Frequently Asked Questions

Through a consolidated and user-friendly metadata layer, called Data Dashboard, any information about specific units and projects can be instantly extracted to provide the basis for compliance reporting and auditing of information. The Data Dashboard provides access to carbon credit data from multiple registries for all parties and individuals. This publicly available data can be utilised by market players, journalists, researchers, and civil society members alike.

The Climate Action Data Trust is delivered as open-source software.  This means there are no fees associated to obtain the CAD Trust application.

The CAD Trust provides quality and high-integrity infrastructure for carbon market transparency. This system offers the private sector, NGOs, and governments the ability to look into a single carbon credit portal and identify what is happening, where, and how many times units are being issued while avoiding double counting. More importantly, it helps to understand supply and demand dynamics of what is coming in and what is going on and helps everyone have a clear understanding. Trust boosts confidence to invest in quality carbon credits which drives the voluntary carbon market and thus channels funding to impactful projects supporting the environment as well as local communities across the world. 

Chia Data Layer is a shared data network with no central authority. Carbon market data is stored locally by a member (in this case: registries and governments), while proofs of the data are stored on the blockchain with URLs that can be used to fetch the stored data. Members in this network can subscribe to data from other nodes and receive updates whenever the data changes and can compare the received data to the proof on the blockchain and confirm that the data is correct.

In use, each participant in the CAD Trust publishes carbon market data in their Data Layer tables, using their Chia wallet and keys, running on its own infrastructure. The “governance” node publishes another Data Layer table with the list of Data Layer tables published by each of the recognised participants. Each participant and observer only needs to know the Data Layer table ID for the governance node to locate all of the other participants’ data.

The challenge is to create a platform that uses technology for international cooperation, offered as a public good open-source code and enables multiple different users to interact. Blockchain assures transparency and credibility in the process of registries providing access to their data. All of this is done from an infrastructure perspective that assures security and sustainability and allows multiple uses. The CAD Trust code is open source, meaning there is complete transparency: sellers of carbon credits will be able to search for carbon offset projects, and civil society may follow what is happening in their region and who is doing these projects. 

One of the key aims of the CAD Trust is to foster transparency, which is critical for the effective implementation of the Paris Agreement. The Paris Agreement opens the door for voluntary carbon markets to play a much bigger role in meeting compliance targets. More international offset programs are being able to play a role in reducing carbon emissions and the landscape becomes more diverse. Against this backdrop, it is necessary to assure end-to-end transparency of the whole value chain itself because it is the only way to provide assurance to market participants that the market is working well and in a transparent manner. And this is where the CAD Trust plays a critical role as a public good that serves to link all these registries together. The metadata gives the users access to transparent carbon market information, which is critical in terms of minimizing the risk of double counting.

Climate Action Data Trust evolved out of Climate Warehouse. In the testing and simulation phase, the metadata layer was referred to as Climate Warehouse. Now, the CAD Trust is an independent initiative, but it is still linked to the so-called Climate Warehouse End-to-End Digital Ecosystem for Carbon Markets as one of the key components. 

The Climate Warehouse program connects several digital tools and products into an end-to-end carbon markets’ digital ecosystem under the requirements of the Paris Agreement. The Climate Warehouse End-to-End Digital Ecosystem for Carbon Markets includes infrastructure such as digital MRV systems, open-source national carbon registries, tokenization instruments to issue and track digital carbon assets, and the Climate Action Data Trust.  

Registries integrating with CAD Trust are responsible for projects and the quality of data that they share with the platform. By transparently providing information on the lifecycle of projects, issued units, and the movement of units registries provide assurances through CAD Trust that units are not being double counted or spent.

At present, there are no prerequisites for the registries to establish a connection with CAD Trust. The specific methods of connecting with CAD Trust can be determined collaboratively between the registries and the CAD Trust team, taking into account the existing capabilities of the registries.

Interested carbon credit registries are welcome to inquire about the connection via Contact form on our website. Once connected, each registry has their own copy of the CAD Trust application.  This provides each entity full control of their deployment decisions.

Registries integrating with CAD Trust are responsible for projects and the quality of data that they share with the platform. By transparently providing information on the lifecycle of projects, issued units, and the movement of unitsregistries provide assurances through CAD Trust that units are not being double counted or spent.

Interested national registries or governments are welcome to inquire about the connection via Contact form on our website. Once connected, each registry has their own copy of the CAD Trust application. This provides each entity full control of their deployment decisions.

Registries integrating with CAD Trust are responsible for projects and the quality of data that they share with the platform. By transparently providing information on the lifecycle of projects, issued units, and the movement of unitsregistries provide assurances through CAD Trust that units are not being double counted or spent.

CAD Trust has the potential to become an important enabler of Article 6 cooperative approaches by supporting internationally compatible national registry systems. As Parties begin to report activities to CAD Trust using a single data standard (including ways to track project activities, authorisations, corresponding adjustments, and other developments), this will enable connectivity and conflict resolution between national and independent standard registries. This can help to support international reporting under the Paris Agreement. The consensus data model developed and adopted by the Parties participating in the CAD Trust may either support the development of Article 6.2 and 6.4 reporting requirements or be adapted to what is agreed. CAD Trust may also support future extensions to enable Parties to transmit data submitted to the CAD Trust to the Article 6 database or UN’s Centralised Accounting and Reporting Platform (CARP) using Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) so that Parties who use the CAD Trust need not submit the data twice.

Yes, there is an onboarding process for both independent and national registries where assistance in connecting to CAD Trust is provided by a partner organisation.

The CAD Trust is the culmination of three years of prototyping and testing series under the World Bank’s Climate Warehouse initiative. The CAD Trust’s open-source data system uses distributed ledger technology –specifically blockchain technology– to create an immutable, auditable, and decentralised record of carbon market data.  The CAD Trust operational system is leveraging Chia Network’s Data Layer built on a public and permissionless blockchain technology. Chia blockchain’s proof of space and time consensus mechanism has a lower environmental impact than other technologies, and it aligns with CAD Trust’s technical and business requirements. CAD Trust recognises the fast-evolving technological innovation in this space and the emergence of new platforms, and thus will continue to assess opportunities for using new technologies to support transparency, interoperability, reduction of transaction costs and enhancement of carbon markets integrity.