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

  1. Use Hyperledger to perform a carbon accounting audit and carbon neutral certification in a permissioned ledger.
  2. Publish the results of 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.
  • REC's showing renewable energy purchased.
  • 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 REC from provider, sign, and store it
  5. Obtain carbon offsets info, sign, and store it
  6. Run smart contracts from both certifying entities.  
  7. 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.

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.  

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