Buying a certificate does not move your emissions figure

Many people assume that buying a low-emission fuel certificate lowers their company's emissions by that amount. The international standards do not see it that way.

The SBTi Corporate Net-Zero Standard V2.0 (June 2026) puts it like this — where such actions are not reflected in a company's physical GHG inventory, they are reported separately (p.47).

What "reported separately" means

The physical inventory is calculated from fuel actually burned and electricity actually consumed. A reduction obtained through certificates does not mix into that calculation; it is written beside it. The two numbers are not added into one — they sit side by side.

There is no need to read that as a loss. Rather the opposite. Mixed into the inventory, where a reduction came from is invisible; written separately, what was procured and how much of it is there in plain sight. What has to be explained in disclosure is always the lumped number, not the divided one.

So what is needed

Even with the two numbers apart, the evidence underneath them is one record: how much fuel was used on which leg, and when.

The physical inventory is calculated from that record, and the certificate side needs it for issuance to stand on anything. The order the standard sets out runs the same way — direct reduction first, market instruments in support of it (p.3).

When to buy certificates can be decided later. The records you will need at that point do not exist unless they start accumulating now.

This article expands one section of LCS EAC special report 1, Do the Reductions You Buy Become Yours? The full report works from the SBTi Corporate Net-Zero Standard V2.0 and SBTi Evidence Synthesis Report Part 2 as primary sources, with the printed page number given for every quotation.