 Thanks everybody for joining this session. This is going to be a panel discussion, so we welcome your questions. My name is David Boswell. I have a few questions to start with, but again, we hopefully will have time to take any of your questions that you have for our panelists. I'll introduce myself quickly. I am the Senior Director of Community Architecture at Hyperledger. I also am involved with Hyperledger's Climate Action and Accounting Special Interest Group. If you're not familiar with that group, you are certainly welcome to get involved. It is an open community effort to look at how do we take the blockchain technologies being developed by the community and apply them to climate-related use cases. If you go to wiki.hyperledger.org, there's a link to the Climate Action and Accounting Special Interest Group there. Again, you're welcome to get involved. You can sign up. They have a mailing list. You can subscribe to that list, introduce yourself, and you can get notified of upcoming meetings, and one of the upcoming meetings will feature our panelists who will be speaking more about the project they're involved with. That is coming up, I believe, on October 4th. So that will be a virtual meeting where you can dial in from anywhere. So if you're interested in about what you're learning today and you want to learn more, please join us for that as well. With that, let me start in and introduce our panelists. We have Nancy Norris, if you want to say a word about yourself. Hi, everyone. I'm Nancy Norris. Thanks for joining us today. I work for the government of British Columbia. My title is Senior Director of ESG and Digital Trust. The ministry that I work for is Energy, Minds, and Low-Carbon Innovation. For the last two years, we've been piloting this project that we're going to be speaking to you about today. It's called the Energy and Minds Digital Trust. Okay. We also have Kyle Robinson with us. Thanks. Hi, everyone. Kyle Robinson. I'm an independent consultant working on a contract right now with the provincial government, and I originally started out as a scrum master with the team and progressed and so now a Senior Strategic Advisor for the project. Okay. Well, thank you both. To start with, Nancy, can you just tell us some basics? Can you tell us about what the Energy and Minds Digital Trust project is? Sure. So this project is a culmination of two basic factors in British Columbia. So we have a fairly long-standing program around digital identity using open source technology, and it is for individual identity. We also have very strong climate legislation in BC. And so what we have done is apply this digital identity technology for individuals, and we're piloting it at the organizational level. What we're doing is mapping, in the use case that we're going to be talking to you about today, we are building on an existing regulatory process where companies, large emitters in BC, are required to submit their carbon emissions data to the government, and they're required to do so using verified, audited reporting. So we are mapping that process using digital credentials. Great. Kyle, can you share some more about the technology side of things? Why specifically is this project using digital trust technology for sustainability reporting? Right. So the big part of the emissions reporting that Nancy mentioned, regulatory reporting, we also have voluntary reporting involved in our use case, is the trust and the verification. So as it stands even today with the business process for carbon emission reporting, there's an auditor required to verify any emissions over 25,000 carbon CO2E. And so that is the existing process. It's written into legislation that needs to be verified. And so essentially the process right now is to email some PDFs around that have been signed. So we're taking the existing process and advancing that to use verifiable credential technology. The stack that we're using is actually on top of, as Nancy mentioned, the organizational identities that the BC government is using. So that's hyperledger Indy and hyperledger Aries with a non-creds credential types. And so that's again all around the organization and identity. The emissions reporting is an annual process and that's one of the pieces of their identity that they can share. Great. And so you mentioned the government of British Columbia. Where do they see the value in here in this project? So broadly the government of BC is interested and has been working quite extensively in digital identity for individuals. We see the value for industry in British Columbia because sustainability reporting is something that has been, is more and more prevalent and we see that it is only going to continue to be a demand on industries within BC. BC is a natural resource rich jurisdiction so our mining industries and others are a big part of our economy. And we want to test out the use of verified credentials in this space because we think and we've been finding over the course of this pilot that the use of these kind of credentials can actually add business efficiencies to existing processes. For example large emitters, as we've been saying, they are legislated to provide their emissions on an annual basis to the government. They can also use those reports for other type of sustainability reporting purposes like voluntary markets or investors, potential investors that are interested in ESG and sustainability or purchasers downstream who are interested in their performance. But at the moment the processes around that are really just what Kyle and I have found basically doing this pilot, the processes are really involved. So for big sophisticated companies they have whole sustainability departments who do this kind of reporting. For the small mines and operators they are missing out on big business opportunities because it's just too complicated for them to have to have to report in all of these different ways to all of these different audiences. So if we can help design a credential that can be shared with others within the digital ecosystem and also bits and pieces of that information can be shared with different audiences we see a lot of efficiency there. We also think that there's you know just for government in general there's a lot of opportunities to build trust and to work on scaling and interoperability of these technologies and this pilot is a way for us to learn more about the technology and to apply it to specific sectors. Great. To build on what you were just saying about how the current processes maybe don't work for everybody can you speak about how digital trust frameworks improve sustainability reporting? Sure. So the improvements I would say are around as I was saying before this ability to share the information in a trusted manner with multiple different audiences. There's also a efficiency angle in terms of being able to have multiple different credentials so not just the emissions credential that we're working on now this is the first use case that we've really been piloting but we're also looking to pilot other use cases such as the Mining Association of Canada has a toward sustainable mining protocol which covers off not just the environmental and climate performance of mines but also their work with the community how they their the governance of the of the mine as well and so we want to work with them in order to create a credential that is a verified credential for the TSM that would improve sustainability reporting for those mines because they could then share that credential with multiple different audiences including potentially the London Metals Exchange which is setting up a digital passport for sustainability so we think that there's a lot of opportunities here for taking efficiency and also to improve and open new business markets for them for the operators within the province. And going back to a question about that technology my understanding is you're using open source technology but you're also creating some technology as well can you speak about what you're developing and how does it fit in with the hyper ledger community? Sure thing so as mentioned we're using Indie and Aries as our base stack for this for this use case again it's a self-sovereign identity model where the credentials are informing the identity on the emissions reporting again that's an annual one so every year they will have a credential added to their wallet. One of the things that we're specifically using for Aries for the organizations is we're using Acapai and so we're actually looking at standing up a multi-tenant solution for the BC government to specifically use. That will actually be an instance of Acapai multi-tenant and we're building our team is specifically building a traction tenant UI so on your handouts you'll see a section on there about traction we have a GitHub repository to where that code base is it's right now we have a tenant UI for it so each different division or department or program in the government could use that a tenant to do any of the issuing or verifying or holding that they need to do for their business practices so and one of the partners that we're working closely with is the climate action secretariat and so they in this use case they are a verifier they'll be receiving proofs from these emissions the large companies that do the emissions so back to traction there's a tenant UI and we're just about to start building out what we call the innkeeper UI which is really an administrative tool for creating new tenants and assigning the keys out to those different divisions departments great and when we talk about building something blockchain the topic of governance always comes up can you speak to the governance side of things like how and why are you developing governance for this I'm just laughing because Kyle really leads the governance work and does an incredible job on it I one thing common I'll just make on governance is that even just in the time that I've been at this conference the point has come up that legislation and a lot of cases is starting to drive blockchain use cases and certainly we have found that in this pilot because British Columbia's climate legislation is long-standing we have the first climate or carbon tax in North America and we have a whole suite of other pieces of climate legislation that have been around for quite a while and are tested and that really provides this framework for the data that is developed and is being fed into the blockchain system so we've found that if the process already exists and it's a very robust process particularly one that's mapped out through legislation that you can build upon that and apply the technology in a way that's quite robust yes that's and so on the governance has become a very important part of our project the technology is also important but we're finding that the governance is maybe even more important so our journey there really a big shout out to Trust Over IP has been working with us we've been working with them on the governance side of this whole world that we're working in and so working on the documentation standards what the kind of things need to have governance associated to them all of the different pieces of an ecosystem need to have governance risk assessment done so those are all very important and we've been working on governance documentation we're very I would say early stages but very close to having actual governance suite of documentation put together on it's spec up is one of the actual tools that we're looking at using thanks to Stephen Curran and helping drive that forward but essentially the governance documentation location is on github repose as well and so that's the best sort of distributed not necessarily decentralized but at least as distributed location for governance documentation great one other question then we'll open it up to the audience is there anything else you'd like to add about how you were piloting both the technology and the governance yeah I would say another lesson that we've learned is that it's you know there's the technology there's the governance but then there's also this whole process around building an ecosystem of participants which is it's been a fascinating process because we you know we have some early adopters the pilot's been going on for a couple of years we put together a sort of an initial team of folks from the public private sector and NGOs and for them it was an easy step they were keen they were wanted to be a part of something innovative but when talking about this project to folks who aren't as versed in the technology maybe don't understand the benefits we've realized that we have to have a whole team that helps with communication and change management to assist us when we go and talk to new stakeholders who we think would be a great sort of part of a use case or building out the pilots but they they these are the education process to get them to a point where they're like where they're that sort of aha moment is for them that this could actually you know really build efficiencies for them create trust in their state ability reporting that wasn't there before that has been a big part of this and continues to be a big part of this pilot project so there's those three sort of main components the technology the governance and then the stakeholder relationships great thank you I think we have time for a few questions from the audience are people great let me yeah let me take the mic down you're called the energy and minds digital trust have you been thinking about any use cases to do a POC for energy side yes so we are in the process so this was sort of our MVP use case on the energy side we are piloting or we're going to start working on for the natural gas operators in BC the same piece of legislation it covers it doesn't matter what kind of operator you are if you emit above a certain level you have to report those emissions carbon emissions to the government so we are going to be doing very similarly an auditor in this case it's PWC we'll probably be using a different auditor as the issuer of the credential the holder of the credential will be the natural gas operator and then the verifier will be either CAS the the government of BC the climate action secretariat we're also just starting to develop a relationship with expansive which is a marketplace for digital fuels and the environmental attributes that are associated with responsibly produced natural gas and other types of energy very exciting work thanks for sharing so government don't do pilot for the sake of doing a pilot what are the exit condition to go in production and having something long live what is success okay so also a great question um on one of the panelists this morning was talking about that step from pilot to integration and uh Kyle and I looked at each other and went yep that's very true um so right now for our pilots um each of the actors within the pilot has a wallet and is able to do the exchange Kyle and his team have done an amazing job of deciding and helping to design the schema for the credential and making sure that it aligns with what's legislated what's required through legislation the next step and I think this it'll be a pivotal step to actually going to production is being able to integrate into the the databases of each of those actors um so that their system can actually populate the credential from the data uh within their own um IT system and then the holder can scrape that data into their um system and the same for the verifier of the credential um we are starting to uh think about you know ways in which we can assist with making that happen um for each of the the um actors within the existing use cases and I think that it's going to be um because you know as government we are only one actor within this ecosystem right like we're we're incubating it because uh we feel that um we're in a good position to bring together public private um users of the technology but uh we're only one actor within the system so uh we think that it's going to be at least another year or two of us being the the drivers I guess of this ecosystem in order to push it past the the pilot stage and actually get it integrated into the systems of of each of the users and then at a certain point it's like any ecosystem it's going to take on a life of its own and at that point you know the governance is going to be key you know whether the governance documentation and systems are in place so that it can expand in a way that's um maintains that same level of trust in the data that's being shared yeah just to add to that um there's you know sort of two main things that our team is really working on and one of them is that a government wide service uh for doing self sovereign identity and so uh our team is working hard on getting that uh code base ready the detraction uh component um and then we're going to work with the ministry of citizen services who will most likely host and run that in as a production service so you know we're talking with them they're very excited John Jordan is part of that I know a lot of you know John Jordan he wanted to be here um and so that's the one piece the other piece specific to the use case is I like to always say that for these kinds of trust triangles the value is with the verifier for the most part okay and so you can have a an issuer and a holder and if there's no verifier then you don't have your triangle it falls apart you can you can issue credentials to holders all day long and if they can't present them to anybody then there's nothing so um working backwards looking at the verifier in this case um the climate action secretariat for the regulatory reporting and then also the voluntary reporting uh piece with the open earth so we're working with them so focusing on the verifiers making sure that they are ready and you know sort of your typical it fashion you know doing change management training getting the server set up um and again the climate action secretariat would use that service you know which is that government wide uh piece so that's the technology piece um of course we also need to get the governance uh pieces organized I think we have time for one or two more questions does anybody have anything else they'd like to ask any questions if not questions did Kyle did you have some information you wanted to share so um the the other piece that I wanted to add is uh that we are working with the climate action and accounting special interest group with hyper ledger and so um we regularly attend those sessions and as David mentioned we're going to be presenting on October 4th I've also been a part of the standards group and so that's been an interesting journey for us uh because we you know there's the stakeholders that we're having to work with the issuer the holders and the verifiers but then there's also the actual credential the schema the standard itself you know what is the data that we're moving around and what's what standard is it can you use the same standard for voluntary reporting and regulatory reporting and so we um explored a number of ESG standards so TCFD um a number of those kinds of things and we talked to our issuer um in our example Pricewater host Cooper's to say okay well what kinds of things would you be able to issue and there's a few different things that they can actually issue the one very specific one that we're looking at is called a verification statement and that's the actual um legislated piece of uh dataset that needs to be part of that admissions reporting so our current standard we're limiting it to uh just what's written into legislation uh that verification statement but very easily that could be extended to use to have Pricewater host Cooper's just issue another credential to um in our use case Copper Mountain Mine or what are the large emitters so that they can have a number of credentials issued in the same process that they could use for different processes great yeah are there any I see a question there um you mentioned verifiers and how important verifiers in it in the community are one of the things I wondered in looking at your picture here is is are you getting much from Copper Mountain or the the the producers on where else they want to use the credentials and what other value they see for where they can use them in other scenarios are you seeing that at all yeah that's a great question um the short answer is yes uh and um particularly this credential um the carbon accounting credential there's uh from the interviews and the work that we're doing with Copper Mountain they see opportunities for uh like reputational gains by being able to share this with uh voluntary uh reporting um platforms um also um you know some of the larger uh folks that we're working with so tech mines um they do a ton of sustainability reporting and they get a lot of requests from investors and purchasers for this kind of information so they see value in being able to share it um with multiple different audiences okay and just to add to that on a on a technical front um one of the things that we're also seeing is these proofs um so in in the regulatory reporting there's an emissions report that needs to be done um and it's a lot more data than is provided by that third party verifier that third party verifier um price wire host coopers they verify a certain set of data um and you know let's say it's 10 attributes well they actually Copper Mountain needs to report to the government that information as verified data plus they need to self report another set of data and so there's a combination of credentials to be provided in a single proof um even self attested attributes so uh that's one of the things we're digging into uh now uh that yeah great first thanks again for the presentation and uh you mentioned a couple of times the importance the relevance of trust and verifications this might be the key issues in the development the successful development of this digital ecosystem uh I was just wondering if you could mention which have been so far the main barriers uh anyway in the development in the implementation of the projects thanks um yeah thanks so in terms of barriers um I think I would go back to um something I said earlier which is around uh the education piece for stakeholders that aren't um as you know they don't know as much about blockchain they don't understood they don't have any background with digital credentials um and so being able to explain the potential benefits to them um and also um being able to help them to see um what the what the benefits are for them specifically so being able to articulate the benefits like as a government and as the um leaders of the project we have an understanding of what the benefits are for us but also for a private sector business um for regulator uh for um like a voluntary reporting platform um the being able to articulate those benefits for each of those different types of actors has been a really important um way of making the bringing the pilot forward yeah just to add to that the one thing that comes to mind with your question around trust is actually looking at the trust registry mechanism that like climate action secretary it would need to um to have a set of trusted issuers so actually in legislation it's uh set out what the actual issuer needs to have as far as I can't remember the actual accreditation but the verifier needs but um that presumably could be uh put into a trust registry and so uh that also speaks back to the governance uh work that we're working on and how that is going to be documented the actual trust registry location uh we've also been having great conversations with indicio um on the actual um uh machine readable governance files that would be associated with the human readable governance files so that you could have a list of dids for your issuers let's say do you already have a proven value in terms of how much more efficient this kind of reporting is compared to the ss or old kind of reporting I would say um we've we have anecdotal uh evidence you know from all of the different folks that are in this use case when we talk to them about what we're doing and um have them participate they they say oh oh yeah okay we can see how this would be more efficient we can see how this would actually expand our opportunities to reach different markets um but this is a pilot so we are learning and um I think that the the long-term benefits will really hinge on adoption and um you know the whole uh next step around integrating and also the benefits around um the scale of the ecosystem because if there's only three actors within um the ecosystem that is not that's not going to be a benefit uh you have to have a much broader adoption um so I think that the scalability factor is uh is a really important one and it also sort of speaks back to the idea of having um good communications you know we have a a team of folks who who work on communications for us uh produced the the pamphlet that's in front of you uh that's a really been a really important factor for this pilot and I think uh we'll continue to be to be important so in the area where you're working energy in mines um clearly it sounds like compliance regulatory compliance is a major uh factor how are you finding the regulators reacting to what's their interest or or level of acceptance of this new way of a new form of reg tech so uh the in terms of regulators so the climate action secretary it is is a regulator uh they have a regulatory duty to um you know annually have these emissions reports um I would say that they're um they're very it's very important to them that we get the language correct um it's very important that we make sure that we're not uh talking about this project in a way or misrepresenting what we're doing like this is not uh what we're doing within this pilot isn't a replacement for the existing regulatory process it could build on that um and maybe be one way of down the road of the information being accepted by the climate action secretary it but that's that's down the road that's a future thing so I think um an important factor uh is is being able to take bite-sized chunks um you know being able to show that uh if you come along on this journey with us uh that uh it's not um you're not sort of signing on that you're going to be doing it you know they you're not impinging on a regulatory process but you are willing to explore that possibility down the road and just being able to really clearly articulate that to a regulator and um also showing them that uh you know when you talk to them about their existing processes and their existing regulation that that is then reflected back to them in the work that you produce I think that that has helped us gain trust that that we are we're doing what we said we were doing and no more and I think that that's going to be a really important factor in making sure that or having them continue to work with us on the pilot um to wrap up I had one other question I mean you mentioned about all the learning that you're doing in the pilot if there's anybody in the audience here or watching remotely who is thinking about adopting blockchain for a climate-related use case is there any guidance that you would give them is there anything that you would learn that you would think would apply to other similar related projects uh so what I would suggest for the the climate-related stuff is actually um attend the climate action and accounting SIG working group sessions um or the special interest group sessions um we meet every two weeks yeah yeah um and what you'll see in that special interest group is not just Indian Aries solutions for your carbon accounting use cases but fabric and other hyper ledger type of solutions but all in that realm of carbon accounting um so that that's a great place where I would suggest starting but certainly you can reach out to us or uh David um yeah great anything you want to share Nancy or great great I think we're right at time uh we may have time for one more question if there is one great I think we uh uh all right time so thank you Kyle thank you Nancy