UPDATED 12 March 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.

SDG Impact Tool

Credible quantification and reporting of the SDGs allows those funding climate change mitigation activities to transparently communicate to stakeholders the benefits those actions bring to the global community.

In 2022 Gold Standard launched an SDG Impact Tool to monitor, quantify and verify a project’s contributions to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in a streamlined, more standardised way, with useful resources that support project developers. Built on principles formed in the SDG Tool Guidance SDG Tool Guidance published May 2021, co-developed with myclimate, Climate Seed, the Swedish Energy Agency, and UN SDSN, this tool provides a standardised template to clearly and transparently monitor SDG impact alongside carbon reductions – making the process more efficient and minimising the cost of Monitoring, Reporting and Verification (MRV) for project developers whilst ensuring SDG impact claims remain specific and credible.

In 2023, a new digital version of the tool was released to further enhance the reporting, quantification and verification of SDG impacts. The customised digital application enables project developers to track impact data more efficiently, consistently and securely – reducing workload and enhancing reporting capabilities. Auditors and certification bodies can assess the project data directly on the tool, streamlining their workflow.

Later in 2023, new data visualisation capabilities will be released, supporting project promotion by developers, while allowing investors and buyers to quickly and clearly view high-level SDG impact data, to aid their funding/purchasing decisions.

The SDG Impact Tool delivers

Streamlined MRV efficiency and reducing cost whilst ensuring SDG Impact claims remain accurate and credible.
Contribution to multiple SDG impacts while minimising the extra burden of MRV for project developers and auditors.
Enhanced communication of SDG contributions by having a transparent standard and a compelling way to visualise the impacts.
Aggregation of SDG impacts for reporting at the portfolio level and comparability within sectors.
Standardised impact indicators and quantification methods to allow for clear comparison of project performance.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thank to all those who have contributed to the creation of this tool.

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