National Carbon Credit Registry

About

The Carbon Registry is an open-source, modular toolbox designed to help countries securely issue, monitor, and trade carbon credits. Built on a secure ledger, the registry ensures data integrity and allows for customization to meet each country’s specific needs. It facilitates the tracking of mitigation projects, including the issuance, transfer, acquisition, and retirement of emission reduction credits. This data is publicly accessible to boost transparency and trust in the global emissions reduction effort. The National Carbon Registry serves as a digital implementation of the Paris Agreement, enabling carbon credit transactions from various mitigation activities. Any country can customize and deploy its local version of the registry, connecting it to other national and international registries, MRV systems, and more. By leveraging open-source code, countries can lower costs, avoid duplication, and ensure interoperability with existing systems—all while streamlining the development of their domestic carbon markets.

The system has 3 key features:

• Analytics Dashboard: Enabling governments, companies, and certification bodies to operate transparently and function on an immutable ledger.
• Carbon Credit Calculator: Standardized system according to the UNFCCC - CDM (Clean Development Mechanism) methodologies, across defined sectors (optional for countries to switch on)
• Serial Number Generator: Standardizing the technical format to allow for easy cross-border collaboration between carbon trading systems.

Value

This open-source tool was developed in response to the challenges countries face when cooperating through bilateral or multilateral agreements to transfer carbon credits or Internationally Transferred Mitigation Outcomes (ITMOs) under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement. Many countries experience challenges with managing data for GHG inventories, NDC reporting, and climate finance opportunities. Additionally, ensuring quality in technology projects is difficult without specialized expertise in software, privacy, and security. Many countries, especially Least Developed Countries (LDCs) and Small Island Developing States (SIDS), need digital systems but risk duplicating efforts and increasing costs without coordination. Software developed without standard international schemas often requires costly rewrites to ensure interoperability.

This open-source solution is a certified Digital Public Good that:

• Lowers costs and risks while shortening the timeline for adoption and implementation.
• Simplifies local processes and accelerates carbon market development, making it easy to meet international standards.
• Offers shared best practices in security, data management, integration, and support, while still allowing country-specific customizations.
• Connects countries to a global community of practice focused on digitalizing climate transparency.

Index

• About
• Standards
• Changelog
• User flow
• Demo
• Architecture
• Project Structure
• Run as Containers
• Run Services Locally
• Run Services on Cloud
• User Onboarding
• Web Frontend
• Localization
• API
• Status Page
• Governance & Support

Standards

This codebase aims to fullfill the digital public goods standard: https://digitalpublicgoods.net/standard/ It is built according to the Principles for Digital Development: https://digitalprinciples.org/

Changelog

Learn about the latest improvements.

User Flow

Carbon registries across different countries typically follow a common set of steps to ensure transparency and accountability in carbon markets. First, projects aiming to reduce or remove carbon emissions are registered, their baseline emissions and expected credits calculated, with ownership is determined. These projects are then validated by third-party entities, and once verified, carbon credits are issued based on the quantified emissions reductions. Finally, these credits can be traded, tracked, and retired, with registries ensuring proper ownership transfer and preventing double counting.

However, every country has different Carbon Market policies, processes and governing bodies. Countries will also have different existing data and systems that the Registry might connect to. Therefore, the exact user group user groups, approval processes and user flows will be different for each country and needs to be customised to each country. The demo version provides an example user flow that can act as a starting point for customisation:

Demo Site

A demo site at https://www.demo.carbreg.org/login illustrates the basic functionality of the carbon registry for your country. Please contact the UNDP DPG team to request a walkthrough of the demo and to be added to the user list for the demo site.

System Architecture

UNDP Carbon Registry is based on service oriented architecture (SOA). Following diagram visualize the basic components in the system.

System Services

National Service

Authenticate, Validate and Accept user (Government, Project Developer/Certifier) API requests related to the following functionalities,

• User and company CRUD operations.
• User authentication.
• Project life cycle management.
• Credit life cycle management.

Service is horizontally scalable and state maintained in the following locations,

• File storage.
• Operational Database.
• Ledger Database.

Uses the Carbon Credit Calculator and Serial Number Generator node modules to estimate the project carbon credit amount and issue a serial number. Uses Ledger interface to persist project and credit life cycles.

Analytics Service

Serve all the system analytics. Generate all the statistics using the operational database. Horizontally scalable.

Replicator Service

Asynchronously replicate ledger database events in to the operational database. During the replication process it injects additional information to the data for query purposes (Eg: Location information). Currently implemented for QLDB and PostgresSQL ledgers. By implementing replicator interface can support more ledger replicators. Replicator select based on the LEDGER_TYPE environment variable. Support types QLDB, PGSQL(Default).

Deployment

System services can deploy in 2 ways.

• As a Container - Each service boundary containerized in to a docker container and can deploy on any container orchestration service. Please refer Docker Compose file
• As a Function - Each service boundary packaged as a function (Serverless) and host on any Function As A Service (FaaS) stack. Please refer Serverless configuration file

External Service Providers

All the external services access through a generic interface. It will decouple the system implementation from the external services and enable extendability to multiple services.

Geo Location Service

Currently implemented for 2 options.

1. File based approach. User has to manually add the regions with the geo coordinates. Sample File. To apply new file changes, replicator service needs to restart.
2. Mapbox. Dynamically query geo coordinates from the Mapbox API.

Can add more options by implementing location interface

Change by environment variable LOCATION_SERVICE. Supported types MAPBOX, FILE(Default)

File Service

Implemented 2 options for static file hosting.

1. NestJS static file hosting using the local storage and container volumes.
2. AWS S3 file storage.

Can add more options by implementing file handler interface

Change by environment variable FILE_SERVICE. Supported types S3, LOCAL(Default)

Database Architecture

Primary/secondary database architecture used to store carbon project and account balances. Ledger database is the primary database. Add/update projects and update account balances in a single transaction. Currently implemented only for AWS QLDB

Operational Database is the secondary database. Eventually replicated to this from primary database via data stream. Implemented based on PostgresSQL

Why Two Database Approach?

1. Cost and Query capabilities - Ledger database (blockchain) read capabilities can be limited and costly. To support rich statistics and minimize the cost, data is replicated in to a cheap query database.
2. Disaster recovery
3. Scalability - Primary/secondary database architecture is scalable since additional secondary databases can be added as needed to handle more read operations.

Why Ledger Database?

1. Immutable and Transparent - Track and maintain a sequenced history of every carbon project and credit change.
2. Data Integrity (Cryptographic verification by third party).
3. Reconcile carbon credits and company account balance.

Ledger Database Interface

This enables the capability to add any blockchain or ledger database support to the carbon registry without functionality module changes. Currently implemented for PostgresSQL and AWS QLDB.

PostgresSQL Ledger Implementation storage all the carbon project and credit events in a separate event database with the sequence number. Support all the ledger functionalities except immutability.

Single database approach used for user and company management.

Ledger Layout

Carbon Registry contains 3 ledger tables.

1. Project ledger - Contains all the project and credit transactions.
2. Company Account Ledger (Credit) - Contains company accounts credit transactions.
3. Country Account Ledger (Credit) - Contains country credit transactions.

The below diagram demonstrates the the ledger behavior of project create, authorise, issue and transfer processes. Blue color document icon denotes a single data block in a ledger.

Authentication

• JWT Authentication - All endpoints based on role permissions.
• API Key Authentication - MRV System connectivity.

Project Structure

.
├── .github                         # CI/CD [Github Actions files]
├── deployment                      # Declarative configuration files for initial resource creation and setup [AWS Cloudformation]
├── backend                         # System service implementation
    ├── services                    # Services implementation [NestJS application]
        ├── src
            ├── national-api        # National API [NestJS module]      
            ├── stats-api           # Statistics API [NestJS module]
            ├── ledger-replicator   # Blockchain Database data replicator [QLDB to Postgres]
            ├── shared              # Shared resources [NestJS module]     
        ├── serverless.yml          # Service deployment scripts [Serverless + AWS Lambda]
├── libs
    ├── carbon-credit-calculator    # Implementation for the Carbon credit calculation library [Node module + Typescript]
    ├── serial-number-gen           # Implementation for the carbon project serial number calculation [Node module + Typescript]
├── web                             # System web frontend implementation [ReactJS]
├── .gitignore
├── docker-compose.yml              # Docker container definitions
└── README.md

Run Services As Containers

• Update docker compose file env variables as required.
  • Currently all the emails are disabled using env variable IS_EMAIL_DISABLED. When the emails are disabled email payload will be printed on the console. User account passwords needs to extract from this console log. Including root user account, search for a log line starting with Password (temporary) on national container (docker logs -f undp-carbon-registry-national-1).
  • Add / update following environment variables to enable email functionality.
    • IS_EMAIL_DISABLED=false
    • SOURCE_EMAIL (Sender email address)
    • SMTP_ENDPOINT
    • SMTP_USERNAME
    • SMTP_PASSWORD
  • Use DB_PASSWORD env variable to change PostgresSQL database password
  • Configure system root account email by updating environment variable ROOT EMAIL. If the email service is enabled, on the first docker start, this email address will receive a new email with the root user password.
  • By default frontend does not show map images on dashboard and project view. To enable them please update REACT_APP_MAP_TYPE env variable to Mapbox and add new env variable REACT_APP_MAPBOXGL_ACCESS_TOKEN with MapBox public access token in web container.
• Add user data
  • Update organisations.csv file to add organisations.
  • Update users.csv file to add users.
  • When updating files keep the header and replace existing dummy data with your data.
  • These users and companys add to the system each docker restart.
• Run docker-compose up -d --build. This will build and start containers for following services,
  • PostgresDB container
  • National service
  • Analytics service
  • Replicator service
  • React web server with Nginx.
• Web frontend on http://localhost:3030/
• API Endpoints,
  • http://localhost:3000/national#/
  • http://localhost:3100/stats#/

Run Services Locally

• Setup postgreSQL locally and create a new database.
• Update following DB configurations in the .env.local file (If the file does not exist please create a new .env.local)
  • DB_HOST (Default localhost)
  • DB_PORT (Default 5432)
  • DB_USER (Default root)
  • DB_PASSWORD
  • DB_NAME (Default carbondbdev)
• Move to folder cd backend/service
• Run yarn run sls:install
• Initial user data setup serverless invoke local --stage=local --function setup --data '{"rootEmail": "<Root user email>","systemCountryCode": "<System country Alpha 2 code>", "name": "<System country name>", "logoBase64": "<System country logo base64>"}'
• Start all the services by executing sls offline --stage=local
• Now all the system services are up and running. Swagger documentation will be available on http://localhost:3000/local/national

Deploy System on the AWS Cloud

• Execute to create all the required resources on the AWS.

  aws cloudformation deploy --template-file ./deployment/aws-formation.yml --stack-name carbon-registry-basic --parameter-overrides EnvironmentName=<stage> DBPassword=<password> --capabilities CAPABILITY_NAMED_IAM
  

• Setup following Github Secrets to enable CI/CD
  • AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID
  • AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY
• Run it manually to deploy all the lambda services immediately. It will create 2 lambda layers and following lambda functions,
  • national-api: Handle all carbon registry user and program creation. Trigger by external http request.
  • replicator: Replicate Ledger database entries in to Postgres database for analytics. Trigger by new record on the Kinesis stream.
  • setup: Function to add initial system user data.
• Create initial user data in the system by invoking setup lambda function by executing

  aws lambda invoke \
      --function-name carbon-registry-services-dev-setup --cli-binary-format raw-in-base64-out\
      --payload '{"rootEmail": "<Root user email>","systemCountryCode": "<System country Alpha 2 code>", "name": "<System country name>", "logoBase64": "<System country logo base64>"}' \
      response.json
  

External Connectivity

UNDP'S ITMO Platform

The Carbon Registry is designed to be linked to the ITMO Voluntary Bilateral Cooperation Platform, https://carboncooperation.undp.org/, managed by UNDP. This enables countries to automatically sync projects created/authorised and credits issued within its national registry to the international trading platform. The system does this by:

1. Carbon Registry make a daily to the retrieve ITMO platform projects.
2. Projects create in the Carbon Registry when projects are authorized in the ITMO Platform
3. The Carbon Registry update when the projects are Issued with credits in the ITMO Platform

Lifecycle

Project Creation and Authorisation

• Authorisation of projects in the ITMO Platform identified by the event name: "ITMO-Design Document (DD) & Validation Report / Upload on National Public Registry".
• If the Company Tax Id doesn’t exist in the Carbon Registry, that company created in the Carbon Registry.
• When creating the project:
  • The project created with the state “Pending”
  • The credit estimate set to 100 by default
  • The company percentage set to 100%
  • The serial number for the project generated the same as any other project in the Carbon Registry.
• Projects retrieved from the ITMO Platform and created in the Carbon Registry can Authorised/Rejected by a Government user the same as any other project in the Carbon Registry
• When a project is authorised, the authorised credits will be the default credit estimate mentioned above. The project can be issued with credits by a Government user the same as any other project in the Carbon Registry.

Credit Issuance

• Credits can be issued for projects retrieved from the ITMO Platform and created in the Carbon Registry in two ways;
  • By a Government user the same as any other project.
  • Credit issuance in the ITMO Platform which should be reflected in the Carbon Registry.
• In the case of 2 above,
  • Credit issuance identified by the event name: "Upload Final Monitoring Report" in the ITMO Platform.

Field Mapping

Company

Name in the Carbon Registry	Mandatory in the Carbon Registry	Name in the ITMO Platform
Tax ID (taxId)	Yes	company
Name (name)	Yes	company
Email (email)	Yes	Set default : nce.digital+[organisation]@undp.org
Phone Number (phoneNo)	Yes	Set default : 00
Website
Address		Set default : Country if the Registry
Logo
Country (country)		Set default : Country of the Registry
Role (companyRole)	Yes	Set default : ProgrammeDeveloper

User

Name in the Carbon Registry	Mandatory in the Carbon Registry	Name in the ITMO Platform
Email (email)	Yes	Set default : nce.digital+[organisation]@undp.org
Role (role)	Yes	Set default : Admin
Phone Number (phoneNo)		Set default : 00

Project

Name in the Carbon Registry	Mandatory in the Carbon Registry	Name in the ITMO Platform
Project Name (title)	Yes	Name
External ID (externalId)	Yes	id
Credit Issuance Serial Number
Current Status		Set default : Pending
Applicant Type		Set default : Project Developer
Sector (sector)	Yes	Sector
Sectoral Scope (sectoralScope)	Yes	Sector
Project Start Date (startTime)	Yes	createdAt
Project End Date (endTime)	Yes	createdAt + 10 years
Geographical Location (Regional) (geographicalLocation)	Yes	country (Name not mentioned as ISO3 or actual name)
Buyer Country Eligibility
Project Cost (USD) (programmeCostUSD)	Yes	Set default : Null
Financing Type
Grant Equivalent Amount
Carbon Price (Dollars per ton)
Company		company
Company Tax ID (proponentTaxVatId)	Yes	company
Company Percentage (proponentPercentage)	Yes	Set default : 100%
Type of Mitigation Action/Activity (typeOfMitigation)	Yes	Sector
GHGs Covered (greenHouseGasses)	Yes	Set default : CO2
Credits Authorised		Set default : 100
Credits Issued		Set default : 10
Credits Transferred
Credits Frozen
Credits Retired
Credits authorised for international transfer and use (Total cumulative maximum amount of Mitigation Outcomes for which international transfer and use is authorized)
Crediting Period (years)
Project Materials		Files *
Project Materials		Files *
Credit Calculation Fields / Mitigation Type Calculation
Agriculture
Land Area
Land Area Unit
Solar
energy generation
energy generation unit
consumer group

ITMO Sector Mapping

ITMO Sector Field Value	Sector	Sectoral Scope	Type Of Mitigation
energy-distribution	Energy	Energy Distribution	Energy Distribution
agriculture	Agriculture	Agriculture	Agriculture
energy-industries	Energy	Energy Industry	EE Industry
Default	Other	Energy Industry	EE Industry

Assumptions

• Project estimated credit amount is 100.
• Project issued credit amount is always 10.

Docker Integration Setup

1. Append data-importer to docker-compose file replicator service RUN_MODULE env variable with comma separated.
2. Update following env variables in the docker-compose file replicator service.
   • ITMO_API_KEY
   • ITMO_EMAIL
   • ITMO_PASSWORD
   • ITMO_ENDPOINT
3. Projects will import on each docker restart.

User Onboarding and Permissions Model

User Roles

System pre-defined user roles are as follows,

• Root
• Company Level (National Government, Project and Certification Company come under this level)
  • Admin
  • Manager
  • View Only

User Onboarding Process

1. After the system setup, the system have a Root User for the setup email (one Root User for the system)
2. Root User is responsible for creating the Government entity and the Admin of the Government
3. The Government Admin is responsible for creating the other companies and Admins of each company.
4. Admin of the company has the authority to add the remaining users (Admin, Managers, View Only Users) to the company.
5. When a user is added to the system, a confirmation email should be sent to users including the login password.

User Management

All the CRUD operations can be performed as per the following table,

Company Role	New User Role	Authorized User Roles (Company)
Government	Root	Cannot create new one other than the default system user and Can manage all the users in the system
Government	Admin Manager View Only	Root Admin(Government)
All other Company Roles	Admin Manager View Only	Root Admin(Government) Admin(Company)

• All users can edit own user account except Role and Email.
• Users are not allowed to delete the own account from the system.

Web Frontend

Web frontend implemented using ReactJS framework. Please refer getting started with react app for more information.

Localization

• Languages (Current): English
• Languages (In Progress): French. Spanish Please refer here for adding a new language translation file.

Application Programming Interface (API)

For integration, reference RESTful Web API Documentation documentation via Swagger. To access

• National API: api.APP_URL/national
• Status API: api.APP_URL/stats

Resource Requirements

Resource	Minimum	Recommended
Memory	4 GB	8 GB
CPU	4 Cores	4 Cores
Storage	20 GB	50 GB
OS	Linux Windows Server 2016 and later versions.

Note: Above resource requirement mentioned for a single instance from each microservice.

Status Page

For transparent uptime monitoring go to status.APP_URL Open source code available at https://github.com/undp/carbon-registry-status

Governance and Support

The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) is responsible for managing the application. To ensure alignment with international demand, Digital For Climate (D4C) will act as an advisory body to the Digital Public Good Carbon Registry codebase. D4C is a collaboration between European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), United Nations Development Program (UNDP), United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), International Emissions Trading Association (IETA), European Space Agency (ESA), and World Bank Group  that aims to coordinate respective workflows and create a modular and interoperable end-to-end digital ecosystem for the carbon market. The overarching goal is to support a transparent, high integrity global carbon market that can channel capital for impactful climate action and low-carbon development.

This code is managed by United Nations Development Programme as custodian, detailed in the press release. For technical questions, please visit the community of practice ‘Keeping Track of the Paris Agreement’ or submit through the open forum. For any other questions, contact us at [email protected].