Reporting SAF certificates without overstating them

For most companies, the hardest part of SAFc is not buying it. It is reporting it.

A certificate can be sound, the documentation can be in order, and the ESG team can still be left with a basic question: where does this go in our numbers, and what can we say about it in the report?

The honest answer is that the frameworks are still catching up. That does not mean there is nothing companies can do today. It means doing it carefully.

Where aviation sits in your inventory

For most corporates, aviation emissions live in Scope 3. Business travel typically falls under Scope 3 Category 6. Air freight usually sits within upstream or downstream transport categories, depending on who arranges and pays for it.

That placement matters, because Scope 3 is where targets, scrutiny and uncertainty all concentrate. It is also where SAFc are designed to help.

Market-based logic, applied to aviation

SAFc are a market-based instrument. The company is not changing the physical fuel in its own flights. It is paying for a verified environmental attribute and retiring it.

This is conceptually similar to how renewable electricity certificates work in Scope 2, where companies report a location-based number and a market-based number side by side. The aviation equivalent is less mature, but the logic is familiar: keep the gross emissions visible, and show the market-based action separately and transparently.

What is settled, and what is not

This is where honesty matters more than ambition.

The GHG Protocol is still working through how market-based instruments should be treated in Scope 3, and guidance continues to evolve. The Science Based Targets initiative has been exploring the role of environmental attribute certificates in relation to Scope 3 targets, including through its work on the Corporate Net-Zero Standard, but the rules are not final.

So a company should not claim that SAFc are universally accepted for hitting an SBTi target today. What it can do is act in line with the direction of travel, document everything, and stay ready to adjust as the standards settle.

Report SAFc as something you did, not as something that made the emissions disappear.

What you can do today

A defensible approach usually looks something like this:

• Keep reporting gross aviation Scope 3 emissions in full
• Disclose SAFc purchases and retirements separately and clearly
• Describe the instrument accurately, including its limitations
• Retain documentation: fuel, pathway, certification, registry, retirement
• Avoid netting SAFc against your inventory until guidance supports it
• Track GHG Protocol and SBTi updates and revisit treatment each year

This is more conservative than some marketing suggests. It is also far more comfortable to defend in an audit or an investor conversation.

Reporting is where credibility is won or lost

SAFc can be a genuine part of an aviation decarbonisation strategy. But the value only holds if the reporting is clean.

For an ESG manager or CFO, the safest position is also the strongest one: act early, report transparently, and avoid claims that outrun the standards. When the rules firm up, companies that built good habits will be ready, and the ones that overclaimed will be unwinding. Refine helps companies buy and document SAFc in a way that fits how Scope 3 reporting is actually evolving.