The Proof of Sustainability, and what has to be on it

It is the per-consignment document that travels with certified material, called a Sustainability Declaration in the ISCC documentation. It must reflect the product group of the material physically delivered and state the GHG value of the final fuel. The market says PoS; the scheme documents say Sustainability Declaration; they are the same thing.

The certificate is about the company: it was audited, it holds a scope for certain materials, and it is valid until a date. The PoS is about the consignment: this batch, this volume, this feedstock, this GHG figure. A buyer needs both, and rejects far more often on the PoS than on the certificate.

At minimum it has to reflect the product group of what was physically delivered, and the GHG value of the final fuel has to be stated. The full requirements are set out in ISCC EU 203, Traceability and Chain of Custody, which is public. If a buyer has queried a declaration you hold, send it to us and we will read it against what they have to book.

Yes. The GHG value of the final fuel must be stated in the proof of sustainability. If a supplier offers certified material without a GHG figure, that is not a formality they forgot; the buyer cannot complete their side without it.

For co-processed and mixed streams the question is what share of the output counts as renewable, and it follows from the mass balance rather than from a measurement on the finished product. It is set out per consignment. Ask for it in writing at offer stage, because it changes the value of the parcel and is not something you can establish afterwards.

ISCC offers optional add-ons that a certificate holder can be audited against and that are then reflected in the documentation. Buyers with their own reporting commitments sometimes require one. Whether a given add-on is on the declaration is a question to settle before contracting, not at loading.

If you take title to certified material and pass it on as certified, you are in the chain of custody and you need to be certified, or work through a counterpart that is. This catches out European trading entities buying from a certified producer outside the EU: the production being certified does not put the trader in the chain.

No. The letter follows the feedstock, and the declaration has to carry the right one. They are two different products with two different chains, and if the letter is wrong the buyer's system will not accept it. Settle the category before you quote.

Every transaction of renewable fuel placed on the EU market is logged there and the entry links back to the PoS. The practical effect is that the declaration has to stand on its own, because someone downstream has to make an entry from it.

It comes up most often for the Italian national scheme, and the answer depends on where your volume is going. The question worth asking first is commercial rather than technical: does the buyer you want actually require it? A second audit is real money, and it is worth knowing whether it opens a market before you commit.

Not in itself. Plenty of legitimate producers certified recently, particularly in pyrolysis oil where the material only became eligible relatively lately. What matters is that the certificate is valid in the public register today, that the scope covers the material offered, and that the declarations are consistent with it.

We do not certify anyone and we are not a consultancy. When certification work is genuinely needed we can introduce you to ISCC consultants and auditors we have worked with, and to laboratories for the analysis that goes with it. We do that because material we cannot document is material we cannot place.