Env. impact certification protocol

[GENERAL] Summarize your solution to the problem.

Create the foundations for a decentralized framework to issue environmental impact credentials, enabling carbon-negative projects to monetize their impact through carbon markets or climate dividends.

[GENERAL] Summarize your relevant experience.

Riverse is a carbon credits certification platform allowing carbon-negative projects access additional fundings. We have 5+ years experience in system eng. and life cycle analysis for project assessment.

Working alongside Smart Chain, specialized in Web3 consulting & services.

[GENERAL] Requested funds in USD.

[IMPACT] Please describe your proposed solution.

Small step back upon the issues we are targeting:

• All the methodologies we don’t have time to develop… Carbon market certifiers like Verra, Gold Standard or Puro, use methodologies specific to each carbon-negative technology to certify carbon credits. Therefore every time a new impactful technology needs to prove its efficiency a new methodology needs to be developed.
• The thousands of environmental experts we don’t have time to train… Impact assessment, measure, verification and reporting are complex steps, often still managed manually by environmental experts. This concentration of expertise prevents impact projects from having quick access to their environmental footprint and therefore to value it to investors.
• A multi-layer system where most of the value gets lost on its way… When we look at the carbon credits market, we realize that a big part of the carbon credit’s value goes to standards (because methodologies are costly to develop), certification (because the work is mostly done manually) and verification (because it’s not automatized). These steps are concentrated into few companies that are actually not scalable to meet market’s demand and prevent numerous projects with potential great impact to even access the carbon credits mechanism.

And how we see things:

• Yes, it is important to enlarge our carbon sinks by planting trees but while the trees are growing we should focus on scaling industrial technologies, process or products that have strong decarbonization capacities
• There are lots of industrial projects which need to prove their impact
• on carbon markets to get additional revenue streams with carbon credits
• to their investors to get approved by “green” or “impact driven” funds
• Decarbonation solutions use levers that we could summarize in a limited list of patterns:
• circular economy 
• On materials: biosourced, recycled or reused
• On the uses: extension of the lifespan, sale of functionalities, modularity
• On the end of life: reconditioning, spare parts, recovery of materials, reuse of products and materials
• new low carbon industrial process
• low carbon energies and energy efficiency
• carbon removal and industrial carbon capture

Our proposition:

We want to provide these projects with a unified methodology and a decentralized and common framework to issue environmental impact credentials. Enabling carbon-negative projects (removal, reduction and avoidance) to monetize their impact through carbon markets, climate dividends, impact investments reporting.

This rely on:

• A data-base of baseline scenarios to enable off-the-shelf impact assessment
• Auditable & transparent process to issue credentials 

 We propose to develop a three-step process for carbon-negative projects:

• Measure: project scenario and baseline assessment
• Certify Impact Credential: in a standardized manner as SBT or NFT own by the project developer
• Report and verify carbon credits: by processing production proof in regards to Impact credential we issue carbon credits as NFTs containing auditable metadata (1tCO2eq = 1 NFT)

With the fulfillment of this process, each carbon-negative project will have an “impact certificate” that could be used on other platforms such as carbon credits marketplaces.

Scope limitations for this proposal

• only projects with already existing LCA measures. Life cycle assessment (or LCA) is a generic methodology for assessing environmental impacts associated with all the stages of the life cycle of a commercial product, process, or service. It has been normalized through ISO 14040 and 14044 and digitalized through software like SimaPro. 
• focus on only one environmental parameter of the LCA : Global Warming Potential (in CO2 equivalent)
• limit to 2 levers of the decarbonization: 
• circular economy based on end of life management
• biosourced materials in construction

Overall process

Draft example of impact certifcate:

[IMPACT] Please describe how your proposed solution will address the Challenge that you have submitted it in.

We enable project impact valuation through our comparative LCA protocol, in order to make it accessible for any industrial carbon-negative project, empowering a whole new type of carbon-negative projects, needed to actively build tomorrow’s world. We believe this will facilitate the issuance of impactful and qualitative carbon-credits that can help meaningful project developers monetize their impact.

[IMPACT] What are the main risks that could prevent you from delivering the project successfully and please explain how you will mitigate each risk?

• Consensus on LCA standardization: this has been a research topic for the past 8 months at Riverse, we believe that we can deliver a framework that fits with industrial applications Though any comments or expertise who would like to join the project will be more than welcome.

• Oracles: the main challenge we will face in this project is the verification of actual (in real life) production happening on sites and how it will be linked to metadata in both impact certificates and carbon credits. To tackle this we aim in simplifying the verification process to simple (and few) KPIs what can be authenticated with documents (bills or legal documents).

• Definition of who is entitled to verify impact credential: we need assessors to have a minimum knowledge in environmental assessment field, in a first version we could imagine choosing among partners we already have but in the long term will need to define a KYC system in order to assess a certain level of qualification

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed plan, including timeline and key milestones for delivering your proposal.

Measure - Phase 1: Project scenario assessment (8 weeks)

We believe that we don’t have time to develop a dedicated methodology for each type of project. We aim at developing a carbon-LCA protocol that can be used by each project and that will facilitate the access to carbon markets. This platform aims to be generic for all types of projects such as ISO 14040 and ISO 14044. We believe this canevas can be built on top of these standards to facilitate fulfillment of the required data per each decarbonation lever.

To build this, we will: 

• Build LCA common grounds based on PEF
• Conduct gap analysis on existing frameworks and define a limited number of accepted frameworks (FDES, LCA, PEF…)
• Onboarding 10 projects (corresponding to 2 to 3 technologies) and apply above-defined framework
• Create platform prototype

Measure - Phase 2: Baseline scenario database & process (4 weeks)

To measure the impact realized by impact projects, we need to compare the results obtained by the project to baseline scenarios which represent the conditions without the project. As our certification protocol relies on LCA, we need to constitute a database of LCA references. For some products, references might be country-related. This database will need to be updated regularly to adapt baseline (recommendations from GHG protocol are every 5 years) and add new references.

For this project, we will :

• Create off-the-shelve baseline scenarios thanks to the LCA references of common products : biogas, steel, concrete, insulators, ethanol, h2, pc, plastic, km of vehicule, coton…
• Create auditable database

In the long term, we consider creating a DAO to manage, update and review this baseline database.

Measure - Phase 3: Comparison criteria and impact assessment (2 weeks)

This step is critical in order to validate the positive gains. We will define the rules in order to certify the similarity between baseline and projects, we will take into account risks due to calculation hypotheses and validate the impact.

For this project, we will :

• Establish verification of efficient substitution
• Create delta (gains) calculation protocol
• During measurement, choose key metrics for each project that would need to be checked (i.e. actual sales, %C in biochar, origin of raw material…)

Certify: Impact certificates (6 weeks)

Impact certificates will link a specific process or product to its environmental impact effect (measured in CO2 equivalent) thanks to its capacity to either capture or avoid GHG emissions. To allow the maximum of carbon-negative projects to issue reliable impact credits, we want to define adapted technological support and promote decentralized certification and validation protocol to avoid traditional bottlenecks and long waiting periods.

• Common approach of bounce-back effects reporting
• Define “impact certificates” (example of LCA) and associated metadata (with format)
• Define technological support for the impact credential : at this stage we imagine using NFT to hold all required metadata for the verification. We also consider the possibility of SBT (Soulbound token) as it should be used only by the entity of the project developer. The NFT, or SBT owned by the project owner only, will be considered as Proof Of Impact and will be required to issue associated carbon credits later on.
• Define validation and certification process to emit Impact credential

Report and verify: Carbon credits verification (4 weeks)

In this step we will issue carbon credits based on actual production for the project. The project will need to prove production KPIs linked by providing evidence of the reality of the production. Associated with impact credentials, this evidence will be used to issue carbon credits in a form of NFT. Each NFT will be associated with 1 ton of CO2eq and will contain relevant metadata (project, year, location…)

• Design a standardized manner to report the Proof Of Impact in NFT (with related metadata)
• Define verification framework with peer-to-peer validation required to issue the carbon credits

TOTAL TIMELINE : 6 MONTHS

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed budget breakdown.

Measure:

• Gap analysis on LCA standards - 80h
• LCA template for circular economy - 40h
• LCA template for bio-sourced materials - 40h
• Baseline reference construction - 16h/each (*4)
• Project example - 10h/each (*10)
• Process validation definition - 16h
• Prototype web interface for LCAs - 150h

Total hours on measure: 490h

Impact certification:

• Protocol research on LCA comparison - 40h
• Protocol definition for carbon impact evaluation - 40h
• Prototyping web interface for impact certificates generation - 150h
• Definition of metadata on NFT/SBT - 40h
• Dev to put manually certificates on chain NFT/SBT - 4h/each (*10)

Total hours on impact certification : 270h

Carbon credit issuance:

• KPIs definitions protocol per project/type of LCA - 80h
• Definition of metadata per NFT/carbon credits - 40h
• Dev to create NFT associated with each project - 4h/each (*10)

Total hours on reporting and verification : 160h

TOTAL HOURS: 920h

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide details of the people who will work on the project.

Impact & scientific leaders :

• Clement, co-founder of Riverse, specialized in LCA and carbon impact
• Auriane, co-founder of the department dedicated to the environmental transition at Stim, specialized in Impact assessment

Business leaders : Gregoire & Ludovic, co-founders of Riverse, focus on carbon markets

Tech leaders:

• Remi, has experience as CTO and tech lead at different tech companies

[FEASIBILITY] If you are funded, will you return to Catalyst in a later round for further funding? Please explain why / why not.

No, we don’t not consider the need for further funding if this proposal goes through as the stage of proof-of-concept would have been demonstrated.

[FEASIBILITY] Are you or any member of your team working on any other proposals in this Fund9?

[FEASIBILITY] Are you or your team working on any other proposals from previous Funds?

[AUDITABILITY] Please describe what you will measure to track your project's progress, and how will you measure these?

The milestones are defined and are measurable. We will track each milestone to give visibility on the project.

Additionally as we will work on real projects, we will be able to give additional visibility on the industrial projects and the information about their respective project.

[AUDITABILITY] What does success for this project look like?

1. Each project has obtained an impact certificate link to its industrial process.
2. Each project has issued related carbon credits related to its annual production (2022).

[AUDITABILITY] Please provide information on whether this proposal is a continuation of a previously funded project in Catalyst or an entirely new one.

This proposal is an entirely new project.

Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Rating

SDG goals:

Goal 9. Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation

Goal 11. Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable

Goal 12. Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns

Goal 13. Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts

SDG subgoals:

11.6 By 2030, reduce the adverse per capita environmental impact of cities, including by paying special attention to air quality and municipal and other waste management

12.2 By 2030, achieve the sustainable management and efficient use of natural resources

13.2 Integrate climate change measures into national policies, strategies and planning

9.5 Enhance scientific research, upgrade the technological capabilities of industrial sectors in all countries, in particular developing countries, including, by 2030, encouraging innovation and substantially increasing the number of research and development workers per 1 million people and public and private research and development spending

Key Performance Indicator (KPI):

13.2.2 Total greenhouse gas emissions per year

#proposertoolsdg