SRUC (Scotland’s Rural College) has funded the initiation of Trustable Credit.

Trustable Credit has been funded by a Universities Innovation Fund grant to SRUC, provided by the Scottish Funding Council. Dr Hannah Rudman is Senior Challenge Research Fellow at SRUC and won the grant to initiate Trustable Credit.

Trustable Credit is a decentralised adhocracy of people, businesses and institutions that want to develop and test open international standards for digital devices and their data that are measuring carbon, biodiversity and nature improvements.

• We want carbon sequestration/nature and biodiversity improvement projects to be able to make attested verification-based credits, based on robust scientific methods proven by actual monitoring and measurement “in the field”, rather than being proxy/model based.
• Measurement can achieved, triangulated and verified – digitally.

There is satellite, drone and IoT sensor data, and robust digital tools that land managers can use (e.g. hand held soil carbon testers).  Recent research and network development by The Challenge Centre for Thriving Natural Capital at SRUC has proven that a wide range of different public and private sector bodies are interested in the idea of being able to rate nature/carbon credits according to the quality and trustability of the data, and the robustness of science methods behind them. 

Credible green finance investors and credit approvers want projects with high data and science standards ratings behind them – this week for example, S&P’s IHS Markit announced its intention to launch a global Carbon Meta-Registry and Advisory Board to provide transparency of carbon credits, working alongside The World Bank’s Climate Warehouse experiments. Through the work of SRUC’s Professor Mark Reed, the UK Woodland and Peatland Carbon Codes are already included.