Global platform to unify carbon credit registry data to be domiciled in Singapore
SINGAPORE will be home to a World Bank-backed carbon credit data sharing platform created to facilitate Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, which clarified how international carbon markets involving governments should function.
Called the Climate Action Data Trust (CAD Trust), the platform, which is set to go live in early December, will link, aggregate and harmonise all major carbon market registry data, creating a decentralised record that can address the issue of double counting.
Double counting, which is when two different parties claim the same carbon credit, is a looming concern given that today’s carbon markets are complex and highly fragmented.
Article 6 sought to address this, but its real-world implementation requires countries to track and report on the use of international credits through a registry system, and the CAD Trust system was created for that purpose.
In a statement on the platform’s planned launch at the Dec 7-8 Asia Climate Summit on Wednesday (Oct 26), the International Emissions Trading Association (IETA) said: “The CAD Trust system will assist in promoting high-integrity systems and digital linkages.”
That said, The Business Times (BT) understands that the platform has no governing power and will not interfere in the nature or validity of the data provided by the registries.
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CAD Trust is a joint initiative involving the IETA, an industry-led organisation dedicated to advancing international cooperation in emissions trading, the World Bank and the Singapore government, along with a number of governments and public and private organisations.
It evolved out of the Climate Warehouse, an initiative launched by the World Bank which had been prototyping a series of simulations of the data system with partner governments, organisations and carbon crediting programmes over the past three years. The final prototype ended in August.
IETA president and chief executive officer Dirk Forrister said consultations on Climate Warehouse helped identify the governance functions of the Data Trust that could accelerate work on the common data specifications for future digital registry systems.
The resulting CAD Trust will serve as a “public good”, providing an accessible and secure digital infrastructure that can be used by all participants of carbon markets, he stated.
World Bank lead financial specialist Chandra Shekhar Sinha said the platform is an important step towards solving the challenge of standardising and interconnecting carbon market registry systems.
“Article 6 reporting is going to be an important challenge for our client countries, so the idea of building these systems linked to the registry and to the monitoring, reporting, and verification systems will help with the reports that need to be provided for Article 6 and drives transparency in the market,” he added.
Benedict Chia, director-general (climate change) of Singapore’s National Climate Change Secretariat, was also quoted as saying that the platform will put in place key building blocks to operationalise the Article 6 rules on transparency, tracking and reporting.
Meanwhile, IETA told BT buyers of carbon credits will be able to use the platform to “instantly” extract any information about specific units and projects, which may provide the basis for compliance reporting or information audits.
CAD Trust will release more details about how it works, its governing bodies and their members in December, IETA added.
For now, it only revealed that the independent entity will be domiciled in Singapore, and led by a council comprising government representatives and major carbon registries.
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