A carbon-trading scheme, backed by the United Nations, was planned to curb global warming in Europe, but instead of solving the problem, it has been found to be releasing over half a billion additional tons of greenhouse gases, a new report found.

The report released by the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) discovered a number of problems of carbon offsets. According to the report, it found problems out of 872 million offsets, 75% have issues. Researcher found that lack of oversight has been found the main issue.

While talking to Al Jazeera, Anja Kollmuss, one of the authors of the study, said there are some rules that are needed to be implemented, but to do, there is a need of the political will. According to the researchers, the scheme, Joint Implementation (JI) carbon-trading scheme, has undermined global climate action.

Faults found in the scheme, established under the Kyoto Protocol, released about 600 million tons of carbon dioxide. The amount of the harmful CO2 gas released is more than if the JI scheme was not in place, as per the report.

Julia Justo Soto, head of the UN's Joint Implementation Supervisory Committee, said, "This study focuses on that part of JI that is not subject to international oversight, but is instead left up to the individual countries to administer and ensure integrity. The enforcement mechanism in future be run under a single track with international oversight".

In some industrialized nations, companies are allowed to emit greenhouse gasses by funding offsets. Such policies are keeping the total emissions under the European Union's goals.