Why "what does it cost" has no answer

Raise emissions certificates and the second question is always the same. What does it cost.

The honest answer: there is no published price index for transport insetting certificates.

Why not

Shares and crude have a quoted price. Everyone looks at the same screen and says the same number. There is no such screen here, for two reasons.

How it trades. Most of what moves today is negotiated directly between buyer and supplier and tied up in multi-year contracts. Nothing obliges the contract price to be published, and it is not.

The goods are not uniform. Two certificates for one tonne differ by which fuel it came from, which country's scheme produced it, who verified it, and how long it stays valid. Goods that are not uniform do not produce an index.

The question that can be answered

"What is it trading at" has no answerable form. Reshaped, it does:

What is the price built on, and how much has actually changed hands?

Both are checkable against published material. The structure that sets the price is written up in a standard-setter's review, and the scale shows up as figures in large contracts that were announced.

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.