Now that I’ve been working with carbon credit data for a couple of years, it seems to me that the incumbent players like Verra have no incentive to make their data easily available and interoperable. While this data is ostensibly public, their terms of service are pretty vague about what constitutes appropriate use, and without the project data then claims about the underlying activity are impossible to verify. As the number of credit issuance systems increases, and interoperable public infrastructure like the KlimaDAO retirement aggregator are built to seamlessly integrate different types of credits, it is critically important that project and issuance data from the registries is made publicly available in an efficient and standardized manner.
In this talk, I basically invoke this xkcd comic to point out that we need a unified, open data standard for carbon credits:
https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/standards.png
To flesh out my point, I lay out some of the limitations of the current registry-specific data models, reference some existing frameworks such as the UN SDGs and Planetary Boundaries, as well as point toward ongoing initiatives like the Ecological Benefits Frame Activator (of which I am a participant) and the Climate Action Data Trust (in whose user forum KlimaDAO has applied to participate).
Finally, I provide an overview of the phased approach that KlimaDAO is taking to integrate carbon credit registry data given our need to ship products that work today, while preparing for a future where there are many more systems to integrate with and (hopefully) a standardized data model toward which to migrate.