A certificate is not priced at the value of a tonne of carbon

There is one misreading that comes up more than any other when the price is discussed: asking it in the form "what does a tonne of carbon cost".

That is not how a certificate is priced. It is priced at how much of the extra cost of using low-emission fuel the market agrees to carry.

The structure, as a standard-setter wrote it

The evidence synthesis SBTi published in March 2025 has it directly. Sustainable aviation fuel certificates are designed to cost "the price premium for SAF over conventional jet fuel, minus any government incentives" (p.30).

As an expression:

what the certificate carries = (low-emission fuel price − conventional fuel price) − government incentives

Which is why it differs by country

The same report set out what share of production cost the average certificate price covered, country by country. 27% in the UK, 55% in Germany, and for biomethane from manure feedstock specifically, an average of 83% in Denmark (p.30).

The same goods, differing by more than double. Not because certificates sell better in one place, but because how much the government incentive fills in differs by country. Where the incentive is thick, the certificate carries less; where it is thin, it carries more.

Reading a price

Knowing the structure changes the judgement. A certificate that looks expensive usually means that fuel's premium is large or that country's incentive is thin; one that looks cheap means the reverse.

It also means another country's price cannot simply be transcribed here. To bring the price over you would have to bring that country's fuel policy with it.

This article expands one section of LCS EAC special report 2, How the Price Is Set. The full report works from the SABA press release, DP World's own pages and SBTi Evidence Synthesis Report Part 2 as primary sources, and marks published figures separately from values derived by dividing them.