Carbon Planet and its PNG partner, Kirk Roberts, have been embroiled in a widening controversy over mocked-up carbon credit certificates, some of which were used in negotiations with PNG landowners.
Last week the PNG government warned landowners against selling voluntary carbon rights over their forests to foreign companies, including Roberts’s business, Nupan, following the removal of the head of the PNG Office of Climate Change.
As the scandal erupted in PNG in May, Australia’s ambassador to Jordan, Glenn White, joined a director of Carbon Planet, Haris Chaudhry, at a signing ceremony for a carbon trading deal with a local energy company at the Australian embassy in Amman.
That week the high commissioner to Bangladesh, Justin Lee, joined Chaudhry at a ceremony for a deal in Bangladesh, where Carbon Planet is partnering a company to work on voluntary carbon credit schemes.
A spokesman for the department confirmed that Carbon Planet had received Australian government support but details were commercial-in-confidence.
“Our officials welcomed the cooperation between the Australian and local companies in the energy sector but did not endorse or promote the company,’’ the spokesman said. Austrade also provided “a range of services’’ to Carbon Planet, but did not specify what they were.
The spokesman said Carbon Planet received a grant of $53,063 last financial year through the export market development grants scheme for developing exports to the United States and Britain.
A founder of Carbon Planet, David Sag, last week defended its role in PNG and its partner there, Roberts.
A dispute has broken out among PNG landowners who Roberts claims to represent in a deal signed last year. In June, a PNG court restrained the Office of Climate Change from dealing in any carbon credits over the forest controlled by the landowners until the dispute is resolved.
