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Today, this is simply not possible. Some data, such as utility bills or shipping records, are held in those institutions' data siloes and are tedious to get. Most data, though, is just not available. Most products involve multiple materials and activities to manufacture and distribute, and the data for the carbon footprint of their raw materials and activities are not available. As a result, we have to rely on broad aggregates of national economic output instead of carbon emissions data for any particular organization or individual.
While it may never be possible to account for the exact carbon emissions of a single unit of product, just like it's not possible to account for the exact value or cost of single unit of production in traditional accounting, we need to improve the quality of carbon accounting so that it could be reasonably done at an organizational or a personal level. Only by doing so could we attribute climate impact and encourage climate action properly.
To do, every member of a supply chain would need to be able to get the data they need to make reasonable carbon emissions calculations of their products and services, and then be able to publish those emissions for the products and services they make. Then Those emissions calculations should be made by trusted auditors, or software developed by such trusted parties. Then customers or users in the next step of the supply chain could use those emissions data to calculate their own emissions. This would require transmitting data across a large number of organizations and activities across multiple industries and supply chains. The challenge is one of scope and scale.
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Fortunately, blockchains or distributed ledger technologies (DLT's) are by design made for solving these issues. They are an "internet of value" where data could be transacted across different organizations through a shared ledger. Furthermore, they are "trustless" networks and do not require trust in a single organization, whether it's the company making a climate action claim or an entity certifying it. Instead, they allow multiple parties to come together and verify all claims independently with data and code. With blockchains, we can
- Automate data collection from a large number of sources, as is typical in supply chains.
- Maintain audit trail of immutable records, so that emissions calculations could be verified later without relying on one central repository.
- Create trust in CO2 emissions accounts as they are transacted across industrial and national boundaries, where no trusted central repository exists
- A company could share its operating data with multiple auditing entities to calculate its emissions on a secured, private channel.
- It could then share its emissions data with its customers on a private channel.
- If multiple companies are sharing their data on one or more blockchains or channels, the next company could subscribe to those channels to obtain the data for emissions calculations automatically.
Why Open Source
By making the source code available, we make the carbon emissions accounting and certification process transparent, so that all stakeholders could see what went into it. This increases the trust in the results.
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