Research Background

In the CA2SIG one-pager, we detail our mission to leverage DLT and related technologies to create a more efficient marketplace for environmental data. By making the emissions data of company supply chains accessible, costless and trusted we can enable capital market forces, government regulation and consumer demand to incentivize corporations to decarbonize their supply chains.. Learn more here.

The CA2SIG Lab has developed an award winning prototype for reducing methane emissions using supply chain tokens. It took first place in the IBM Call for Code Challenge and also the Hyperledger Challenge. This research project has been designed to inform our go-to-market strategy.

This research project will support the development and go-to-market strategy for a Platform as a Service (PaaS) business to support the verification of methane emission data by the oil and gas industry. The platform is designed to address existing complexities in the management and processing of emissions data. The objective is to reduce transaction costs for the measurement economy of methane emission data in order to drive the adoption of technologies to decarbonize corporate supply chains.

An emerging trend in the oil and gas industry is methane performance certificates and identification of responsibly sourced oil and gas. This involves tracking and valuing embodied emissions in oil and gas products. These certificates can be sold directly or incorporated into sustainable and green finance programs.

Research Objective: Competitive Analysis

This research will provide a competitive analysis of the solutions that are currently being used by key stakeholders in the oil and gas marketplace focused on the challenge of methane emissions reduction via flaring, venting and leakage.

We have identified four stakeholder groups described below, with a list of examples from each group provided in this spreadsheet:

Oil and Gas Producers and Service Providers

We are seeking where possible to focus on the unique challenges faced by Oil and Gas Producers in Least Developed Countries (LDC’s) that are leaking or flaring methane emissions. This subset of the marketplace offers a high impact opportunity for decarbonization technologies that our solution can help unlock. An auxiliary stakeholder/party here are service providers that offer emission reduction solutions to oil and gas companies, i.e., companies that benefit from the capital allocation.

Data providers: companies offering independent data collection and analysis services for oil and gas producers.

Onsight services such as those provided by Project Canary.
External/ remote sensing : satellite remote sensing, aircraft, drones ...

Verification agencies:

Auditors examine emission reports from oil and gas producers (e.g, methane flaring and venting data)
Verifiers prove that the original (or audited) accounts are true

Green and Sustainable Financial Markets seeking to allocate capital to projects that reduce methane flaring.

Our objective is to understand:

What are the existing solutions being used by each stakeholder group being listed below
Summary Description of the solution. For the purposes of this research, we do not need a full analysis of every solution that is out there. For example, there are a large number of data service providers and to keep this research within a reasonable scope, it may be necessary to review several and provide a summary of findings or generalities for the group as a whole
Key features of the solution
Pricing and business models

For private companies, look at their website. For publicly traded companies, we recommend reviewing annual reports and quarterly stakeholder calls

Description of data flow

How is it captured, verified, and used?
Who are the stakeholders involved?
What is the value proposition for each?

Existing barriers to an efficient marketplace? For context, an efficient marketplace requires market participants to have access to low cost and trust data. Understanding how the current status-quo contributes to an inefficient market place will help us better understand the gaps that our solution seeks to fill, existing pain points, key features to prioritize, and how to position our product. Key questions to answer for each stakeholder group are:

Is data made broady accessible? Why or why not? If yes, how?
Is data cost-less? Why or why not? What contributes to the cost of the data
Is data trusted? Why or why not?

Barriers to market entry / technology adoption

For each stakeholder group, what are the barriers to entry?
What stakeholder group has market power to influence others to adopt

Market Assessment

Once you have conducted this market analysis, we would like to hear your recommendation:

What market segment would you target and why?

Which market segment has the strongest pain point that we can solve?
Which market segment has addressable barriers to entry for new technology adoption?
Which market segment has the power to influence other stakeholders to adopt

How would you position the product?

What is the value proposition for our offering?

How would you price the solution?

Research Methodology / Design:

We are here to provide support and have provided recommendations below. Ultimately the design of the research execution is up to you. Please feel free to use any templates, research methodologies to support these research objectives. Resources to consider in this effort:

We recommend first reviewing secondary research available. Good resources can include reports, websites, corporate annual reports and quarterly earning calls which can be found on the sites of publicly traded companies. Other good sources of information include related trade associations.
We also recommend reaching out to individuals via trade associations or directly at companies. You are a member of the Linux Hyperledger Climate Action and Accounting Special Interest Group which is an Open Source Organization. Use this as a credential for credibility. Your university affiliation is also an excellent credential, be sure to mention it. Professionals are open to supporting student research.
Leverage the resources within your university. Who are the professors and associations that can offer you support? Are there other student groups that would like to join to support and participate in your research?
Leverage the expertise within the Hyperledger community. While many are technically orientated, many work for large organizations and may be willing to provide introductions to others within their companies on your behalf. One good place to start may be LF Energy. For help with introductions, please reach out to David Boswell Dboswell@linuxfoundation.org and cc Bertrand and myself. David is the Hyperledger representative to the CA2SIG and his role is to support our work.
Once you have established baseline answers to the research objectives we established above, we also recommend using this research project as an opportunity to interview professionals from the different stakeholder groups above for some of the more qualitative research questions for expert input. This will be particularly useful for the existing barriers to an efficient marketplace and barriers to adoption of our DLT solution. Bertrand and I will also be supporting this research with interviews with key stakeholders groups and will share our findings to support your research.

Research Deliverables:

This research report will be published on the CA2SIG site.

Once completed, we would also like to invite you to present your findings and recommendations to the SIG.

Research Resources:

The Climate Action and Accounting Special Interest Group (CA2SIG) is an open source network of technologists, strategists and environmentalists using blockchain, ai, iot, and big data to create climate accounting solutions. We are a part of Hyperledger which is the Linux Foundation's Open Source Distributed ledger Technology (DLT) or "Blockchain" Network.

The mission of the CA2SIG is to leverage DLT and related technologies to create a more efficient marketplace for environmental data. By making the emissions data of company supply chains accessible, costless and trusted we can enable capital market forces, government regulation and consumer demand to incentivize corporations to decarbonize their supply chains.. Learn more here.

We also invite you to join the CA2SIG bi-monthy meetings to explore how you can become a part of this Open Source effort.