Today, Centigrade, a climate-focused technology provider, announces the launch of an open data platform focused on restoring trust in global voluntary carbon markets. Centigrade’s easy-to-use platform provides the fundamental data quality, availability, and transparency required for a liquid, fair, and efficient carbon market – thus enabling the necessary elements required for trust and increased participation in a durable market.
Centigrade is independent and intended for broad public purpose: it does not own or trade credits, nor provide rating or certification services. This unique position allows Centigrade to remain neutral and focus on delivering valuable data to all ecosystem players – sellers, buyers, and service providers including digital measurement providers, verifiers, auditors, certifiers and ratings agencies. Suppliers can use the platform to introduce their differentiated product to the world, exchanges and buyers can use it for price discovery, searches and due diligence, and service providers can use it to evaluate, track, analyze and rate credits and their movements. Over time, Centigrade will provide value-added services beyond data, enabling third parties to develop additional products and services, including for managing and remediating risk.
“We cannot end the twin crises of climate change and nature loss without thriving credit markets. All truly functional markets require high-integrity, transparent data – and the complex realm of carbon and nature credits is no exception. Using innovative technologies, Centigrade provides the integrated, interoperable and open data platform that will enable all market actors, private and public, to make sophisticated decisions”, said Andreas Merkl, Co-founder and CEO at Centigrade.
“Carbon credit markets are in trouble, a situation that couldn’t come at a worse time considering the devastating effects of climate change are on clear display across the world. A well functioning, liquid carbon market has the potential to top $50B by 2030, providing much-needed financing for high-impact climate-related projects. With the launch of Centigrade we hope to make a significant contribution to restoring trust in voluntary carbon markets,” said Ken Weber, SVP of Sustainability and Social Impact at Ripple.
Centigrade will add features and project types to the platform over time, increasing its utility beyond transparency and differentiation, and enabling ever more sophisticated tracking, asset and risk management for “ex ante” credits – carbon credits that are early in their lifecycle, such as recently seeded forests or carbon removal plants under construction –and “ex post” credits – credits representing carbon reduction or removal that has already occurred.
As the market diversifies, expanding attention and attracting capital to additional durable nature-based products and innovative, scalable science and technology-driven approaches, Centigrade’s platform will serve a broader and increasingly diverse swath of the market.
“We believe that radical transparency, underpinned by a minimum bar for credit performance data, will enable key information to flow across the VCM value chain. This will make it easier and faster to grow the supply of high-quality credits, and help ensure that carbon and nature markets operate effectively,” says Josh Henretig, Managing Director of the Climate Intelligence Program at RMI (Rocky Mountain Institute).
