Open Climate

* Whitepaper: Open Climate. Leveraging blockchain for a global, transparent and integrated climate accounting system. By Martin E. Wainstein.

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Abstract

The Open Climate Project is an open source initiative exploring the application of distributed ledger technology (DLT) and other emerging technologies, such as IoT (Internet of Things), big data and machine learning, to the challenge of helping the world keep a transparent climate accounting system towards the climate targets set in the 2015 Paris Agreement — i.e. maintaining anthropogenic warming below 1.5oC. Global climate accounting, the process of recording climate actors and their actions in respect to the shared account of the planet’s climate state, occurs in diverse set of registry platforms that are individually centralized and collectively dispersed and unlinked.

This is often due to lack of trust between actors, resisting to share data that exposes them to scrutiny.

This project involves a software ‘platform of platforms,’ distinguished here as the Open Climate1 platform, the development of climate communication protocols, and a shared user interface as portal to the system. The platform acts as a common integrator that can reconcile climate records and functions from both legacy and DLT-based climate platforms in the pursuit of helping maintain a decentralized ‘ledger of ledgers’. With climate actors and their associated records mapped in a shared network— ranging from countries, to companies to individuals — DLT and other cryptographic tools are primarily used to: provide general transparency alongside individual data privacy, prevention of double counting in the digital certification and trading of climate actions, and a platform for contractual automation of rules and mechanisms with financial nature; from Paris Agreement stocktakes to carbon pricing and rewards for mitigation outcomes.

We present here the architecture for the Open Climate platform as well as describe its full stack prototype.

Whilst the platform is currently incubated at the Yale Open Innovation Lab (openlab) it combines multiple other platforms in advanced technological stages; incubated and developed by a growing network of collaborators. For the combined development, the open climate project adopts a multi-stakeholder open innovation framework and consortium to actualize this ambitious endeavor through radical collaboration." ([1])

Status

• The Open Climate platform, portal and integration protocols are in an alpha prototype phase. Platform can be accessed at www.openclimate.earth

Current Open Climate’s state and next steps

Martin Wainstein:

"After over a year of architecting and several months of incubation, the project is in an advanced prototype phase and is currently deploying its first real-world pilots. U The blueprint of the project’s meta architecture is in its first full draft, and maps how data and process flows cross multiple layers of the technology stack, spanning from IoT-based datasets, to platform functions, blockchain ledger records, smart contracts and user interface displays. The architecture is tested by different proof-ofconcept of these data flows but will require a higher level of testing by directly integrating of the platform ecosystems of the initial collaborating partner. Our realworld pilots are focused on the certification and minting of digital climate assets from the generation of renewable energy by non-state actors (eg. private companies). We are primarily focusing on the compatibility of these assets (eg. mitigation outcomes) with subnational and national climate records in order to enable the automated nested accounting system once those assets are retired. Other next steps are outlined in Part III of this document." ([2])

Discussion

Integrated platforms and working groups under an open innovation framework

Marvin Wainstein:

"The Open Climate Project and its underlying global climate accounting system and platform cannot be developed in silo, and certainly not under legal layers of protected proprietary software. It requires a higher level of participation, collaboration and interoperability among climate stakeholders and technological providers; from established government and private actors, to new climate action innovators and, ultimately, individual citizens. Innovation needs to not only occur in blockchain for climate accounting and related software systems but in decentralized institutional models that can steer and maintain global projects and their associated business models. Blurring organizations’ IP boundaries in the innovation process allows a rich ecosystem for such solutions to emerge. Here we present the open innovation framework adopted by the project and its initial participants.

As a platform of platforms, Open Climate would lack significant value without the integration of its constituent platforms via application programming interfaces (APIs) and shared protocols. This section introduces the first group of integrated platforms with their respective technological capabilities, how they participate in the project as part of working groups to deliver robust realworld pilots, and their intention to form part of a growing network and consortium to develop and govern the underlying climate accounting system. Furthermore, it presents the overall project development timeline until the release of the operational Open Climate platform, proposed here to be governed by a decentralized autonomous and self-sovereign organization." ([3])