Rebuilding the Climate Code for the Digital Age
Carbon accounting is a system of data without property; the verified carbon market is a system of property without data. What the missing market layer has to do, and what it would take to build it.
Energy and environmental markets · Market infrastructure · Digital asset law
Minding the gaps and points of interconnection between digitization and decarbonization.
Underpinning both carbon accounting and environmental market systems sit a data layer, where the collection, measurement and verification is quickly evolving to allow companies and their agents to manage environmental performance on the basis of interoperable data models and protocols.
Above that data layer sits an accountability and reporting framework layer that attempts to contextualize and use information as fodder for policy-based objectives. Between the two there is no joint and common market coordination architecture — no institutional system of record capable of enabling verifiable attribute and performance information to transact and clear the rights to those attributes and performance claims across every sector at scale. That structural gap is not just a data problem or an environmental integrity problem. It is a social network, information coordination, and market design problem. The transition economy is missing a market governance layer that all mature markets build.
- Third floorCarbon accounting, net zero targets and disclosure — frameworks, e-liability, reporting
- Second floor — never builtMarket layer — system of record, title, exclusive control, clearance
- First floorData and measurement — sensors, MRV, verification
What I do
Current areas of work
- Market infrastructure design and governance
- Energy and environmental commodities and derivatives transactions
- Digital asset law
- Sovereign and multilateral institutional advisory
- Agentic AI platform development
Recent writing
Writing
Notes by email · no more than monthly