Halfway through 2026 - what progress has CDOP been making?
CDOP membership has grown to nearly 75 organizations since the launch of Version 1.0 at Climate Week NYC in September 2025
The Technical Working Group has completed harmonization of seven new data categories in Round 1 and is now launching Round 2, covering seven additional categories. The goal is to cover all pre-issuance fields by the end of 2026.
The Principles and Policies Working Group has finalized CDOP's guiding Principles and is now developing a governance model to ensure the protocol's long-term continuity
At least six organizations are actively using the CDOP schema to exchange data, with more to do so in the coming year.
Altogether, CDOP has considerable momentum and is poised to become an integral component of the VCM’s data architecture — thus enabling more transparent and efficient exchange of critical project data.
In September 2025 at Climate Week NYC, the Carbon Data Open Protocol (CDOP) released Version 1.0 of its data schema, covering four core pre-issuance data categories —Project Approach and Details, Location, Disclosures, and Issuances — with 75% of member organizations at the time committing to support its adoption and development.
Less than a year on, CDOP has grown to nearly 75 member organizations and is on track to triple the scope and depth of its data schema, making significant strides toward standardizing the data infrastructure underlying the carbon credit lifecycle.
Establishing the foundations: Principles and Policies Working Group
The Principles and Policies Working Group (PPWG) has concluded its foundational work, delivering CDOP's 11 guiding Principles that govern data, guide disclosure practices, and implement protocol governance.
Building on this, the PPWG has turned its focus to developing a governance model designed to ensure the continuity of CDOP's work in the ongoing maintenance and evolution of the protocol, in full alignment with those Principles. This includes identifying a CDOP Director role to champion CDOP work going forward. More details on this role will be released soon.
Advancing technical harmonization: the Technical Working Group
The Technical Working Group (TWG) has adopted a Pod model to accelerate the development of the CDOP schema. Each Pod is led by a Pod Leader, supported by Pod Members and Domain Experts, and is responsible for harmonizing the data fields that comprise a specific data category within the carbon credit lifecycle. Each data category is meticulously reviewed and tested by the larger TWG to ensure utility and relevance for the diversity of carbon market actors.
The work of the TWG is guided by a comprehensive mapping of the carbon credit lifecycle, drawing on the World Bank's foundational framework and enhanced by members' experience, to support the comprehensiveness of the final schema. As with Version 1.0, CDOP's work continues to be developed in alignment with, and building upon, other data standardization initiatives, including the G20-led Common Carbon Credit Data Model (CCCDM), the CAD Trust, and the UNFCCC (relating to Article 6). For further information about cross-initiative collaboration, see this CDOP blog.
Data harmonization and schema development: Round 1
Since January 2026, the Pods have successfully tackled seven new data categories, drawing out valuable lessons that CDOP will incorporate in Round 2:
1. Co-Benefits
Carbon projects frequently deliver social and environmental benefits — from biodiversity protection to community livelihoods — described inconsistently across standards. The Pod aligned its schema with Article 6.4 guidance and incorporated high-level SDG target and indicator fields, establishing a common foundation rather than duplicating existing SDG frameworks.
2. Crediting Period
Crediting period data risked definitional overlap with ex-post quantification fields, creating potential disruption to existing workflows across member organizations. The Pod kept the two categories distinct, deferring methodology-specific refinements to a future round.
3. Estimations
Ex-ante estimates of emissions reductions or removals are central to project assessment, but their relationship to crediting period data introduced complexity around category boundaries. The Pod maintained clean category separation, establishing standardized fields that can be built upon as methodology-specific work matures.
4. Labels and Certifications
Labels and certifications such as CCB or CORSIA eligibility are increasingly decision-relevant for buyers and compliance markets, but no common framework exists for distinguishing certification eligibility from regulatory approval or expressing varying accreditation levels in a consistent way. The Pod developed a schema that aims to capture these distinctions in a consistent and structured way.
5. Project Finance
Financial information about carbon projects is rarely captured in a standardized format, limiting institutional investors' ability to compare and assess opportunities at scale. The pod focused on the fields of practical value while deliberately removing derived fields that would create maintenance complexity and inconsistency across systems. The result is a lean, implementable schema suited to practical use.
6. Unit Description
Carbon credits carry complex attributes — vintage, serial number, retirement status, and more — defined differently across registries, creating friction in trading and compliance workflows. The Pod standardized core descriptive fields for individual units, integrating the schema into CDOP's broader entity relationship model through the issuance entity.
7. Durability and Permanence
Standards apply different questions, scoring schemes, and sub-question breakdowns, making like-for-like comparison extremely difficult. Rather than pushing a single harmonized framework prematurely, the Pod took a pragmatic approach to first establish machine-readable, structured fields that capture each standard's approach consistently, with deeper harmonization targeted for subsequent versions as market practice converges.
These harmonized data categories will shortly be published on GitHub for market participants to incorporate into their existing systems.
Data harmonization and schema development: Round 2
With Round 1 concluding and lessons learned taken on board, CDOP is now launching Round 2 of technical harmonization. Pods will tackle seven new data categories spanning the broader carbon credit lifecycle:
1. Additionality: establishing common project additionality information fields to support project assessment and comparison.
2. Baseline Scenario: establishing common fields that assess whether emissions would have occurred without a carbon project's implementation, supporting project assessment and data consistency.
3. Methodology Metadata: standardizing the description of methodologies in a project-agnostic way to support consistent nomenclature across the market.
4. MRV: standardizing MRV assessment and value fields to streamline data collection and facilitate comparison.
5. Registry Metadata: standardizing the description of registries to support consistent nomenclature.
6. Validation Metadata: standardizing the description of validators and validation-stage data to support consistent nomenclature and facilitate project assessment.
7. Verification Metadata: standardizing the description of verifiers and verification-stage data to support consistent nomenclature and data reporting integrity.
Round 2 work will continue through to Climate Week NYC 2026, where CDOP looks forward to sharing further progress on schema development and adoption — both central to increased market scalability, efficiency, and investability.
How to get involved
To view the CDOP schema and its technical documentation, including harmonized data fields for categories such as Project Approach and Details and Unit Description, visit the CDOP GitHub here.
CDOP invites carbon market participants to contribute to the ongoing technical harmonization in Round 2 — covering categories such as Additionality, MRV, and Registry Metadata — as well as future Pods. The work of building shared data infrastructure for the carbon market requires sustained expertise, participation, and support across the public, private, and philanthropic sectors.
If you are interested in getting involved or supporting this initiative, please contact us here.
