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UAE: Abu Dhabi’s TII launches blockchain-enabled carbon emission tracking, trading platform

The trade-in tokens will create incentives to drive investment in green projects such as forestation and carbon capture

Abu Dhabi-based Technology Innovation Institute (TII) has launched a blockchain-powered carbon tracking and trading platform, which will facilitate international trade in carbon tokens.

TII is a leading global scientific research centre and the applied research pillar of Abu Dhabi’s Advanced Technology Research Council (ATRC). The platform aligns with the UAE Vision 2021’s aim of fast-tracking a sustainable environment and achieving net zero as well as the goal of COP28 to “accelerate a transition that puts our economies on the path toward a new low-carbon, high-growth, sustainable economic model in a way that is both transformational and just.”

Announcing the launch of the digitised platform at COP28 in Dubai, Dr Ray O. Johnson, CEO of TII, noted: “The UAE has provided the tool to ensure that trading can be done in confidence while mitigating human impact and maximising the benefits to the environment.”

The platform designed by TII’s Cryptography Research Centre will support the global carbon market and allow better tracking of carbon emissions and carbon emission trading. Using a lightweight, efficient blockchain implementation that is not computationally wasteful, as opposed to existing blockchain projects, tracking and trading activities can be verified publicly at little to no cost, either in carbon emissions or other resources.

“This tracking and trading platform was designed by our talented team of international experts and allows large numbers of verified users to carry out carbon tracking and trading transactions in confidence,” Dr Najwa Aaraj, chief researcher at TII’s Cryptography Research Centre, said.

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“It protects the integrity of the transactions and the privacy of the user while ensuring auditability and transparency, making it a perfect tool for a new era of confident carbon trading.”

How digital platform works

While other organisations are also developing digital carbon trading platforms, TII is the first to implement a blockchain-enabled Proof of Concept as it continues to prepare the platform for global trading. The platform will accurately track carbon emissions by registering the emissions from any worldwide public or private organisation. Auditors can then establish a chain of trust from emissions from capture to storage to trading. These audited transactions can be made transparent while keeping intact the privacy of the user – emitter, buyer, or third party.

TII’s new platform will allow for the creation of tokens that represent a quantity of carbon dioxide that has been removed from the environment. The token can then be stored and traded transparently and securely. The trade-in tokens will create incentives to drive investment in green projects such as forestation and carbon capture and allow entities to offset hard-to-decarbonise activities — further incentivising green investment.

Specifically, blockchain can track and trace products throughout their supply chain journey, enable peer-to-peer energy trading, and create a transparent and immutable ledger of waste disposal and recycling activities. It can also help track water and forestry management efforts.

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