The 2023 United Nations Climate Change Conference, also known as COP28, saw several new initiatives aimed at innovating the fight against climate change and streamlining the complex carbon credit markets. Amid a sea of announcements and partnerships, Envision Blockchain, in partnership with HBAR Foundation and Swirlds Labs, has announced a new open-source Managed Guardian Service platform focused on a digitized and digital measurement, reporting and verification (dMRV) system for carbon markets.
The dMRV system was developed in collaboration with the UN Climate Change Global Innovation Hub (GIH) and built on the HBAR blockchain. The new platform aims to digitally transform carbon markets using decentralized blockchain technology.
The platform offers a range of features including artificial intelligence and guided search functions for the methodology library for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and other carbon market industry standard registries.
The CDM methodology library consists of hundreds of rule sets required to create a carbon credit, developed independently in an analogous process that supports the carbon market. Envision, with the help and guidance of the UNFCC Secretariat team, has digitized 15 of the most commonly used rules and expanded the current library of methodologies available for use in HBAR’s Guardian ecosystem.
Further scaling the library of digitized and open source methodologies will enable registries, project developers and other market stakeholders to use digital technologies to solve trust and transparency issues.
Cointelegraph spoke with Wes Geisenberger, vice president of sustainability and ESG at HBAR Foundation, to understand the importance and operation of the new dMRV platform and how it could help digitize the complex carbon credit market.
Geisenberger told Cointelegraph that UN GIH/UNFCCC Secretariat staff were deeply involved in developing the methodology while supporting the “toughest challenges in the climate negotiations.” We greatly appreciate their time and effort in developing this innovative solution.”
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Another key feature of the platform is a new project data comparison tool that allows users to compare data captured as verifiable credentials (VCs), including ‘property fields’ that comply with the Global Blockchain Business Council’s dMRV specification version 2 (GBBC).
VCs are digital certificates with signatures that validate critical project information and are essential for ensuring authenticity. The comparison tool provides detailed analysis of project data, addressing double counting issues under the Paris Agreement and improving transparency and traceability of environmental projects.
This library of digital rules, active in the Guardian, is being adopted by organizations building applications that use this open source technology to support digitized measurement, reporting and verification processes