Frequently Asked Questions

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 public code and enables multiple different uses 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.