Distributed Ledger Technology for Collective Environmental Market Action

The Paris Agreement tracks national contributions towards the goal of limiting global warming to well below 2 °C. To achieve this goal, collective actions are needed among economically competing countries. In this research, we propose a distributed ledger technology (DLT) based system that allows sovereign states to stay in control of their data while enforcing CO2 emissions monitoring and reduction rules among all states. Taking the implementation of vehicular fuel consumption metering in the European Union as an example, we use coopetition theory to illustrate how diverging interests can potentially be aligned to achieve a common goal while protecting autonomy. We demonstrate a DLT prototype, created following a design science approach, for monitoring and reducing automotive CO2 emissions within Europe to illustrate how competing interests can be overcome by the use of innovative solutions on an international level.