UPDATED 02 July 2024

Digitising the Standard

More Impact, Better Data, Less Complexity

Gold Standard is working to fully digitise Gold Standard for the Global Goals and our certification workflow to enhance the accessibility, practicality, and robustness of our standard, while seamlessly integrating with marketplaces and exchanges that allow companies, investors, and individuals to simply and transparently support verified climate and development impact

Full digital workflow

Open Collaborations for Digitising Impact

Driving systems changes in climate and sustainability through next-generation digital solutions and governance innovations designed for scale, interoperability, and equitable system access.

The Open Collaboration for Digitising Impact was set up in 2022 to use a collaborative, multi-stakeholder approach to build consensus on good practice in digitising impact across the value chain. The collaboration aims to design, document, test, and build digital solutions that are: open source, without user fees, low-energy, modular, and with the highest levels of data integrity and security.

In 2022, the Open Collaboration partners secured a grant from Google.org Charitable Giving and launched working groups that will develop principles, knowledge products, and prototypes for transformative next-generation digital solutions.

Impact

Scaling carbon market volume and impact through digital interoperability, enhanced user efficiency and new standards governance and MRV models.
Increasing carbon market integrity through new digital approaches to data security, reporting, tracking, and tokenization.
Improving carbon market access and equity through system design and innovative business models that Channel finance to project developers and local communities.

Results

The three working groups formed were:

A ‘Digital Monitoring, Reporting and Verification (DMRV)’ working group led by ClimateCHECK which aimed to inform how to upgrade and digitise monitoring approaches and quantification methodologies as well as the supporting verification processes and systems.
A ‘Digital Infrastructure and Open APIs’ working group led by the IOTA Foundation which aimed to define core principles for the digital market infrastructure and how organisations and technologies can interact with it.
A ‘Digital Assets for Climate Impact’ working group led by Gold Standard which aimed to establish best practice principles to leverage the advantages of distributed ledger technologies in the demand side of the carbon market, while applying safeguards to avoid perverse incentives, double counting or other risks.

The outputs of these groups are now available and open source to allow organisations from across the carbon market to build upon the work carried out so far.

VIEW FINAL OUTPUTS

For more informationcontact please contact
[email protected]

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thanks to the support from Open Collaboration sponsor, Google.org Charitable Giving.

Digital SDG Impact Tool & Dashboard

In 2024, a digital version of the SDG Impact Tool was released Visit the SDG Impact tool to further enhance the reporting, quantification and verification of impactful contributions towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This tool is part of the work to digitalise Gold Standard for the Global Goals and streamline the project certification process, intending to decrease complexities of the process and increase efficiency in issuing credits. It simplifies the reporting, quantification, verification, and certification of the safeguarding principles assessment and the sustainable development impact of Gold Standard projects. Project Developers can input SDG impact data, submit projects to Auditors and Reviewers for evaluation, and receive results and feedback within the tool – reducing administrative work and creating one channel of communication for key stakeholders. It can also be used by countries hosting projects to set the SDG indicators that align with Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs).

In addition, a new public ‘SDG Impact Dashboard’ was released at the same time, which showcases climate and SDG impact data from Gold Standard projects, across time, location, technology type, and more. The Dashboard offers access to key project data in visualisations, leading to better informed decisions by project supports, investors, host country governments, and other market stakeholder. This new development supports the call for increased access to, and better use of, data across the carbon market.

There are plans for the Tool to be further developed over time, including expanding the scope of SDG indicators, and for the Dashboard to be advanced to showcase more granular data sets.

The SDG Impact Tool delivers

Seamless SDG impact reporting – complete list of monitoring indicators and their detailed description allow project developers to efficiently report on the quantitative and qualitative impact of projects.
Comprehensive safeguarding principles assessment - a digital assessment that makes it easy for Project Developers to report, and Auditors and Reviewers to evaluate the assessment.
Streamlined review workflow - easy and consistent processes of review, closure of findings, and interaction between Project Developers, Auditors and Reviewers.

Digital SDG Impact tool

User Resources

SDG Impact Dashboard

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The digital SDG Impact Tool and SDG Impact Dashboard were developed by The Gold Standard Foundation with financial support from the Swedish Energy Agency and digital services provided by Thinking Machines Data Science. 

implementing partner

Climate Ledger Initiative

Working with the Climate Ledger Initiative Climate Ledger Initiative website, we are piloting new technologies such as Internet of Things (IoT), Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to improve data quality from the Monitoring, Reporting and Verification (MRV) process – improving efficiencies, driving down costs and overcoming barriers to scale. Read more about our use cases in the reports featured below:

Our Standard