Transportation accounts for 1/4 to 1/5 of global Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions, or 8 billion tCO2e per year. Of this 75% comes from road vehicles, 12% from aviation, and 10% from shipping. (Source: Our World in Data)
This project builds a blockchain network to calculate emissions from transportation and verify emissions reductions in transportation. It could be used with a mobile app to track your own personal emissions for traveling or transportation and logistics emissions as part of the Supply Chain Emissions Ledger Project.
Requirements
Mobile App
A user-friendly mobile app will capture travel information and integrate with the Blockchain network (see below.) The mobile app could be used by an individual to track their travel, or attached to a truck, ship, airplane, or cargo container to track its transportation.
Features of the mobile app:
- Set up vehicles - Set up type of car or other mode of transportation
- Initiate trip - Choose vehicle and click on Start
- Trip tracking - GPS signals record location of the device during the trip
- End trip - Click on End
- Sync - Use web socket security to sync travel information with Blockchain network
- Status - Visualize trips and emissions.
Integration with the blockchain network will be via the web socket security wallet on the mobile client.
Blockchain Network
A Fabric blockchain will receive the travel records from either the mobile app or other sources such as shipping manifests (UPS, freight carriers) or employee travel systems (Concur).
The blockchain will not store the travel records. Instead, each record will be hashed to preserve audit trail.
Blockchain will calculate and record the emissions from the travel records and link back to the original source with a record of its keys.
To do this correctly, the Blockchain will need to validate:
- Mode of transportation (ie drive, bike, fly, type of car), based on origin, destination, and time of travel to calculate the average speed and verify that this is reasonable given the mode of transportation.
- Fuel use - electronic certificate or token of sources of electricity for EV's or sustainable fuel for aviation and cars.
- Sharing - Simultaneous record of travel from other people on the network to prove you shared a ride.
- Claimed emissions - Programs such as UPS Carbon Neutral or the Delta Airlines Flight to Net Zero involve both reductions and offsets. The blockchain can collectively validate these programs' claimed emissions reductions.
Tokens of Emissions Reduction
Tokens of emissions reduction from travel will be issued by a DAO. The DAO will vote on:
- Chain code for validating the mode of travel, emissions calculations, and ride sharing
- Validity of fuel certificates
- Baseline for travel emissions based on expected mode and fuel use
The DAO can issue tokens for verified travel reduction.
Available resources
- NREL OpenPath (formerly e-mission) provides a mobile app which captures travel information and send them to a server. See their github issues #693 and #694 for details about how this interesting app works.
This program from the Connecticut Green Bank serves as an example of certifying emissions reductions from electric vehicles.
- The emissions calculation channel (currently being refactored from just utility emissions) will calculate emissions based on the type of travel and distance and store them on Fabric.
- Emissions factors for different types of travel and transportation is available from the data sources of the Supply Chain Emissions Ledger Project.
- Calculated Emissions could then be tokenized on an emissions tokens network
- Emissions reduction certification by the DAO Project.