Q3/Q4 - 2021

Hyperledger Climate Action & Accounting Special Interest Group (CA2SIG) Q3/Q4 2021

This is the second half of the 2nd year of the CA2SIG. We are closing the year with 282 (+70 in since Q2/2021) members on our mailing list!

The SIG ended the year with 5 active working groups, each with its own team leader:

1. Carbon Accounting and Certification WG (Status: active)
2. Standards WG (Status: active)
3. Climate Research WG (Status: active)
4. Awareness and Capacity Building WG (Status: active)
5. CSR Reporting WG  (Status: active)

One working group lost traction over the year and is currently not active::

1. Consumer Disclosure WG (Status: not active)

We held 12 general meetings, 13 Peer Programming Calls, and 12 Standards WG meetings in the second half of the year. As part of the normal cycle of co-chairs, the beginning of 2022 marks the time to change the SIG chairs. Sherwood Moore and Robin Klemens are co-chairing the group.

What's Working Well

• Bi-weekly calls have consistency, and we have a max group of around 12 recurring and 3-15 additional but frequently changing participants that give continuity to dialogues. The number of attendees has gone up a bit (3-5 attendees) since Q2/2021. At least one chair is always present in meeting to give continuity as well. 
• The group invited 6 expert guest speakers to their general meeting. These presentations attracted 20-60 participants each.   
• New Member Introductions feature in every call is working well. We receive new members frequently. However, we don't necessarily get first timers to continue showing up. 
• Working groups have significantly ramped up interesting conversations and gotten diverse members engaged. Some are working towards MVP developments, which will lead to more interest. 
• The group mentored in four mentorship projects as part of the Hyperledger Mentorship Program that started in June. A special thanks goes out to all the mentees and mentors. At this point, we want to highlight the efforts of Si Chen who mentored all 4 mentees and was the main driver behind the mentorship program.
  
  • Blockchain Integration for Climate Emissions Data with Fabric and Cactus - We thank our mentee Pritam Singh. Also we want to thank Peter Somogyvari who mentored from the Hyperledger Cactus side
  • Documentation and Use Cases for Climate Action - We thank our mentee Dounia Marbouh
  • Implement Client Side Security for Climate SIG Fabric Application - We thank our mentee Bertrand WILLIAMSRIOUX
  • Automated Testing for Climate Emissions Ledger - We thank our mentee Harsh Sharma
• Carbon Accounting and Certification Working Group completed a research paper Voluntary Carbon Offsets: An Empirical Market Study, improved the connection between Hyperledger Fabric and Ethereum, and implemented client side security for Fabric using web-socket and Vault Transit engine.  We are currently working on extending the carbon calculator to cover the full scope emission (scope 1,2 and 3) and uses data from several open databases across the globe.
• The Supply Chain Emissions Project (nested under the Carbon Accounting and Certification Working Group) was created in late 2021 and has made early progress exploring the possibility of a cross-sig project with the Supply Chain / Trade Finance SIG.
• The Standards WG analyzed existing carbon emission calculation tools and discussed differences between climate account vs other forms of accounting. They are currently developing an ontology for climate accounting.
• The Research WG published a paper on the Voluntary Carbon Offsets Market (published as Voluntary Carbon Offsets: An Empirical Market Study on SSRN).
• The CSR Reporting WG is currently doing market research to identify the problem of  Corporate Social Responsibility reporting. Results will be published in Q1 of 2022. Thanks to Ermanno Camerinellifor leading the research.
• The group presented Global Climate Accounting two times this year and received great interest from the audience.
  • The first presentation was hosted by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), as part of a Digital Discovery Session titled: Open Digital Infrastructure for Global Climate Innovation and Accounting. Please click the link provided for access to a recording of the presentation.
  • The second presentation was held by Robin Klemens at Blockchain Europe 2021 in Hamburg. The slides are at Resources and the recording will be shared with the group once published.
• The group also contributed to the UNEP sponsored Coalition for Digital Environmental Sustainability (CODES) Action Plan. The CA2SIG contributed language to the action plan which is highlighting the need of global multistakeholder participation in an Open Global Climate Accounting System. The CODES action plan is scheduled to be published in early 2022.

Issues being faced by the group

• Working groups still have low engagement and support outside meetings, and will need more commitment to arrive towards milestones and products. 
• Meetings oscillate in 12-20 in attendance and don't go up very much, or at least we don't get many new members that are consistently joining. 
• The group identifies that solid proof use cases are essential to convincing people from the open-source community to get engaged and also to collaborate with other institutions and cooperations. The SIG is currently looking for guidance on how to create use cases.
• The SIG would benefit from increased enterprise / corporate sponsorship and participation. In 2022, we plan to explore using business cases to actively recruit corporate sponsorship and participation. 

List of planned next steps

• Carbon neutrality certificate concept and MVP
• Climate standards mapping exercise
• The Supply Chain Emissions Project is developing a business case that it will use to actively recruit new participation and support from enterprise enterprise partners seeking to build solutions to solve the challenge of Scope 3 supply chain carbon emissions reporting using Hyperledger.
• The group will publish a blog post featuring all guest presentations throughout the year 2021.
• The group started piloting with POAPs and iterate closely together with the community architects of Hyperledger. The first meeting badge has already been created and is at https://app.poap.xyz/token/3496829