ClimateCHECK and the IOTA Foundation Strengthen Their Collaboration to Increase Trust in Environmental Data

TL;DR:
Last year, we successfully demonstrated the potential of IOTA’s technology to increase the quality and trustworthiness of climate data. The work in Chile is part of the Reciclo Orgánicos program supported by the Canadian Government. The partnership between the IOTA Foundation and ClimateCHECK is being expanded to include a state-of-the-art biodigester project.

ClimateCHECK, a leading international provider of climate and cleantech services and solutions, and the IOTA Foundation have been awarded a new project for DigitalMRV, their jointly-developed tool for streamlining and digitizing the MRV (measurement, reporting, and verification) of data related to climate actions.

The biodigester project recovers and processes organic residuals from the San Pedro Wine Company vineyards in Molina, Chile, the first winery in the world with the technology to reduce its carbon footprint and conserve water and soil resources. As part of the project, organic waste is processed in an advanced anaerobic digester to produce biogas for heat and electricity, which offsets the use of fossil fuels. Furthermore, digested residues digested by bacteria are used as soil fertilizer.

Locally managed by BioG, the biodigester project was awarded to ClimateCHECK and the IOTA Foundation by Reciclo Orgánicos, which aims to combat climate change in Chile by capturing gas in landfills and converting organic waste into clean energy and natural fertilizer. Reciclo Orgánicos is led by the government of Chile and ECCC, the department of the Government of Canada responsible for coordinating environmental policies and programs, as well as preserving and enhancing the natural environment and renewable resources.

ClimateCHECK and the IOTA Foundation are proud to announce that the successful demonstration of IOTA’s capabilities as an open digital infrastructure will continue to grow with the support of a vivid ecosystem centered around the Reciclo Orgánicos program.

Steven Kuhn, Canada’s Chief Negotiator for Climate Change said:

“Canada is proud to support digital MRV pilots in Chile to implement state-of-the-art methods to track and report emissions reduction in real time. These pilot projects exemplify Canada’s climate finance in helping countries meet their climate commitments and their reporting requirements under the Paris Agreement.’’

Collecting, measuring and analyzing emission data - and most importantly turning these benefits into trusted metrics for international accountability - is complex, time-consuming and costly. Enabled by IOTA Streams technology, data inputs are directly secured near or at the source. They are then made available globally in near real-time through the energy-efficient, feeless and scalable distributed ledger technology (DLT) protocol, the IOTA Tangle. This offers a more secure, cost-efficient and feasible way of conducting carbon-capture projects like Reciclo Orgánicos.

Making it easier to implement these processes in different environments and industries is key to following through with the ambitious goals set forth in the Paris Agreement, the UN-backed legally binding agreement signed by 196 state parties in 2016. As such, international institutions are recognizing the importance of digital monitoring, reporting and verification processes (read the Climate Ledger Initiative Navigating Report to learn more) and the IOTA Foundation is committed to contributing to the suite of open-source tools that increase access and opportunities to participate in the sustainable transformation of industries. Furthermore, the project demonstrates the convergence of the Internet of Things and DLT to reduce friction and externalities in our economy.

Tom Baumann, Founder and CEO of ClimateCHECK, commented on the project:

“This DigitalMRV project is part of a bold initiative led by ECCC and its international partners to advance MRV innovations in combination with nextgen digital infrastructure to increase trust, transparency and utility of GHG metrics of climate actions as part of NDCs in order to support and scale effective climate finance.”

For Dominik Schiener, Chairman and Co-Founder of the IOTA Foundation, the project further emphasizes the importance of IOTA’s mission to not only make available to the public a feeless and permissionless protocol but also to highlight the societal value that blockchain and distributed ledger technologies can contribute to the fight against global warming:

“It is often said that we cannot manage what we cannot measure. Beyond that, trust in measurements and the role of the Internet of Things is a critical component of globally coordinated efforts to avoid global warming. The IOTA Foundation is dedicated to making sure that this precious information can be trusted, shared and utilized in the future.”

While we continue on this already two-year journey to add use cases and features to IOTA’s climate-related capabilities, we are also building an open ecosystem of like-minded organizations and individuals, so that we can understand requirements and jointly develop the open-source infrastructure that is needed to address climate change globally.

Once our solutions reach the necessary level of maturity, we plan to publicly release blueprints that will make it easier to leverage the IOTA protocol and frameworks to build transformative, sustainable solutions.

If you want to get involved or learn more about our work around sustainability, we warmly invite you to reach out to us, either under [email protected] or by joining our Discord, or by visiting https://www.iota.org/foundation/social-impact.