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A new Australian carbon offset company has been accused of potentially misleading customers by offering to generate thousands of credits for their solar panels and electric vehicles in a scheme that climate campaigners have labelled as junk.

Not-for-profit group Climate Integrity has written to the corporate watchdog asking for an investigation into Aetium, a company which is asking consumers and organisations to register their rooftop solar, EVs and forests in return for carbon credits.

One expert told Guardian Australia that Aetium’s online scheme had “jettisoned” a core principle in the world of carbon offsets – that projects can only generate credits if they would not have happened without the financial incentive.

More than 4,000 projects have been registered with Aetium since February last year, including more than 150 by the Cassowary Coast regional council in Queensland and more than 30 EVs owned by the Europcar rental car service, according to the scheme’s website.

The company defended its scheme and said it aimed to challenge the current system of how people and organisations could be rewarded for actions they had taken to cut emissions.

In its complaint to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, climate advocacy organisation Climate Integrity alleges Aetium is misleading consumers about the carbon offset scheme’s potential environmental benefits.

A key concern was the scheme allegedly failed the “additionality” standard – a safeguard in carbon offset schemes that tests whether emissions reductions would have occurred without the scheme.

This aims to ensure credits bought represent additional emissions reductions, rather than business-as-usual activities.

“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,” Climate Integrity’s executive director, Claire Snyder, said.

On its website, the company says that: “At Aetium, ‘additionality’ means the CO2 reduction would not have occurred if the solar system, EV or forestry did not exist”.

Snyder said Aetium’s definition was “out of step with virtually all established carbon credit schemes and the evidence-backed view of climate scientists”.

“Failing to satisfy the additionality test runs the risk that consumers become misled about their contributions to reducing emissions, and could ultimately undermine efforts to tackle the climate crisis,” she said.

‘Divergent’ from accepted practice

Aetium says it is not currently generating money from the scheme. According to its website, it would make money through registration fees it plans to begin charging from 1 March and by collecting a 7% share of the carbon credits it issues.

According to Aetium’s project registry, the Cassowary Coast regional council in far north Queensland has registered 131 forest projects and 23 solar PV installations, representing about 4,500 tonnes of CO2 credits, with the company.

It also shows more than 30 electric vehicles owned by the international rental car company Europcar are registered with Aetium.

Aetium’s managing director, Christopher Ride, said that, to date, “no carbon reductions have been certified by Aetium, no fees have been taken, no credits have been sold or retired, and no payments have been made” due to a minimum 12-month certification period for projects that the company has set.

He said the company had not been made aware of any formal complaint to the ACCC. The ACCC confirmed to Guardian Australia it had received a complaint.

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The international Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market’s set of principles says emissions reductions “shall be additional, i.e., they would not have occurred in the absence of the incentive created by carbon credit revenues”.

Prof Andrew Macintosh, an environmental law professor at the Australian National University and the former head of the federal government’s emissions reduction assurance committee, said: “Of all the registries I have reviewed globally, Aetium stands out as one of the most divergent from accepted practice.”

He said the cornerstone of this was the concept of additionality.

“Aetium have jettisoned this principle and instead try to redefine additionality, with the consequence that they will issue credits for standard activities where the emissions reductions have nothing to do with the incentive provided by the scheme,” he said.

“From the information available, there also don’t appear to be third-party verification processes and the scheme seems to fall incredibly short of standard practice regarding transparency.

“I feel badly for anybody who buys credits from Aetium in the belief they are helping ‘fight climate change’.”

In response to questions from Guardian Australia, Ride said: “We believe the current system should be challenged, and genuine change is needed.

“We need divergence from the accepted practices.”

He said the company wanted to reward broad participation in driving down emissions. Ride said that it remained “unknown” whether Aetium would could ultimately generate sales from the credits it issued but “our hope is this will encourage more awareness and more investment”.

Aetium also promotes its membership of the Smart Energy Council, Electric Vehicle Council and Carbon Market Institute and its status as a signatory to the Australian Carbon Industry Code of Conduct.

A Smart Energy Council spokesperson said membership was open to any organisation in the renewable energy sector, and an Electric Vehicle Council spokesperson said it was not a regulator and it was common for members to use its branding.

A Cassowary Coast council spokesperson said the council had registered its solar installations and bushland reserves with Aetium as a trial and any credits would be used to reinvest in “like-minded projects”.

Dr Sasha Courville, chief executive of the Carbon Market Institute, said membership of the institute “does not include independent checks of business activities” but Aetium was bound by the Australian Carbon Industry code of conduct.

But she said the code “does not regulate or assess the technical quality of carbon credits”.

She said the institute supported maturing standards in the voluntary carbon market and pointed to the “important work” of the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market that “has developed a global benchmark for high-integrity carbon credits”.

The Guardian requested comment from Europcar.

Global stock markets are bracing for falls when trading resumes on Monday after Donald Trump threatened eight European countries with fresh tariffs until they support his ambition to acquire Greenland.

The US president’s plan to impose new trade levies of 10% on goods from Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, the UK, the Netherlands and Finland from 1 February, rising to 25% on 1 June, is creating fear in the markets, and among European businesses.

Trading on the brokerage IG’s weekend markets suggest there will be losses on the London stock exchange, and on Wall Street, when they reopen on Monday, while rising geopolitical fears could drive precious metal prices towards new record highs.

“This latest flashpoint has heightened concerns over a potential unravelling of Nato alliances and the disruption of last year’s trade agreements with several European nations, driving risk-off sentiment in stocks and boosting safe-haven demand for gold and silver,” said Tony Sycamore, market analyst at IG.

Britain’s FTSE 100 index was on track to fall by 0.9% on Monday, IG’s weekend market suggested, while its Weekend Wall Street market indicated a 0.5% fall on the Dow Jones industrial average, which tracks 30 large US companies.

Gold was trading 0.6% higher at $4,625 an ounce on IG’s weekend bullion market, nudging the record high of $4,642 an ounce hit last week, while spot silver was trading 0.5% higher at $90.41/oz.

European leaders, including UK prime minister Sir Keir Starmer and European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, criticised Trump’s move on Saturday, which threatens to undermine the Nato defence alliance.

Trump’s new policy has “whipped up fresh economic chaos” and is a setback for the UK economy, warned Susannah Streeter, chief investment strategist at Wealth Club.

“This is a migraine-inducing development for politicians who have already had to go through tortuous negotiations to reach the first tranche of tariff deals, winning exemptions for certain sectors. For companies selling into the United States, and their customers, this move creates another layer of difficult decision making.

“Already they have had to try to absorb the current tariffs – there will be little room to soak up any more – so this new tranche of duties is likely to end up being passed on to American customers,” Streeter warned.

There were signs on Sunday that European business groups were pushing the EU to flex its muscles in response. Germany’s engineering association, the VDMA, called on the Commission to consider using its “anti-coercion instrument” against the US.

“If the EU gives in here, it will only encourage the US president to make the next ludicrous demand and threaten further tariffs,” the VDMA president, Bertram Kawlath, said in a statement on Sunday.

Hildegard Müller, the president of the German auto industry association warned that the costs of these additional tariffs would be “enormous” for German and European industry.

William Bain, head of trade policy at the British Chambers of Commerce, predicted that new tariffs on goods exported to the US will be “more bad news for UK exporters”, and he urged the UK government to push for last year’s trade deal with the US – which was frozen last month – to be implemented.

“We know trade is one way to boost the economy, and the success of transatlantic trade depends on reducing, not raising, tariffs. The government must prioritise the implementation of the [UK-US] economic prosperity deal and negotiate calmly to remove the threat of these new tariffs,” Bain said.

Some people think of the stock market as a place to buy shares low and sell high, banking a profit from the share price difference. This is one way that the market works. Yet another way is to use dividend shares and banking income to generate a generous second income. Here’s how.

To generate a monthly passive income, an investor would need to hold a diversified portfolio of stocks. It’s incredibly rare to own a single company and expect to receive dividends every month. Further, it’s a high-risk play to own a single company and hope the dividend keeps getting paid and don’t get cut. If this happens in the future, the overall strategy falls apart. Rather, if someone owns a dozen or more stocks, the impact can be minimised.

A lot of focus will be on making the capital work hard. As such, I don’t see much value in buying stocks with a divdend yield at or below the index average. For example, the FTSE 100 average yield is currently 2.92%. So the strategy would be to target FTSE shares with a yield well in excess of this. Based on what other stocks offer, I think a sustainable portfolio can be built with shares yielding around 7%.

In theory, let’s assume someone invested £600 a month in a portfolio yielding 7% and reinvested the proceeds. By year 15, this could be paying out an average of £1,055 a month. Of course, it’s impossible to say for certain that the goal will be reached at this point. Planning this far into the future isn’t an exact science, and many factors could mean it takes longer (or shorter) to achieve.

One idea to include in this portfolio could be ZIGUP (LSE:ZIG). It’s a FTSE 250-listed mobility services group, with the share price up 28% over the past year. It currently has a dividend yield bang on 7%.

The business primarily makes money from charging clients to use commercial vehicles. Rental revenue has been a major driver of growth, especially with higher demand in Spain and the UK. Half-year results from December showed revenue up 16.3% for Spain. In comparison, UK and Ireland revenue was up 6.5%.

At the same time, it generates recurring income from maintenance, repair, and fleet-management contracts. This is the part of the business that provides steady revenue and helps to ensure the dividend is covered from earnings. In fact, the latest dividend cover ratio is 2.9, which means the earnings can cover the latest dividend almost three times over.

In terms of risks, business demand tends to follow the broader economic cycle. If we saw a downturn in the UK and Europe, people might decide to cut back on vehicle hire. Or the company might have to cut profit margins to sustain demand.

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BBC

Fowl and Fury

Fowl and Fury

Rajendra Vikram Kupperi

Story Continues

You are battling the January blues and see a cheap deal on one of your socials for a two-week break in Spain during August. Better still, the price is £200 cheaper than elsewhere, possibly because the holiday is almost sold out.

When you text to confirm the details after making the payment, you are talked through the booking by a convincing contact.

Unfortunately, that will be the last you hear from the travel agent as they are criminals, and the advertisement was a fake set up to lure you in.

January is one of three months during the year – June and July being the others – when scammers ramp up their efforts to defraud people planning summer and winter breaks. This time of year is traditionally when holiday companies see a rush of bookings as people crave something to look forward to after Christmas.

Jim Winters, head of economic crime at Nationwide, says the building society sees a pick up in holiday scams at this time of year. Typically, people are drawn in by a social media ad, which is either a direct copy of a legitimate one from a reputable company, or created by AI.

“They’ll look at where the popular holiday destinations are, and if there’s one that is up and coming they’ll tailor the scam,” he says.

Nationwide said the average loss to people is about £3,500.

What it looks like

The hook is a credible-looking ad on social media for two weeks in the sun, or a winter break skiing. The reason it looks like the real thing is that it has probably been copied from a genuine travel site, however the price quoted will be significantly less than you might expect to pay.

After clicking on the ad, you will be asked to fill in your details and then be contacted on a chat app, such as WhatsApp, later. Or you may be able to click through directly to the chat from the ad.

Winters explains: “The offer will look like a bargain, an incredibly good value holiday. They might even give you some time pressure – as in ‘this is a one-time only deal’ or ‘you’ve got to sign up to it in the next 24 hours to qualify for this price’, and ‘we’ve only got x amount of tickets at this amount’.”

The fraudsters will ask for payment through bank transfer, and then, typically, cease contact, although some will still answer inquiries to lend some sort of legitimacy to the fraud. But, ultimately, the holiday does not exist.

What to do

When booking a holiday, make sure that you start the process on a reputable website, and not via a chat app. A good tip is to check the URL of the site in your browser. Be aware of the tactics of criminals. Urgency, and the fear of missing out on a deal, are big ploys to make victims act quickly and without thinking through decisions.

“Fraudsters know when peak periods are,” says Winters. “They know when people will be shopping for holidays. And, crucially, they know when they’ll be vulnerable to ‘too good to be true’ offers.”

Being asked to pay via bank transfer is a significant red flag as you will not have the section 75 protections that come with using a credit card.

If you think you have been defrauded, contact your bank immediately. After that, contact Action Fraud, the central hub for fraud and online crime.