Mission

The mission and goals of the Climate Action and Accounting SIG includes " 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 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"]

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

Clarification:

What do we mean by 'standards'?

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

• Technical standards like those of the W3C 
• Accounting standards, including:
  • Greenhouse Gas Protocol  
  • the standards used by the UNFCCC (e.g. the CDM project standard)
  • voluntary standards like the Verified Carbon Standard (VCS), the Gold Standard  Social Carbon
  • Standard for entity  level accounting within various scopes
  • Standards for local/regional/national inventories
• Environmental performance standards like those of the IFC
• Standards related to products
• Standards for accounting for policy impacts

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

There are other bodies the 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 how such representations can be used. 

Use cases

• Personal climate footprinting
• Product/ Service footprinting
• Entity accounting (scope 1, 2 and 3)
• Regional accounting
• Policy impact assessments

What is standardised?

• Entities

• Activities and events

• Agency

• Counterfactuals

What is the relationship between standards, authority and freedom in the context of the work of the CA2SIG?

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 tree 
• Protobuf examples

Taxonomy of protocols and standards

Meetings

All Hyperledger meetings are run covered by the following Antitrust Policy.

Meeting Agendas

Meeting Notes