A sixth question, before you ask the price

An earlier article set out five things to ask before the price. Which fuel, under which country's scheme, who issued it, who verified it, is it on a registry and retired.

After reading four countries' schemes in the source documents, one more attaches.

The sixth — inside or outside

Is this reduction inside what a domestic mandate counts, or outside it?

Inside, the double counting question has to be settled first. You have to establish whether this is a reduction already counted towards a public obligation being sold again in the voluntary market — and that argument is not settled internationally either.

Outside, the price has to be rooted not in a domestic scheme but in that fuel's actual extra cost and in buyer demand. Which also means another country's coverage rate cannot simply be transcribed.

Why the question matters especially here

Korea's blending mandate is fixed to one pair — automotive diesel and biodiesel — and counts by volume. What transport insetting deals with mostly happens outside that pair.

Once you know what a scheme counts, which side your own reduction falls on becomes the first thing to settle when reading a quote.

Where it meets the disclosure timetable

Mandates and disclosure regimes use different rulers. But both require the same thing.

On which leg, when, how much fuel was used.

That is also why a three-year deferral on Scope 3 disclosure should not be read as time gained. A deferral is a preparation period, not an exemption, and what eats the time is not the calculation but the system for getting the data in.

The scheme sets the price. The record sets who qualifies.

This article expands one section of LCS EAC special report 4, Different Schemes, Different Shares. The full report works from documents published by the UK Department for Transport, the German Bundestag, the Danish Energy Agency and the Korea Energy Agency as primary sources, and does not reproduce figures that were not confirmed in a primary source.