Carbon markets try ledgers to fix a credibility problem
Double-counting and phantom credits pushed registries toward shared records; the technology is proving easier than the governance.
Markus Kammermann via UnsplashCarbon credit markets have a record-keeping problem that occasionally becomes a scandal: the same reduction claimed twice, credits retired on paper and traded in practice. Registries in several jurisdictions are testing shared ledgers as the fix, one authoritative record of issuance, transfer, and retirement that all parties read.
The technical work has proven the easy half. Pilots show that a ledger can track a credit's life cleanly; what it cannot do is decide which credits deserved to exist, and market participants caution against confusing provenance with quality. A perfectly tracked phantom credit is still a phantom.
The governance questions, who validates issuers, who can freeze fraudulent credits, how registries interoperate across borders, are being negotiated in working groups whose progress is measured in memoranda. The pattern is familiar from every institutional blockchain effort: the chain is ready before the committee is.