Co-creators: Hannah Rudman, SRUC; Darran Gardner, The DataLab; Elisa Fuentes-Montemayor, SRUC; Leandro Barbieri, Soil Heroes; Angelos Marnerides, University of Glasgow School of Computing; Annie Leeson, Agricarbon; Leonie Alexander, Lauriston Farm; Olivia Crowe, Earthly; Ben Hart, Bunloit; Vicky West, Woodland Carbon Code; Joseph Gridley, Soil Association; Marian Bruce, Highland Boundary; George Noble, SAOS; Brian Davison, Edinburgh Napier University; Nicola Anderson, Fintech Scotland; Summer Davies, The Palladium Group.
Observers: Peter Phillips and Richard Haw of Scottish Government.
Apologies: Rich Fitton, Finance Earth; Robert Hall Federated Hermes International; Julian Bell Agrecalc.
(There are currently c. 35 co-creator stakeholders of the Trustable Credit open standardised processes).
Minutes 31.08.2021
1. Hannah updated the adhocracy of stakeholders on the external environment, discussing emerging Tier 3 measurement only methods for credit creation, and the impact of this on the range of projects in the market, highlighting the positive case study of Bunloit and the negative case study of the Regen Network (where credits sold failed at first audit due to incorrect measurement methods being used).
2. Ben Hart from Bunloit responded, and Mark Reed from SRUC & Peatland Code discussed how the Peatland Code can accept new proposals for measurement using new digital devices if they align with core principles and metods of the code. Mark outlined how standardised processes for digital devices and their data could enable new emerging codes (SRUC and Agricarbon are working on UK Farm Soil code, SRUC working on Salt Marsh and Lowland Peat carbon codes) to accept various combinations of methods. It could also make it easier for existing codes with existing methods to accept data from sensors if the Trustable Credit standardised processes were easy to use in combinations of methods.
3. Brian Davison, part of the Trustable Credit convening team, introduced himself and his experience from research on digital device authentication and calibration in the renewable wind sector. There is a network of labs that stringently certify the performance assessment of sensors on turbines. Ben Hart from Bunloit responded, highlighting IPMVP’s look-up lists for Energy Perfomance Contracts.
4. The group introduced themselves and Hannah gave the final news update which was that Trustable Credit has now been invited to join the Align project community of practice, which is developing biodiversity metrics for business and accounting principles for natural capital, funded by the European Commission, and led by WCMC Europe, the Capitals Coalition, Arcadis, ICF and UNEP-WCMC (Sebastian Mynott of Applied Genomics is already on the technical group).
5. Brainstorm on the group’s co-creation MIRO board.
- Presentation of the data journey for Tier 2 modelling processes and and Tier 3 measurement processes were agreed by the group.
- People worked individually on what assurances digital devices and their data would need to present for assuring trustable baseline data. The group worked according to their personal experience in either Tier 2 or 3 methods. Those with experience in measuring contributed green coloured notes, those with experience in validation used purple colours.
- Digital devices need…
- Data collected through…
- Data store and governance…
- What does good data look like?
- What would bad data be?
- Methodologies – towards consensus?
- Generalisable method for core outcomes?
6. Group discussion
- Brian clustered into themes the Tier 3 comments and the group discussed them.
- Angelos clustered into themes the Tier 2 comments and the group discussed them.
- See MIRO board.
7. Next steps
– Work up a first draft of standardised processes to bring back to the group: action Hannah
-Working group 3 will be presented with the first draft – likely to be end of November due to start of term for Angelos and Brian and COP26 for Hannah: action Hannah
– Continue recruiting co-creators: action Hannah