With the transportation industry accounting for a substantial 29% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in 2019, the current mobility paradigm is facing challenges of sustainability. Congested roadways and high-emission vehicles underscore the need for effective, scalable, and privacy-preserving solutions to reduce GHG emissions across the entire mobility value chain. To achieve the climate goals set by the Paris Agreement, public and private stakeholders must collaborate in developing truly scalable emissions reduction solutions.

Accurate measurement and verification of carbon emissions are essential to develop tools that incentivize decarbonization efforts. However, the lack of a standardized methodology for collecting and handling emissions data leads has created fragmentation across jurisdictions and hindered scalability. To address this, the European Commission partnered with MOBI to conduct a joint pilot aimed at advancing research and development for global emissions monitoring. The pilot leveraged MOBI’s Web3 infrastructure — Citopia and the Integrated Trust Network (ITN) — to demonstrate its potential use in establishing an interoperable Vehicle Identity Management system for securely collecting, handling, and sharing emissions data across organizational boundaries. The pilot leveraged Citopia Self-Sovereign Digital Twins™ (SSDTs™) and Verifiable Credentials (VCs) to simulate interactions between the EU Commission, Member State Vehicle Registration Authorities (RAs), and 280 million vehicles.

By establishing trusted decentralized identities, entities (vehicles, people, organizations, devices, etc.) can function as independent economic agents in various transactions with assured data privacy preservation. A standardized identity management system is crucial for implementing accurate digital MRV (monitoring, reporting, and verifying) for GHG emissions, as mitigation strategies rely on verifiable and seamless data tracking.

The pilot study demonstrated that SSDTs™ can connect entities for secure transactions while preserving data privacy in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), electronic IDentification, Authentication, and trust Services (eIDAS), and ePrivacy Directives. Additionally, it showed the technical feasibility of sharing vehicle information, such as fuel consumption or emissions, to a decentralized monitoring system.

From the EC Report: “The simulations illustrated that connecting a vehicle fleet of 280 million vehicles, the EC, and 27 Member States through two heterogeneous blockchains communicating in tandem is viable at a pilot level. Storing and reporting data, such as that recorded by On-board Fuel Consumption Monitoring Devices (OBFCM), on a tamper-resistant blockchain has the potential to reduce operational costs while enabling compulsory monitoring of CO2 and energy consumption.”