1 Intro
I am .... I represent the Standards Working Group of Hyperledger's Climate Action and Accounting Special Interest Group
2. Hyperledger and Climate Action & Accounting Special Interest Group (CA2SIG)
Hyperledger is a multi-project, open source, collaborative effort hosted by The Linux Foundation, created to advance cross-industry blockchain technologies.
Various special interest groups operate as part of Hyperledger, one of them is the Climate Action & Accounting Special Interest Group.
The mission of the Climate Action & Accounting Special Interest Group is to foster a collaborative network to create a center of gravity around the role of DLT and open source software to address challenges in the global climate action, policy and digital accounting.
The mission of the Climate Action & Accounting Special Interest Group is furthermore 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
3. The need for standardisation in the context of global climate action
Standards help people to understand each other.
Standards also help people to made decisions with confidence and cooperate towards joint goals.
Climate change necessitates urgent action at a global scale.
Standards related to climate change and climate action make it easier for individuals, companies and states to make climate-informed decisions and will help all stakeholders coordinate their efforts.
There are already many standards of different types. We do not propose to develop even more standards to replace the ones already in use. Rather, we want to contribute to the development of a way in which we all can “speak the same language in the digital world” by allowing greater interoperability between these standards.
4. What do we mean by 'standards'?
Standards are relevant at diffident levels of the climate accounting process:
- There are standards for measuring aspects of activities and processes. Let's call these measurement collection standards. These standard are focussed on measurements and concern things like the calibration and correct use and instruments. Application of these standards produce valid measurement data.
- There are other standards that standardise the transformation, evaluation and aggregation of data and metadata. We can call these calculation methodologies or data processing standards. Application of such standards produce indicators, metrics and indices with a well-defined meaning. Such outputs can bebe tokenised.
- Another type of standard concerns claims or assertions about a entities or activities, such as the yearly emissions of a company or the climate impact of a project. We can call these reporting standards. Application of these standards yield standards compliant reports. The contents of such report can also be tokenised.
- There are also standards that concern the process of measuring, reporting and verifying itself and the persons who carry out such assessments. We can call these quality standards and verification or certification standards. Application of such standards produce certifications or assurance.
5. What do we want to achieve with the Standards Working Group?
At the Standards Working Group, we plan to develop a taxonomy of available climate action-related reporting standards, calculation methodologies and verification or certification standards and express that in software specifications so outcomes from different standards can be compared, aggregated and traded with confidence.
6. Inputs needed
For this effort we need a range of complimentary skills: This will include:
- Practitioners
- Subject matter experts
- Software architects
- Coders