Last month at Climate Week NYC a growing coalition of carbon market participants announced the release of Version 1.0 of the Carbon Data Open Protocol (CDOP) structure to help facilitate and scale carbon markets by standardizing rules and definitions that describe carbon crediting projects and carbon credits across markets, geographies, and activity types. The new structure provides a collaborative, cross-industry schema for project location, project details, and project approach.
This CDOP Version 1.0 structure, with its harmonized data schema, marks a critical breakthrough in addressing data fragmentation that has hindered the carbon market’s development into a mature, investable asset class capable of mobilizing the capital needed for global climate action. It is the first result of the international coalition of leading businesses, nonprofits and public sector organizations that launched in mid-March of this year, co-chaired by The Global Carbon Market Utility (GCMU), Sylvera, RMI, and S&P Global Commodity Insights.
Solving critical market fragmentation
Carbon credits are defined by complex attributes spanning project type, methodology, location, and vintage – variability that has resulted in dozens of incompatible data schemas across the market. This fragmentation results in inconsistent data quality, limited interoperability, and slows down the investment of crucial capital into the market.
The CDOP Version 1.0 structure – starting with pre-issuance – provides standardized definitions for five foundational data categories: location; project details and approach; disclosures; and issuances, helping support technical alignment across registries, platforms, buyers, project developers, and institutional investors on these key data points where no or little common guidance had previously existed. Future iterations will cover the full lifecycle in terms of data categories, with the aim to bring in-depth technical guidance for implementing common data practices in various contexts.
“This is one of the most significant collaborative steps toward carbon market standardization we’ve seen to date,” said Nikodem Lacki, Data as a Product Head, S&P Global Commodity Insights. “Establishing common data foundations across voluntary and compliance markets, removes structural barriers that have prevented institutional capital from flowing efficiently into climate solutions.”
Built as a public good
CDOP Version 1.0 structure also marks a pivotal technical moment, where the CDOP’s Technical Working Group analyzed and harmonized – according to the CDOP Principles – more than 15 distinct data schemas submitted by market participants, identifying over 1,600 unique data fields under location alone. The resulting standardized structure captures the full complexity of carbon credit attributes while maintaining simplicity for implementation and has already been tested with real data by multiple committee members.
Unlike proprietary data solutions, CDOP is designed as an open-source public good. The complete structure, supporting documentation, and CDOP Principles are freely available online, to ensure broad accessibility and continued evolution. This approach reflects the coalition’s commitment to scaling carbon market integrity through basic infrastructure collaboration rather than competition.
“Carbon markets are too important to global climate goals to be hindered by data silos,” said Allister Furey, CEO, Sylvera. “By open sourcing these standards, we’re ensuring that innovation can build on a stable, shared foundation.”
To access the data schema, technical specifications and documentation, follow this link.
Global alignment and coordination
CDOP is designed to complement and strengthen existing carbon data initiatives, creating a coherent ecosystem of standardization. Specifically, CDOP recognizes and welcomes such as:
- The G20-led Common Carbon Credit Data Model (CCCDM), as a common foundation on which market participants can build and innovate.
- The G20 Sustainable Finance Working Group, the first multilateral policy forum to address carbon market data standardization – with its request that the Climate Data Steering Committee (CDSC), as its Lead Knowledge Partner, build a CCCDM to serve as a common foundation for data standardization across the carbon credit life cycle, for voluntary use by the public and private sector.
- Building on the CCCDM’s fields, CDOP will progressively add layers of technical depth and rigor needed by sophisticated market participants – to ensure implementation readiness for registries, platforms, carbon credit rating agencies and institutional investors. Recognizing the need for data schema to evolve over time, over time, CDOP and CDSC will regularly engage to ensure ongoing alignment.
- The Climate Action Data (CAD) Trust’s objectives of increasing transparency and accessibility in carbon markets. It aims to support its key role as a global public data infrastructure helping avoid double counting and support transparent accounting in line with the Paris Agreement. CDOPwill embed its updated 2.0 schema into the first round of updates, providing a robust open-source baseline for global post-issuance data to support technical alignment. This is to increase data interoperability across systems and ultimately enable greater public access to standardized data and its use for increasing market integrity.
“Standardizing data in carbon credit markets is critical to scaling and unlocking their financing potential,” said Alice Carr, Managing Director of the Climate Data Steering Committee (CDSC) Secretariat. “We welcome CDOP’s efforts to build on the Common Carbon Credit Data Model (CCCDM), developed in support of this year’s G20 priorities, as a step toward greater technical alignment across the market.”
How to get involved in CDOP Version 1.0
CDOP invites market participants to begin adopting the Version 1.0 structure and contributing to its continued development, especially those involved in data-heavy workflows. CDOP is intended to be an iterative and collaborative initiative, in which the schema will update over time, and will evolve with the data underpinning its use. To adopt, please view CDOP’s Version 1.0 structure, its data schema, adoption guidance and documentation here.
“This is just the beginning,” said Chris Canavan, CEO at GCMU. “The real impact comes from widespread adoption. We invite every carbon market participant to join this movement toward transparent, efficient, and scalable climate finance infrastructure.”
CDOP is supported by 54 leading organizations from the private, nonprofit, and public sectors. To find out more about CDOP and become a member, or submit your organization’s data schema to be included, visit the CDOP website.
“Transforming global systems requires market infrastructure that works at scale,” said Bonnie Lei, Principal, Climate Intelligence – Carbon Markets at RMI (founded as Rocky Mountain Institute). “CDOP represents exactly the kind of collaborative, market-driven solution needed to unlock capital flows for climate and clean energy projects worldwide. We’re enabling the efficiency that the market transition demands.”
SIGNATORIES:
- AirCarbon Exchange
- AlliedOffsets
- Artio
- BeZero Carbon
- Biocare Projects Pty Ltd
- BlueLayer Ltd
- CarbonAI
- Carbon HQ
- CDR.fyi
- Centigrade Inc.
- Climate Impact X Pte. Ltd. (CIX)
- Demia
- EcoRegistry
- Elimini
- Equitable Earth
- Evident
- Global Blockchain Business Council (GBBC)
- GCMU
- Herzog Law Firm
- Infrablocks Technologies
- Isometric
- Kana Earth
- Kita
- Klimate.co
- Offstream
- oneshot.earth inc.
- Plan Vivo
- Puro.Earth
- Remove
- Resilient LLP
- Revalue
- RMI
- S&P Global Commodity Insights
- South Pole
- SustainCERT S.A.
- Sylvera
- Verra