Mission

The mission and goals of the Climate Action and Accounting SIG includes include " to to turn this network into action under a common open source project that defines shared protocols, standards, and platform tools for a globally integrated climate accounting system to be operationalized."

This working group will focus focus particularly on the "protocols and standards" that will enable consistent climate accounting MRV is often used to convey not only the accounting, but more broadly measurement, reporting and verification.  

•  [Tom comment: ISO produces many types of standards-related products, however it is mainly known as an SDO that creates auditable  standards for conformity assessment. Such standards are typically relatively short (e.g. 20 pages). In contrast, the GHG Corporate Protocol (2001), which was followed by a suite of GHGPs, started as a "how to guidebook" that are typically relatively long (e.g. 100+ pages). In 2005, the GHGP adopted ISO-style language and requirements content to complement the guidance content. In addition to differentiating protocols and standards (there are several types of standards), CDM Methodologies  and IPCC Guidelines  are additional variations of "standards"]

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Work plan for 2023

We coordinate most of the work for this working group through the bimonthly Standards WG call. The work plan for the working group is set out in this document. The most practical way to get involved is to join this call. Please check the calendar for the next call. 

The 2023 work plan involves:

• SSSOM maps that map AIAO to at least two prominent greenhouse gas accounting standards.
• A SHACL shape graph that can be used to validate the conformation of annotated data to AIAO.
• Tagged impact documents from at least 10 representative case studies, stored in an appropriate open source graph database. One of the case studies will be the work of our sister working group, the Carbon Accounting and Certification WG of CA2-SIG.
• EITHER (a.) an AI model to annotate further documents according to AIAO, OR (b.) a SPARQL endpoint for querying annotated climate impact data. 

Progress and opportunities to contribute

For the latest version of our taxonomy of protocols, standards, methodologies and certifications, head over to this page. The taxonomy is by no means complete yet, so feel free to add, improve and expand! You'll find some TODOs at the bottom of the page.

For the latest version of our ontology and its application guide, check out this page. You will find a bunch of TODOs there that you can pick up and run with, e.g., embedding our ontology into the ISO/IEC Basic Formal Ontology (BFO).

Some further results and ideas are taking shape under the New ideas, debates and discussions page. If you like to go down rabbit holes or debating things, this page is for you.

The best way to start contributing is, however, by joining our biweekly calls. Please check the calendar for the next call. 

Clarification

Scope

This section will eventually be much shorter. During the formation period, the text under this heading serves to guide the discussion on especially the mission, scope and deliverables. Once sufficient concensus has been reached, these discussions will be moved to an appropriate location and the concensus formulations kept here

1. Develop and populate a taxonomy of available accounting standards in a way relevant to the mission of the CA2SIG

2. Develop a consistent way to capture existing certifications as a transaction in any of the Hyperledger blockchain frameworks

3. Implement a proof-of-concept chain from aggregating, reporting and possibly trading certified outcomes.

4. Develop and populate a taxonomy of available  methodologies  in a way relevant to the mission of the CA2SIG

5. Implement a proof-of-concept transactional chain containing transaction processors and data structures and identifiers

6. Develop and populate a taxonomy of available certification processes

7. Implement a proof-of-concept transactional chain for verification / certification

8. Develop one vertically intergrated use case

What do we mean by 'standards'?

The term 'standard' is used in a variety of contexts . Even - even within the scope of the CA2SIG CA2-SIG a variety of things are denoted with the term 'standard'. These include:

• Technical technical standards like those of the W3C ;

• Accounting accounting standards, including:

  • Greenhouse Gas Protocol  ;  

  • the standards used by the UNFCCC for compliance purposes in different jurisdictions (e.g., the CDM project standard, California Air Resources Board (CARB));

  • voluntary standards like the Verra's Verified Carbon Standard (VCS), the Gold Standard, Social Carbon, American Carbon Registry (ACR), Climate Action Reserve (CAR), and The Plan Vivo Foundation;

  • standards for entity-level Standard for entity  level accounting within various scopes; 

  • Standards standards for local/regional/national inventories;

• Environmental environmental performance standards like those of the IFC;

• Standards standards related to products; and

• Standards standards for accounting for policy impacts.

What are standards used for?

Standards are used for many things, among which:

• personal climate footprinting

• product/service footprinting

• entity accounting (scope 1, 2 and 3)

• regional accounting

• policy impact assessments

Standards are relevant at different phases of the climate accounting process:

1. There are standards for measuring aspects of activities and processes. Let's call these measurement collection standards. These standard are focussed on measurements and concern things like the calibration and correct use and instruments. Application of these standards produce valid measurement data.
2. There are other standards that standardise the transformation, evaluation and aggregation of data and metadata. We can call these calculation methodologies or data processing standards. Application of such standards produces indicators, metrics and indices with a well-defined meaning. Such outputs can be tokenised.
3. Another type of standard concerns claims or assertions about entities or activities, such as the yearly emissions of a company or the climate impact of a project. We can call these reporting standards. Application of these standards yield standards compliant reports. The contents of such reports can also be tokenised.
4. There are also standards that concern the process of measuring, reporting and verifying itself and the persons who carry out such assessments. We can call these quality standards and verification or certification standards. Application of such standards produce certifications or assurance.

What is standardised?

• Entities: This is the problem of identity. We mean the identity of people, organisations and things. It is needed to connect an unambiguous identifier to all the entities involved in the accounting process. In the case of businesses, this may be difficult because businesses may have complicated structures of ownership and control (see for example Chapter 3 of the GHG Protocol: Corporate Accounting Standard).

• Agency: This is the problem of responsibility - how do we show and prove that an entity (be that a person or organisation) is responsible for a certain action or outcome?

• Activities and events: Agents do things that affect their surroundings at some point in time.

• Counterfactuals: This is the problem of what would have happened if certain decisions had not been taken or certain actions had not been undertaken.  

What will the working group deliver and who will use it?

There are other bodies the that create the types of standards mentioned above. This working group will be more concerned with how such standards themselves and compliance to these standards are encoded and captured in a distrubuted ledger an and how such representations can be used. 

Use cases

What is

• Entities

• Activities and events

• Agency

• Counterfactuals

the relationship between standards, authority and freedom in the context of the work of the

CA2-SIG?

The CA2SIG CA2-SIG will not act as an authority that compels entitie entities to engage in specific actions. 

The standards to be generated by this working group will enable agents to clearly communicate clearly about the implications of their actions. This will enables enable others to have a clear understanding of the state of affairs regading regarding the activities and states covered by the standards. 

How will we translate standards into software?

Find the most generic articulation of what a standard, method and transaction is and develop protobuffer examples of each.

• Namespaced merkle Merkle tree 

• Protobuf examples

Refer to this page for more information.

Glossary and definitions

Meetings

Join the CA2-SIG Standards WG calls that are held on every other Tuesday of the month at 8 AM US Pacific time (UTC-07:00 America/Los Angeles). Please check the calendar for the next call.