Hope Through Innovation: A COP29 Perspective on Climate Innovation for 2025
At COP29 in Baku, a tale of two conferences emerged. While media headlines focused on gridlocked negotiations, I witnessed a different story unfolding. As Chair of LF Decentralized Trust’s Climate Action and Accounting Special Interest Group (CA2SIG), I saw firsthand how climate technology innovations are quietly transforming our ability to tackle the climate crisis.
Between formal sessions, real progress emerged. The corridors and pavilions buzzed with demonstrations of how we're revolutionizing climate action tracking and verification. Our technology community, resolute in their commitment to solve the climate challenge, showed how far we've come in building solutions for monitoring global climate commitments.
The momentum behind standardizing climate data measurement and verification was particularly inspiring. The strong interest from various countries in open-source solutions and blockchain technology validated our direction. Technical sessions revealed growing confidence in the tools we're developing for transparent climate accounting.
Innovation in AI and IoT remains central to our progress. Their integration with blockchain-based accounting systems isn't just theoretical anymore – it's becoming a practical reality and a mainstream topic in the agenda for practitioners building for tomorrow. These advances align perfectly with CA2SIG's vision of creating an open, global system that balances emissions against climate actions.
One important storyline was the impact of the Hedera Guardian ecosystem, which is being built on top of Linux Foundation Decentralized Trust’s Hiero and the Hedera Network. The Hedera Guardian ecosystem’s commitment to climate action and focus on institutional adoption made waves in venues from multiple countries and institutions present at the COP. Based on the work on display at the Digital Innovation Pavilion, IETA, and Hedera Regenerative Finance Forum, it is clear Hedera Guardian, a digital public good, is providing enabling functionality for auditable climate finance. This functionality builds on the need to accelerate digitalization, especially in carbon market methodologies, which can enable outcomes previously not possible with traditional technologies.
Perhaps most encouraging was the widespread recognition that open standards and collaborative frameworks are essential. Our advocacy for interoperable, open-source solutions was a core shared belief of many throughout the conference, reinforcing our belief that effective climate action requires unprecedented cooperation.
COP29 confirmed we're on the right path. The technical foundations for effective climate action are strengthening, with open-source collaboration and distributed systems now widely recognized as crucial components of credible climate solutions.
Looking ahead, our mission at CA2SIG is more vital than ever. The challenge now is accelerating the implementation and adoption of these solutions. While high-level negotiations continue, we can drive real progress by building the digital infrastructure necessary for effective climate action.
Join us in this crucial work. Together, we can create the open, transparent climate accounting systems our world urgently needs.
To get involved in the community’s work on climate use cases, join the Climate Action and Accounting Special Interest Group’s mailing list and join their regular calls. To get involved with the Hiero project, the open source code that powers the Hedera network, check out the Hiero Github repo and feel free to join any of the project’s community calls.