Carbon offsets are claims of activities which reduce carbon emissions, such as investments in renewable energy generation, improved forestry and land management, circular economy and reuse, and carbon capture and sequestration. Carbon offsets are either part of mandatory schemes, such as the European Emissions Trading Allowance, industry schemes, such as CORSIA, and voluntary purchases by primarily corporate buyers and some individuals.
Mandatory carbon trading regimes are often limited in scope and region, and in the past have suffered large swings in activity due to political shifts. The European Emission Trading scheme, for example, was active until 2010.
Therefore, to reach Paris Climate goals, a robust voluntary carbon offsets market is needed. The voluntary carbon offsets market is currently a highly fragmented, illiquid market with poor transparency and questionable quality. The goal of this project is to bring forward a blockchain-based solution which will allow greater transparency, price discovery, and ultimately higher quality. Through interviews with key stakeholders, we will identify the key issues, fine tune a solution, and bring on initial participants to launch it.
Carbon offsets are created by
The Players
See for example Gold Standard’s approve auditors list
Major corporations such as Microsoft
CORSIA - eligibility criteria for airlines to purchase credits
ICROA
IETA
Since the market trades directly or over-the-counter, most of the information is not available. However, a few references are:
A blockchain based platform to provide a central directory of voluntary offsets based on a decentralized architecture. The decentralized permissioned architecture allows recognized participants around the world and in different functional roles (developers, brokers, buyers, verification bureaus, standards organizations) to contribute data about voluntary carbon offsets. Built on a permissioned network such as Hyperledger Fabric, members of the network could contribute data about voluntary carbon offsets, including the projects details, quantity issued, background documentation, and any trades that occur. Fabric is a high speed ledger, faster and with lower energy usage than public proof of work or even proof of stake ledgers. We could use IPFS or another decentralized storage mechanism to store documentation of the offsets and use md5 to verify that documents have not been altered.
The solution would be an open source code base which includes Fabric chain code, scripts to access the network, plus a basic web UI for demonstration purposes. Initially the data could come from the Berkeley Carbon Trading Project of different offsets registries, so the schema would be based on their data as well. A proposed governance and incentive structure:
An incentive structure for contributions similar to the Multiple Listing Service for residential real estate would be based on:
This directory would not directly allow trading between participants. It is for information purposes only. However, even without trading, this directory could greatly enhance the voluntary offsets market place by:
The Case for Starting Your Project with an Ecosystem Map: https://spin.atomicobject.com/2018/03/19/why-ecosystem-map/
How to Get Ecosystem Buy-In: https://hbr.org/2017/03/how-to-get-ecosystem-buy-in
Methodology Of Business Ecosystems Network Analysis: A Field Study In Telecom Italia Future Centre http://www.diag.uniroma1.it//~nonino/Publications/CI20.pdf
BEAM: A framework for business ecosystem analysis and modeling: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/5386541
Business ecosystem analysis framework: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7341356
The Delicate Balance of Making an Ecosystem Strategy Work: https://hbr.org/2019/11/the-delicate-balance-of-making-an-ecosystem-strategy-work
Mapping and Strategising Across Business Ecosystems: https://www.europeanbusinessreview.com/mapping-and-strategising-across-business-ecosystems/
This project is part of the Documentation and Use Cases for Climate Action mentorship. For updates on this project, see the Project Plan - Documentation and Use Cases for Climate Action.