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This Minimum Viable Product will demonstrate two these key concepts from the Carbon Neutral Accounting and Certification Working Group:

  1. Use Hyperledger to perform a carbon accounting audit and or carbon neutral neutrality certification in a permissioned ledger.
  2. Publish the results of Create tokens or assets based on the audit publicly so that it could be used for another company, such as a customer, in its carbon audit and certification down the value chain.

Let's start with a hypothetical company C1, which makes and sells a product.  To do so, it purchases energy from a local utility and raw materials from a supplier.  To become carbon neutral, it purchases a Renewable Energy Certificates (REC's) to offset its energy emissions and carbon offsets to balance out its overall carbon footprint.  So the data we have for the company are:

  • Company attributes - name and location.
  • Utility bills showing energy purchased.
  • Renewable energy generated, for example from solar panels' inverters.
  • REC's showing renewable energy purchased and retired.
  • Raw materials purchased - Dollar value, quantity, weight, and source.  The raw material also has a published carbon footprint which the company could use.
  • Products produced - Dollar value, quantity, and weight
  • Carbon offsets 

The following parties are involved in the audit:

  • The Company, which provides basic information and information about raw materials purchased.
  • Its utility, which provides the energy bills.
  • Provider of the REC's.
  • Provider of carbon offsets.
  • 2 entities certifying the company's carbon neutrality.  They will each provide a formula for calculating the carbon neutrality of the company.  Their formulas are slightlly different in how they analyze the data.  They have coded their audit into smart contracts.
  • Neutral administrator of the audit, which manages the infrastructure, obtains the data and smart contracts, and publishes the results.

The MVP would:

  1. Set up a channel in a Hyperledger permissioned ledger for the parties
  2. Obtain company information, sign, and store it in the channel
  3. Obtain utility data, sign, and store it  
  4. Obtain energy generated from solar panel inverters, sign, and store it.
  5. Obtain REC from provider, sign, and store it
  6. Obtain carbon offsets info, sign, and store it
  7. Run smart contracts from both certifying entities.  
  8. Publish results from both certifying entities.

The results of the carbon neutrality audit would be published and made publicly available, so the company's customers could use it in their carbon calculations, just as the company did for its supplier.  If the company does not want to publish this publicly, it could be kept in a permissioned ledger just for its supply chain partners.  If needed, the published results of the carbon neutrality audit could also be embedded in tokens and attached to actual products as they flow through the supply chain.

Each of the entities will tokenize the carbon footprint of its output and place it on a permissioned ledger for its customers to use:

  • The utility will create a token of its carbon emissions based on kWH sold and place it on the utility permissioned ledger.  (In reality, this will probably have to be done by an entity which does this for the utility.)
  • The REC and carbon offsets sellers will each publish a token of the amount of renewable energy or carbon offsets purchased and place them on their respective ledgers.  These could be ledgers shared by multiple REC and carbon offsets sellers and all their customers. 
  • Finally, the raw materials supplier will create a token for its product and place it on its own permissioned ledger. 

The MVP would:

  1. Subscribe to the permissioned ledgers of the utility, REC seller, carbon offsets seller, and raw materials supplier.
  2. Obtain the tokens from the utility, REC seller, carbon offsets seller, and raw materials supplier.
  3. Obtain information about the company's output.
  4. Run smart contract to calculate the net emissions of the company.
  5. Calculate the carbon emissions per unit of product sold.  
  6. Set up a permissioned ledger for the company's customers.
  7. Create tokens or assets on the ledger for the company's products.

Then a second company, C2, could use the tokens from C1 to calculate the carbon emissions of its purchases from C1.  

See the Data Center Carbon Calculator for a very simple example of this.Then we'll have a second company C2 with the same setup, but which purchases the products of C1.  It will obtain the carbon neutrality certification for C1 and use it for its own carbon audit and carbon neutrality certification