atmosfair wins court case against DIE WELT. DIE WELT must delete false statements and refrain from repeating them in future; a counterstatement by atmosfair must be published by DIE WELT in the same place.
On 18 December 2025, an article appeared in DIE WELT under the headline “How Hamburg bought stoves in Nigeria that did not exist”. In the article, author Axel Bojanowski makes serious allegations against our stove project in Nigeria.
atmosfair obtained a preliminary injunction against DIE WELT / Axel Springer. atmosfair used publicly available audit reports to prove that it had built and distributed stoves in Nigeria and that their proper operation and the associated CO₂ savings for the city of Hamburg had been confirmed and documented by UN auditors.
On 20 January 2026, the oral hearing took place before the Regional Court II in Berlin. The judges upheld atmosfair’s claims on all points: DIE WELT is obliged to refrain from expressing or disseminating the following, either verbatim or in essence, in future:
“How Hamburg sold stoves in Nigeria that did not exist.“,
“To achieve its climate targets, Hamburg financed climate-friendly stoves in Africa – but they were nowhere to be found.“,
“The efficient stoves the Senate used to polished up its climate balance sheet from 2018 onwards only existed on paper.“,
“Were mitigations certified here that were based solely on the principle of hope?“
The ruling is immediately enforceable. The opposing party may appeal against it.
On 4 February, the Berlin Court of Appeal ruled that DIE WELT must also publish a corresponding counterstatement from atmosfair.
atmosfair – Statement dated 19 December 2025 regarding DIE WELT article dated 18 December 2025: “How Hamburg bought stoves in Nigeria that did not exist”
19 December 2025
A recent Welt article by Axel Bojanowski accuses the city of Hamburg and atmosfair of unfair practices.
1. What really happened
At the end of 2017, Hamburg’s environmental agency, BUKEA, signed a contract with atmosfair whereby the city of Hamburg would offset 75,000 tonnes of CO₂ with efficient stoves in Nigeria. The atmosfair stoves are mainly used by families in rural areas of Nigeria. They save 80% of firewood, meaning that less wood needs to be cut down for cooking and the forest is preserved. According to the contract, the CO₂ certificates were to be decommissioned by atmosfair for Hamburg by 2020 at the latest.
atmosfair had been distributing the stoves in Nigeria since 2010 and had the CO₂ reductions regularly verified by UN-accredited auditors using a UN method (CDM, Clean Development Mechanism). With this method, the auditor checks how many stoves were in correct operation during the audit period and thus determines the amount of CO₂ that these stoves had saved. This is a so-called ex-post approach: only CO₂ reductions that have already been successfully achieved by stoves that were already in place are credited.
According to the contract, the 75,000 certificates for Hamburg had to be verified and proven in accordance with this UN standard. Independently of this, atmosfair was to deliver a total of 15,000 new stoves in Nigeria over several years starting in 2018.
Atmosfair provided contractual proof to the City of Hamburg of the delivery and decommissioning of the 75,000 certificates with the stoves that had already been distributed earlier. This meant that the CO₂ offsetting had been provided and documented as agreed. Due to the ongoing terrorist attacks and violence in northern Nigeria (see here: Amnesty reports), the new stoves were not produced by atmosfair itself until 2021 in a new factory built by atmosfair in the industrial city of Kano, and were delivered to users with a delay. This delay was communicated transparently by atmosfair to BUKEA.
There is evidence to support this:
- The UN audit reports by independent and accredited auditors on the existing atmosfair stoves and their CO₂ reductions are publicly available on the United Nations website and easy to find. (PoA 5057, Links see here https://cdm.unfccc.int/UserManagement/FileStorage/QJCEFD34Y0MBU5P8SWNIVA9HLK6ZR1 & https://cdm.unfccc.int/UserManagement/FileStorage/4C0MDKENQVRGFIY9WS61PAX85B73TH).
- At the beginning of 2025, the Hamburg Court of Auditors presented a report (Annual Report of the Court of Auditors 2025) that also deals with the project in Nigeria. In the section “Delivery of stoves in Nigeria only years later,” the Court of Auditors quotes BUKEA as saying “that the funds for the project had been used, albeit at a later date.” Despite its criticism of the delay, the Court of Auditors concludes in its report “that, according to information provided by atmosfair, the delivery of the stoves contractually agreed for the years 2017 to 2019 did not take place until years later”.
- The new stoves were sold by atmosfair to families in Nigeria. There are sales receipts for this. These naturally contain personal data and cannot be published.
2. What DIE WELT wrote afterwards
Read the article for yourself here. Here are the most important excerpts with our corrections:
“How Hamburg sold stoves in Nigeria that did not exist”
This headline is incorrect: the stoves did exist. This is proven by the publicly available UN verification reports for the project (PoA 5067) from 2018 and 2019 (see above).
“When asked by WELT, Atmosfair responded vaguely”
The truth is: Atmosfair told WELT that the new stoves were distributed late due to the security situation and in consultation with the authorities.
“The efficient stoves with which the Senate polished up its carbon footprint from 2018 onwards only existed on paper.”
This is incorrect, see above. The Senate offset its CO₂ emissions with CO₂ certificates from existing stoves in Nigeria. atmosfair had clearly communicated this to Mr Bojanowski.
“However, how such certificates could be generated without new stoves being installed on site remains unclear.”
No. The above-mentioned UN verification reports clearly show that the CO₂ reductions came from existing furnaces in Nigeria. Perhaps WELT did not understand that a furnace saves CO₂ every year and that this can be verified by auditors every year as long as the furnace continues to operate. New furnaces do not have to be added every year. BUKEA had also already explained to the Court of Auditors that the CO₂ compensation was carried out in accordance with the contract. The Court of Auditors did not question this either.
“Were savings credited here that were based solely on the principle of hope?”
No, the savings came from the earlier stoves in Nigeria, see above.
“However, the Court of Auditors notes that a United Nations (UN) organisation criticised an audit report by the project certifier” on the project in Nigeria for the observation period from July to October 2019. The criticism states that no new stoves had been added to the project since 2015.“
On page 232 of its report, the Court of Auditors cites a UN verification report. However, this report relates to a different project (CDM 2711) and has nothing to do with CO₂ offsetting and the stoves for Hamburg. Atmosfair had already informed the Court of Auditors of this in 2024, but the Court of Auditors did not take this into account in its subsequent report.
In addition, in this project, which has nothing to do with Hamburg, the Court of Auditors refers to ‘missing information’ noted in the verification report (page 26 of the UN verification report for CDM SSC 2711). However, the Court of Auditors fails to mention that one page later in this very same UN verification report, the information is noted as having been submitted and the issue is marked as resolved (page 27 of the UN verification report for CDM SSC 2711).
It is true that no new stoves were added to this project (CDM SSC 2027) in 2015. However, this has nothing to do with the city of Hamburg, as it offset its CO₂ emissions in another project with other stoves, albeit in Nigeria.
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