How Data Standardization is Ready to Unlock Carbon Markets
Despite the potential to mobilize trillions in investment, carbon markets remain frustratingly fragmented and difficult for buyers and investors to navigate at scale.
This is in part due to a lack of standardized data infrastructure that other mature financial markets now take for granted.
The result is higher transaction costs, slower due diligence processes, and ultimately, a bottleneck that prevents the capital flow needed to scale climate solutions globally, and channel climate finance to emerging markets and developing economies.
But this is starting to change. A convergence of industry-led initiatives and government frameworks is driving carbon data standardization, helping to unlock the market's potential.
The infrastructure problem
The carbon market's data challenge is complex to solve. Different registries, projects, and geographies describe and store carbon credit information in different ways. What could be straightforward data points (project location, methodology, vintage, ownership) exist in incompatible formats across the ecosystem.
This data sits buried in countless pages of inconsistently structured documents, creating major complexity for anyone trying to submit project information, assess quality, compare projects, or manage risk at scale.
For those familiar with mature financial markets and their standardised data structures, this represents a major hurdle when compared to other financial markets.
The standardization solution
In order to build data standardization, standardisation the steps needed are:
At minimum, a common baseline for collecting and recording key data fields
That allows different systems - registries, trading platforms, ratings agencies - to communicate with each other without market frictions
This means greater liquidity, and ultimately more climate finance to emerging markets and developing economies.
And the benefits of standardization extend far beyond simple convenience. Common data standards enable automated risk assessment, real-time market monitoring, and the development of sophisticated analytical tools that sophisticated investors require.
They reduce operational overhead for everyone from project developers to buyers, while improving transparency and market integrity. And this is exactly what carbon markets need to mature into a trusted, investable asset class.
The path forward is well-established. Financial services have repeatedly demonstrated how standardization unlocks market potential. Open Banking, for example, transformed financial services by requiring banks to standardize data access, enabling everything from fintech innovation to improved customer choice. Once established, these systems created network effects that dramatically expanded market liquidity and accessibility.
Practitioners and policymakers embrace standardisation
The current momentum behind carbon data standardization reflects a wave of collaboration across the ecosystem, with multiple complementary initiatives working in coordination rather than competition.
There are now clear roles emerging for the three initiatives that have driven different aspects of standardisation - CDOP, the G20-overseen CCCDM and CAD Trust - and momentum building at the International Standards Organisation (ISO).
Understanding how these initiatives complement one another is crucial for market participants considering adoption strategies, and all three initiatives recognize the value of collaboration and clarity in our market positions.
CDOP Industry Leadership
What the initiative is:
The Carbon Data Open Protocol (CDOP) represents the market's most comprehensive industry-led standardization effort. Co-chaired by GCMU, Sylvera, RMI, and S&P Global Commodity Insights, CDOP is backed by 50+ participants spanning the entire carbon market value chain, from registries and industry bodies to ratings agencies and project developers.
What its role in the ecosystem is:
CDOP's approach is deliberately inclusive and open-source. The initiative is making its Version 1.0 data schema freely available to ensure broad accessibility and continued evolution through community input.
CDOP's Version 1.0 provides standardized definitions for five foundational data categories focussing on the pre-issuance space: location, project details, approach, disclosures, and issuances - with plans to expand coverage across the full credit lifecycle. Early adoption commitments from major market participants demonstrate the momentum behind implementation.
How it builds on other data standardization initiatives:
CDOP operates as the market implementation layer, adding the technical depth and operational cogs that market participants require. While the CCCDM (see below) establishes core data fields, CDOP provides the detailed schemas, validation rules, and integration guidance needed by users, incorporating data fields from schemas provided by 15+ market participants. CDOP explicitly builds on CCCDM fields while progressively adding layers of technical connectivity.
The G20-Led CCCDM
What the initiative is:
Government backing is equally crucial. The G20 Sustainable Finance Working Group, under South Africa's presidency, made carbon market data standardization one of three priority areas for 2025. The G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors have formally acknowledged the potential of carbon markets and specifically noted efforts to build a Common Carbon Credit Data Model (CCCDM) as a voluntary tool.
What its role in the ecosystem is:
The Climate Data Steering Committee (CDSC), serving as the G20's lead knowledge partner, has developed a comprehensive framework covering the entire carbon credit lifecycle through 11 data tables. The CCCDM eliminates technology barriers while incorporating sophisticated features like ISIN-compatible unique identifiers that mirror financial market best practices.
How it builds on other data standardization initiatives:
The CCCDM serves as the common foundation for carbon credit data, across the lifecycle, developed with input from all G20 countries plus EU, AU, and observer nations. It's designed to be accessible to policymakers and usable by the private sector, while providing basic interoperability across jurisdictions. Think of it as the essential infrastructure layer that ensures different systems can communicate.
CDOP recognises and welcomes the G20-led effort to build a CCCDM, as a common foundation on which market participants can build and innovate.
CAD Trust
What the initiative is:
Established by the World Bank, IETA, and the Singapore government in 2022, the CAD Trust supports a global carbon credit transparency platform that links, aggregates, and harmonizes data from diverse carbon credit registries to increase transparency, help avoid double counting, and support transparent accounting of credit impact.
What its role in the ecosystem is:
CAD Trust governs an open source common data model to support the platform through a collaborative, committee-driven model engaging multiple governments, crediting programs, and market practitioners. It has demonstrated the power of applying international common data standards, as the platform now aggregates data on around 90% of total credit issued globally across 11 registries.
This includes most major independent programs (e.g. Verra, Gold Standard, GCC, Cercarbono), the Clean Development Mechanism, and two national registries. The CAD Trust data model and practical experience building registry data interoperability has informed the CCCDM and CDOP as well as ICVCM and World Bank infrastructure work.
CDOP supports the CAD Trust's objectives and its role as global public data infrastructure and commits to embed the forthcoming CAD Trust v2.0 schema into CDOP’s first round of updates. The initiative also aligns with ICVCM integrity standards and World Bank infrastructure efforts, helping create a coherent ecosystem rather than competing alternatives.
How it builds on other data standardization initiatives:
CAD Trust functions as the operational infrastructure, serving as a global public database that helps avoid double counting and supports transparent accounting in line with Paris Agreement requirements. It's the actual system where standardized data from different systems gets stored and accessed, as well as an important ongoing effort to help refine its global structure in collaboration with CDOP and CCCDM. Both CDOP and CCCDM initiatives build on rather than replace existing standardization work, notably the work of the CAD Trust.
All initiatives also recognise the importance of data compatibility with emerging international climate frameworks, including the UNFCCC's Article 6 reporting requirements.
How is the CCDF different from CDOP?
RMI - a CDOP co-chair - has developed a Carbon Credit Data Framework (CCDF). This is a lifecycle-complete data schema - like many other companies having their own data schema - however, it is now publicly available. The CCDF provides detailed standardization across the entire carbon credit lifecycle, so serving as both a working model while contribution to the broader harmonization effort.
Rather than positioning CCDF as a competing standard, RMI has integrated its framework directly into CDOP's Technical Working Group. The CCDF represents one of sixteen distinct schemas being unified under CDOP's coordination, with the intention that CCDF will become CDOP-compliant while potentially providing additional detail for specific use cases important to RMI's mission.
This demonstrates how specialized frameworks can contribute to CDOP’s broader standardization aims. For example, 16 organizations have shared their own data models and are participating as active committee members to establish a common data model in CDOP. By leveraging other data models in the space, CDOP can ensure that the harmonised data model aligns with data standards across the market whilst providing one common standard for everyone to use.
A collaborative foundation for transformation
These initiatives are laying the foundation to transform how carbon market information is accessed and exchanged across carbon market infrastructure, from a collection of disconnected data points into a functional, navigable system that institutional buyers and investors can confidently access.
Carbon markets have technical foundation through registries and methodologies, but achieving scale requires the data accessibility layer that these coordinated initiatives provide.
This collaborative approach also recognizes that registries and credit programmes are already undertaking their own internal digitalization and data standardization work. Rather than imposing external requirements, these cross-industry standardization initiatives work directly with market players to help set the norms for what the market needs to see.
The CAD Trust data model, for example, was developed based on extensive feedback from registries about what works in practice and what doesn't, ensuring that standardization efforts support (rather than complicate) existing operational processes. This partnership approach - working with organizations rather than simply providing them with frameworks to follow - helps ensure that standards land effectively in the market.
Success depends on network effects. The more participants that adopt these standards, the more valuable they become for everyone. Early adopters will benefit from improved operational efficiency and market access, while late adopters risk being left behind as standardized data becomes the expected norm.
Over the coming months, the three initiatives will be moving towards full technical alignment and working together to pilot adoption of standardization solutions with market participants as well as inform work starting at the ISO.
For market participants, the next steps are clear. Registries and ratings agencies should begin piloting these standards in their technical infrastructure. Project developers should start organizing documentation according to standardized schemas. Buyers and investors should advocate for standardized approaches in their procurement processes.
The technical foundations are now in place. The policy frameworks have government backing. The industry collaboration spans the entire ecosystem. What remains is the adoption momentum that will transform carbon markets from their current fragmented state into the mature, trusted, and scalable asset class that global climate action requires.
CDOP V.10 WILL LAUNCH AT CLIMATE WEEK NYC
Following CDOP Version 1.0’s official launch at Climate Week New York in September 2025, CDOP Version 1.0 will be freely available for all market participants to access via GitHub.
