Book and claim

“Book and claim moves the attribute through a ledger, not the material through a pipe. ”

Book and claim separates two flows that other chain-of-custody models keep partly connected. The physical product moves through its ordinary market. A verified sustainability attribute is issued as a transferable instrument, traded independently and retired by an organisation making a claim. The buyer may never receive the physical material associated with the original attribute.

ISO 22095-3:2026 introduced requirements and guidance for book-and-claim systems, building on the model defined in ISO 22095. It uses the concept of transferable instruments with entitlement to claim and addresses their creation, transfer, retirement, system boundaries, transparency and protection against double counting.

Electricity certificates provide the most familiar analogy. Power from many sources enters one grid and cannot be directed as specific electrons to a customer. Attribute certificates allow renewable generation and consumption claims to be accounted separately from physical delivery. Similar approaches are being developed for sustainable aviation fuel, lower-emission materials and agricultural commodities.

The separation creates access and risk. Producers can receive value for a preferred practice even where segregated logistics do not exist. Buyers can support demand without rebuilding physical supply chains. But the distance between payment and product makes claim wording decisive. The customer is purchasing an attribute or contribution, not proof that the physical item contains the corresponding material.

Every instrument needs a unique lifecycle. It should be issued against eligible activity, recorded in a registry, transferred without duplication and retired so it cannot support another claim. Registries, serial numbers, ownership rules, audits and interoperability are therefore core infrastructure. A certificate copied into two systems can create two claims from one activity.

Additionality is a separate question. A technically valid certificate may reward activity that would have occurred without the purchase. The book-and-claim system can still allocate an attribute correctly while the buyer overstates causal impact. Claim integrity therefore requires clarity about whether the statement concerns procurement, financial support, market demand or additional change.

Geographic and temporal connection also matter. A certificate from one country and year may be used by a buyer elsewhere under system rules. That can support a global market and may not address local impacts or transition.

Organisations should avoid implying that an instrument changed the physical supply chain serving a particular site unless the evidence supports it.

Price and producer benefit require scrutiny. A large downstream claim can rest on an instrument that delivers limited revenue to the producer. Transparent systems should show issuance fees, trading margins and the value reaching origin. Market growth is not automatically fair value distribution.

Book and claim is sometimes criticised as permission to avoid physical change. That risk is real when organisations use certificates as a permanent substitute for feasible operational improvement. It can also be a practical transition tool where physical segregation is impossible or would delay demand.

Strategy should explain why the model is appropriate, what physical changes continue and when the approach will be reviewed.

The model is not automatically an offset. An attribute instrument may represent renewable content, production practice or another characteristic without compensating for the buyer's separate impact. Offset claims require additional rules on equivalence, baseline, additionality, permanence and leakage. Calling every certificate an offset confuses different market mechanisms.

The discipline is to state exactly what the instrument entitles the holder to claim. Book and claim can channel finance and demand across physical constraints, but it requires exceptional registry control and communication. The ledger may be correct while the public story is wrong.

Practical application

Define the eligible activity, unit, issuance evidence, registry, ownership, transfer, retirement, expiry, geography and period. Prevent duplicate issuance and claims across registries. Verify who receives value and how intermediaries are paid.

Write model-specific claims before purchase and test them with reasonable users. Separate claims of support or attribute procurement from physical-content and impact claims. Use book and claim within a transition plan rather than as an unexplained substitute for feasible supply-chain change.

Why it matters

Some attributes cannot be followed economically or physically to individual users. Book and claim can create demand and finance for preferred production despite that constraint. Its usefulness depends on unique instruments, reliable retirement and claims that do not pretend the physical connection exists.

Common misconception

Book and claim is often described as either direct sustainable content or mere green paper. It is an administrative chain-of-custody model. It can credibly transfer an entitlement to claim, but the claim is about the attribute instrument, not the physical item received.

Connections

Mass balance retains quantity accounting within physical material systems; book and claim decouples the attribute further. Verification tests issuance and retirement claims. Impact and additionality require evidence beyond the validity of the instrument itself.

A question worth asking

If the certificate registry disappeared from the story, would your customer still believe the physical product carried the claimed attribute - and is that belief being corrected clearly enough?

Selected references

ISO 22095-3:2026. Chain of Custody - Part 3: Requirements and Guidelines for Book and Claim. ISO 22095:2020. Chain of Custody - General Terminology and Models. ISO. 2026. New ISO Standards Bring Clarity to Chain of Custody. GHG Protocol. 2015. Scope 2 Guidance. Roundtable on Sustainable Biomaterials. 2021. Book and Claim for Sustainable Aviation Fuel - Frequently Asked Questions.