media contact[email protected]Jamie Ballantyne,
Director, Marketing and Communications
Building on two decades of delivering development impact through carbon markets and other mechanisms, Gold Standard has digitalised its Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Impact Tool to streamline the reporting, verification and certification of the sustainable development impacts of Gold Standard projects and launched a public dashboard to showcase these impacts in an accessible way for the first time.
Gold Standard, with the support of the Swedish Energy Agency, has today released a new digital ‘SDG Impact Tool’ enabling project developers to more seamlessly report the sustainable development impact of their projects as required under Gold Standard for the Global Goals. The tool allows for the independent verification and certification of these impacts, streamlining a major part of the Gold Standard certification process that is complex but distinguishes the deeper development impact delivered by Gold Standard projects. The tool was built by Thinking Machines Data Science, a leading-edge technology consultancy solving high-impact problems with AI and data.
In addition, a new public ‘SDG Impact Dashboard’ showcases climate and SDG impact data from Gold Standard projects, across time, location, technology type, and more. This will help project supporters, investors, and governments make better-informed decisions, while increasing the accessibility of data in the carbon market overall. The new Dashboard is now available on the Gold Standard Website.
The SDG Impact Tool will also allow governments hosting projects to identify national sustainable development priorities and ensure alignment between projects’ impact and national goals. The new Dashboard also tracks SDG impacts at the national level, supporting governments in implementing their targets under the Paris Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals.
This marks a significant step in Gold Standard’s plan to fully digitalise its Standard and certification process, reduce the complexity of delivering high-integrity, high-impact projects, and enable better data discovery to inform the decisions of carbon credit purchasers, investors, host country governments, and project developers.
Commenting on the release Margaret Kim, Gold Standard CEO, said:
“Helping project developers deliver high-integrity, high-impact projects has been the goal of our Standard since the beginning. The digitisation of the SDG Impact Tool enhances our capability to deliver on this goal, by reducing the intricacy of an integral part of the certification process. Gold Standard-certified projects make immense contributions towards the UN SDGs and now we can share this data with the world in a useful way through the new Dashboard. The release of these two products marks only the beginning of our digitisation journey at Gold Standard.”
Sandra Lindström, Head of international Climate Unit, Swedish Energy Agency, said:
“Ensuring Sustainable Development benefits and safeguarding against negative impacts is essential going forward with the operationalization of the Paris Agreements Article 6. The Swedish Energy Agency believes that this tool can assist highlighting contributions to the SDGs as an inherent value of international carbon markets and help both buyers and sellers to make more informed choices. We are pleased with what Gold Standard has been able to achieve with our support.”
About Swedish Energy Agency
The Swedish Energy Agency (SEA) is the Swedish national authority on energy policy issues. The Electricity Certificate System and the EU Emission Trading System are some of the Agency´s national responsibilities, as well as providing information, statistics, and analyses on efficient energy use to households and the industrial and public sectors. The organisation also has a coordinating role in maintaining security of energy supply on a national level.
The Swedish Energy Agency supports and funds national research on new and renewable energy technologies, smart grids, vehicles, and fuels of the future. Furthermore, the Agency supports national business development that allows for commercialisation and export of promising climate tech/cleantech innovations.
The Agency is continuously working towards environmental, economic, and social sustainability by actively committing to the global sustainability goals, hereby contributing to a sustainable societal development, nationally as well as internationally.
The collaborative international activities of the Swedish Energy Agency cover several areas and are an extensive part of the organisation's operations. The Agency is responsible for Sweden´s programme for international climate cooperation under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, aiming to develop and intensify the international cooperation to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions.
About Thinking Machines Data Science
Thinking Machines is a leading technology consultancy specializing in AI and data platforms to solve high-impact problems. With offices in Manila, Bangkok, and Singapore, they create custom AI and data solutions to empower governments, NGOs, and businesses everywhere to make data-driven decisions.