Correction issued 2026-09-03 Washington (WCA) price basis: Washington's mark moves from the June auction clearing to the December 2026 futures settlement, the contract carrying 85% of that curve's open interest. (full statement below.) RIN prints: withheld, adjudicated, restored - the full sequence: we withheld our four RIN prints on 2 September on a suspected parse fault, then adjudicated it against sixteen years of the same series and restored them. (full statement below.) · All corrections
AS OF 3 September 2026, MDT (Calgary, UTC-6). Futures marks are today's close. Auction clearings and regulator prints carry their own dates, which are stated on each. Currency is named on every price.
Two corrections ride this note. First, we withheld our four RIN prints on 2 September on a suspected parse fault, adjudicated the series against sixteen years of the same export, and restored them. The prints were always right; what was missing was any way to check them. Second, Washington's mark moves from the June auction clearing to the December 2026 futures settlement, the contract carrying 85% of that curve's open interest. The clearing stays beside it as the primary print. The level change below is a basis change, not a market move.
EU ETS (EUA), EUR. Mark 83.53 (3 Sept 2026, most liquid futures settlement (Dec26), EUA, settlement observation), -0.6% vs prior same-basis mark. Primary print 82.84 (3 Sept 2026, latest EEX auction clearing).
What moved: Softer by 0.6%, with today's common-platform Thursday clearing printing below the Dec26 observation.
Why: A sub-1% session; the desk asserts no catalyst it cannot date.
Desk view: Constructive. Forward rows are supply 1101.4/1015.4/929.4/843.4 against demand 987.7/972.9/958.3/943.9, so +113.7 in 2027 flips to -100.5 by 2030 - narrowing and structurally tightening. That balance is PRE-MSR: the reserve withdraws from auction volumes before the market sees them.
UK ETS (UKA), GBP. Mark 59.49 (3 Sept 2026, Dec26 settlement observation), -0.4%. Primary print 58.68 (July 2026 official monthly average UKA settlement, CCM table).
What moved: Marginally lower; in common currency the Sep26 contract sits 17.1% under EUA, narrowing to -14.4% at Dec28 (ECB EUR/GBP reference rate, 31 Aug; mixed timing basis disclosed).
Why: No dated catalyst. Demand rows re-anchored 1 September on the registry's observed 79.716 Mt for the 2025 compliance year, cutting demand 5%.
Desk view: Deficit throughout under SI 2020/1265 Table B as amended by SI 2026/392. These rows are budget minus emissions and carry no bank or reserve, so this is a supply path, not a scarcity call.
California-Quebec (CCA), USD. Mark 33.35 (3 Sept 2026, Dec26 CCA V26 settlement observation), 0.0%. Primary print 32.48 (August 2026 joint auction, current-vintage settlement; held 19 Aug, results 26 Aug).
What moved: Unchanged on the day.
Why: Quiet tape into the amended 17 CCR 95841 Table 6-2, effective 1 September, which removes 118.3 Mt from the 2027-2030 budgets. Separately, a Manufacturing Decarbonization Incentive account is created with its own 2028-2035 allocation window. Withdrawn from auction and allocation is not permanent retirement.
Desk view: Deficit -27.0 to -84.2. The desk holds no bank figure here; offsets sit under the cap per AB 1207, biasing supply high.
Washington (WCA), USD. Mark 52.85 (3 Sept 2026, Dec26 WCA V26 settlement observation), 0.0%. Primary print 64.56 (June 2026, Auction #14 current-vintage settlement, held 3 June).
What moved: Price flat; the basis moved, per the correction above.
Why: Auction #15 was held 2 September and no clearing exists until certification on 9 September (Ecology publication 26-14-062). No price is attached to it here.
Desk view: Deficit -12.4 to -24.2 on the current statutory slope, an assumption superseded when WAC 173-446 adopts (est. 23 Sept, effective est. 24 Oct). APCR and the first-ever ECR sale (16 Sept) are contingent supply that has not released.
RGGI (RGA), USD. Mark 40.00 (3 Sept 2026, Dec26 RGGI V26 settlement observation), -1.6%. Primary print 35.00 (3 June 2026, Auction 72 clearing).
What moved: The front lost 1.6%, the only move above one percent on the tape.
Why: Verification found no dated same-day catalyst, so none is claimed. A Carbon Pulse headline describes RGAs easing from six-week highs ahead of the quarterly sale, but our results carry no date for it, so it is not carried as cause. Auction 73 is held 9 September, a Wednesday.
Desk view: Eleven states participate, Virginia since 1 July 2026; the cap and CCR volumes are ten-state and exclude Virginia, which aligns with the Third Program Review by 1 January 2027. Rows are deficit -9.8 to -32.9, so the ~67M private bank (Potomac, July 2025) is load-bearing and drawdown pace is the trade. Virginia's H2-2026 budget divides across the half's remaining sales - per-auction volume comes from the notice - plus 1.148 million CCR allowances available from the 73rd auction, supplied by Virginia. Our 2029 and 2030 supply rows carry +0.071 and +0.109 desk adjustments the statute does not state.
NZ ETS (NZU), NZD. Mark 54.77 (13 August 2026, NZU secondary spot, open-licensed scrape of broker marks), -2.2% versus the prior close 21 days earlier.
What moved: Nothing here today; no fresh mark since 13 August, and that -2.2% spans three weeks, not a session.
Why: Not applicable absent a print.
Desk view: Rows assume auctions clear nothing below the NZD 71 floor. Tuesday 8 September, the first sale under Xpansiv CBL, tests that premise.
Australia (ACCU), AUD. Primary print 37.50 (15 May 2026, generic ACCU spot, CER QCMR March quarter 2026). This is a last print past its own cadence, not a mark; no citable current mark.
What moved: Unmarked.
Why: The next quarterly report is the repricer of record.
Desk view: Deficit -22.8 to -34.4 on the legislated 4.9%/yr baseline decline, with the base still the desk's own figure pending CER's published totals.
Alberta TIER, CAD. Primary print 95.00 (2026 headline price, stated verbatim at s.1.2.1.1 of the Canada-Alberta Implementation Agreement, 15 May 2026). Administered price, not a market mark; the NGX feed is held indefinitely because no reference contract can be determined.
What moved: Administered prices do not move intrasession.
Why: n/a.
Desk view: The live item is the credit price floor regulation Alberta is to enact by 31 December 2026; clause 1.2.3.4 grandfathers credits generated before enactment, so the cutoff is economically live now.
Fuels and LCFS. RIN prints, USD: D4 2.0639, D6 2.2615, D3 2.5820, D5 2.3402, all 20 July 2026 (EPA EMTS weekly volume-weighted average of separated RINs) - historic prints 45 days old, not current marks. CA LCFS credit 79.02 USD (CARB weekly volume-weighted average, week of 24 August 2026, range 67.00-84.00). BC LCFS 135.80 CAD (July 2026 monthly average credit transfer price).
What moved: No dated move today in any of the three.
Why: The RIN lines are back on the tape under the correction above, with the audit trail that was missing.
Desk view: California's 2026Q1 balance was credits 6.93M MT against deficits 9.77M MT, net -2.84M, cumulative bank 36.86M MT (quarter ended 31 March, published 31 July, 153 days behind today, and revisable). The renewable-diesel margin channel stays direction-only: we hold no current licensed RIN price, so no number is claimed from it.
What to watch tomorrow. Friday 4 September brings the CFTC Commitments of Traders report, the only dated release on tomorrow's calendar, and the cleanest read available on positioning across the carbon complex into a heavy following week. Then 8 September carries CARB's weekly LCFS credit transfer report and the NZ quarterly auction; 9 September carries RGGI Auction 73 and Washington's Auction #15 certification. All four are IOUs this desk owes back in print.
The desk's mark for Washington Cap-and-Invest (WCA) changes basis with this note.
What changed. Until this note the WCA mark was the most recent Ecology auction settlement - Auction #14, held 3 June 2026 (Ecology publication 26-14-039, the Auction #14 Summary Report: "Ecology held an auction of allowances on June 3, 2026", which also states the USD 64.56 current-vintage settlement the desk carries). From this note it is the front-month futures settlement, stated as such on every appearance with the contract month named, and the auction settlement stays on every surface as the primary print beside it.
Why. Washington auctions clear quarterly, so an auction print describes the market in the week it prints and drifts from it for the three months afterwards - the mark this note replaces was a quarter old. This is the same shelf-life argument that moved RGGI off its auction print on 27 August, applied to the same auction cadence. A front-month settlement reprices daily and is what a compliance buyer transacts against; the auction remains the primary print, and when an auction is the news the auction leads.
What it means for reading the note. The mark will move daily and by small amounts; a change in the mark is no longer evidence that an auction has happened. Each mark states what it is and which contract month it is.
What we did, in order, because a figure that disappears and returns without an account is worse than one that never moved.
1. The suspicion. Our RIN prints for the week of 20 July showed D4 at 2.0639 against D6 at 2.2615 - the biomass-based diesel RIN trading two tenths of a dollar BELOW the conventional one. A D4 RIN can be retired against a D6 obligation, so a lasting D4 discount is an arbitrage. Set against the only other RIN observation on our tape - a different publisher, six weeks earlier, showing D4 four cents ABOVE D6 - it looked like the collector had swapped the labels.
2. The withholding. We took all four prints off the tape rather than publish figures we could not check, and rather than publish them re-sorted into the order we expected, which would have been a market invented from a hypothesis.
3. What we could not do, and why that was the real problem. Our collector read the newest week out of the export and discarded the rest. There was no retained copy, so there was nothing to adjudicate against. The desk could not tell whether its own figure was wrong.
4. The adjudication. We changed the collector to keep the export, pulled a fresh one, and read the whole series: 839 weeks back to June 2010, under the same source. D4 sits ABOVE D6 in 92.2% of those weeks, at a median premium of seventeen cents. A swapped label is a property of the source and would have inverted the entire history; it did not. A swap that began recently is refuted the same way - the last 26 weeks carry ten normal weeks interspersed among the inverted ones, and a swapped label cannot produce those. The disputed week is genuine: the third most inverted week in 838, inside a historic range that has been wider.
5. The restoration. The four prints are back, with a flag on the D4/D6 pair marking the week as rarer than one in a hundred and inviting a cross-check against a commercial assessment. They render as last prints with their age, as they did before.
What did not change, and should not be read as recovered. These are prints for the week of 20 July. They were never a current mark and are not one now. The renewable-diesel margin channel composed on them before the withholding and does so again; nothing was regained that the desk did not already have.
What we learned, which is the part worth publishing. The desk was one retention step away from being able to answer this in minutes, and instead spent a day unable to answer it at all. A collector that parses and discards leaves its own output unauditable. Ours keeps the file now.