TCC #68 — The EU no longer cares about greenwashing
Right-wing pressure has led the EU to cave on its Green Claims Directive. What does it mean for climate comms?
Hi folks,
The climate movement has a habit of taking one step forward and then jumping in the car and reversing all the way back down the hill. This week’s issue has a few small wins, but also some pretty big setbacks.
So, basically — just another week in the climate world!
This week’s briefing
❌ What’s bad
EU decides greenwashing isn’t so bad after all
JD Vance will be thrilled: the EU is caving under right-wing pressure. One of the cornerstones of the EU’s Green Deal — the Green Claims Directive — was designed to crack down on greenwashing by requiring companies to back up their environmental claims with third-party verification.
This week, under pressure from right-wing parties and business lobbyists, the European Commission paused work on the directive, citing concerns about the “burden” it would place on micro-businesses to have their environmental claims verified by third parties.
The irony in all of this is that the kind of environmental claims the directive targets are voluntary claims. We’re not talking about mandatory disclosures or complex emissions reporting requirements that often do place unnecessary burdens on smaller companies. We’re talking about a simple rule: if you want to slap a carbon-neutral or any other vaguely eco-sounding label on a product to boost your sales, it’s on you to prove it’s actually true.
Not that hard, really — but in a political environment trolled by right-wing extremists, anything that requires people to fact-check their claims before profiting from them is apparently too hard.
What effect will this have on the world of corporate climate claims? Honestly, maybe not too much. We’ve already seen a massive silencing on the climate front, from both well-meaning and not-so-well meaning companies. Legal directives aside, the reputational risks of being called out for greenwashing are enough to keep many companies quiet — for the moment. Still, any kind of policy action on the green claims would have been a welcome step forward, and seeing this much pushback in the EU, which has historically been pro-climate-legislation, is disheartening.
It also reminds us that climate change is not the only problem the world is facing. Right now, the EU is focused on a number of threats, and increasing business competitiveness is a key focus. Deregulation is in, so the Green Claims Directive is out. When we talk about climate action, even at the policy level, we need to make sure we frame the end — and the means — in terms that align with the broader political, social and economic zeitgeist, rather than those that appear naive and impractical.
✅ What’s good
EnergyAustralia says sorry
It might be old news for some, but last month, EnergyAustralia (one of Australia’s largest energy retailers) admitted that it had been greenwashing with its “Go Neutral” campaign and apologised to the 400,000+ customers who signed up because of the campaign.
In a nutshell, the campaign claimed that EnergyAustralia would reduce emissions on behalf of its customers, when really, this just involved buying (usually international) offsets and calling it a day.
It doesn’t surprise me that a carbon neutrality campaign by a major Australian energy provider was a fraud: they basically all are, as I discovered in my quest to find a renewable energy provider for my home in Queensland (spoiler: there were none). What does surprise me is the legal victory and the plain English apology that followed
🤷♀️ What’s messy
Another study finds problems with corporate carbon credit use
Every time I see these headlines, I sigh. I actually love the VCM. A good majority of Meg’s and my clients are VCM heavyweights. I think it’s a place filled, largely, with good people, good projects, and good intentions. And yet there’s still so much work to be done to make sure the VCM is used as a tool for good and not for greenwashing.
The LSE recently analysed almost 3,000 climate-related lawsuits and found that legal backlash from corporate carbon credit use is growing. To be fair, we didn’t need a cohort of economists to tell us that.
What I see in all of this is not that carbon credits are problematic (sometimes they are, sometimes they’re essential) — it’s about how companies talk about their use of carbon credits. If Shell bought 100,000 credits and never said a word about it, who would care? I certainly wouldn’t — all the power to them. But it’s when companies buy credits in order to make claims that things get, well… messy. That’s why I’ve always been a fan of reframing voluntary carbon credit purchases as contributions rather than offsets or whatever other dodgy terms companies love to use. It’s also why I’ll be glad to see compliance markets become more widespread.
What we’re reading this week
📚 Book: Kicking Away the Ladder — I’m doing background reading for a big writing project we’re taking on at The Climate Hub. The client recommended this book as an example of the style he’s aiming for, and now I’m hooked. Here’s the idea: developed countries like the UK and the US have long preached that free trade and liberal institutions are the keys to economic success, including for developing countries. (Let’s just ignore Trump’s tariffs for now.) But liberal economic policies are not what led these superpowers to economic dominance in the first place. In pushing this agenda on developing countries, are the superpowers kicking away the very ladder that they once climbed — and might they be doing it on purpose?
📖 Article: Has science fiction forgotten how to help us dream of a better world? I’ve said this before on this newsletter and I’ll say it again: We need more positive representations of the future. This is why I loved Abundance, the documentary 2040, and the movie Her. I think we’ve all forgotten just how persuasive optimism can be.
🎙️ Podcast: The very American roots of Trumpism — don’t hold out hope for a podcast recommendation from me that isn’t either Ezra Klein or Kara Swisher. For NYT subscribers, this episode of The Ezra Klein Show explores the fascinating history of illiberalism in America, revealing that the land of freedom’s shadow self.
What we’re working on
👉 Charitable ESG comms: A large non-profit recently approached us for help turning their ESG communications into something both creative and concrete. We’re helping them zoom in on what really matters — where to focus, what to spotlight, and how to make the biggest possible impact. Let’s just say it: this is the kind of work we love.
Ways we can help 🫶
🎯 Need help building an organic lead-generating machine? → See our lead gen services
📥 Want to know what’s trending in the world of sustainability reporting? → Download our free PDF: 2025 State of Sustainability Reporting
📣 Share this with your climate tech marketing team
We second framing VCM as contributions instead of offsets too!