantiation record should show the claim wording, claim subject, impact category, lifecycle boundary, primary data, representative secondary data where primary data is unavailable, significant impacts considered, offset or credit fields, verifier details where required, and the exact consumer-facing summary. If the claim depends on consumer behaviour in the use phase, the claim should also tell consumers what they need to do to achieve the stated environmental performance.