An EAC is not something outside the standard

Raise EACs and one reaction comes first: "is that recognised?"

The SBTi Corporate Net-Zero Standard V2.0 defines the category.

Two definitions in the standard

Market instrument — "a contractual arrangement between two or more parties that enables the creation, transfer, or claiming of GHG-related environmental attributes" (p.88).

Commodity certificate — a "third-party-assured market instrument that represents the environmental attributes of an underlying good, product, or service" (p.82).

What the industry calls an EAC is exactly this category. Not a separate thing sitting outside the standard, but an instrument the standard has already made room for.

And conditions come with it

Introducing its implementation hierarchy, the standard continues: those actions "may be supported by market instruments, including energy and commodity certificates based on different chain-of-custody models (e.g., mass balance, book-and-claim), subject to the guardrails set out in the Standard" (p.3). The same sentence is repeated in the summary (p.5).

Two things matter. That it is allowed, and that there are conditions. The place to start a review is not "can we or can't we" but "what has to be in place".

Who vouches for it

The standard is clear about its own role too: "the SBTi does not seek to develop or replace certification schemes" (p.47). Instead it undertakes to develop criteria and processes for recognising third-party frameworks, standards and programmes.

So there is one more thing to ask when reviewing a certificate — who issued it, and where does that body stand.

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.