We vet the carbon credits on our platform using a set of principles that can be found here.
This is a widely accepted method of carbon accounting developed by Greenhouse Gas Protocol. In a nutshell:
Scope 1 covers direct emissions (e.g. fuel burned on-site)
Scope 2 covers energy used
From a building perspective in Carbon Title, Scopes 1 & 2 are considered operational carbon emissions.
Scope 3 covers indirect emissions, including embodied carbon from materials used in a building and the process of construction.
You can read more about this protocol here.
We depreciate the first-year embodied carbon emissions for a building over an assumed 60-year lifespan. This recognizes the value of reusing existing structures vs. new construction, while ensuring that building-related emissions for older buildings don’t disappear when it changes hands.
You’ll see this reflected on a building’s carbon title:
There are many ways you can reduce your building’s carbon balance, some which are easier to do than others. The first step is to claim your building and provide additional data that will help narrow down the range of estimated emissions for your building. This includes indicating whether the building uses low-carbon structural materials which will reduce your embodied carbon. You can reduce your operational carbon by making energy efficiency upgrades and/or participating in your local utility’s renewable energy purchase program. Finally, you can quickly reduce your remaining carbon balance by purchasing high-quality carbon offsets available in our platform.
If you’re not able to find a carbon title easily by zooming in on the map and clicking its pin, it may be behind another one. Enter the address in the search bar, which should open your carbon title in a new tab. If you don’t see it, check that your pop-up blocker is off on your browser.
Carbon Title is currently available for buildings in the U.S. only. We have plans to expand around the globe over time. Let us know where you’d like to see Carbon Title Explorer next!
If you’re an employee, you can always follow your company’s buildings to track their progress. You can also reach out to us to contribute data on the buildings (though the owner will need to confirm it for it to be published on the map).
You can also let people know about us on social media, and tag us (@carbon_title on Twitter, @CarbonTitle on LinkedIn, Facebook or Instagram). Please help us get the word out and accelerate our collective progress towards decarbonization!
If you’re a renter, you can always follow the building to track its progress. You can also reach out to us to contribute data on the building (though the owner will need to confirm it for it to be published on the map).
You can also let people know about us on social media, and tag us (@carbon_title on Twitter, @CarbonTitle on LinkedIn, Facebook or Instagram). Please help us get the word out and accelerate our collective progress towards decarbonization!
Once you have a Carbon Title account, you can create draft buildings for projects that are in the planning phase or still under construction. To publish completed buildings, you’ll need to upgrade to a premium account. New buildings will not show up on the map until they are published.
If you are a developer, contractor, architect, engineer, commercial tenant, local government, or low-carbon materials supplier, please schedule time with one of our carbon experts to learn more about our enterprise platform.
If you are a developer, contractor, architect, engineer, commercial tenant, local government, or low-carbon materials supplier, please schedule time with one of our carbon experts to learn more about our enterprise platform.
You can share your building’s carbon story with anyone by sending them the link to your building’s carbon title. They can easily follow your building within their own Carbon Title account.
You can also let people know about us on social media, and tag us (@carbon_title on Twitter, @CarbonTitle on LinkedIn, Facebook or Instagram). Please help us get the word out and accelerate our collective progress towards decarbonization!
You can claim one building for free on Carbon Title Explorer. If you have additional buildings, you will need to upgrade to a premium account where you can claim multiple buildings and view them all within the same account.
We believe that we must all act together to decarbonize our built environment. If every building in the US were to reduce their CO2 emissions by 1 tCO2 (which is very little for even a house), it would be the equivalent of removing 27M cars from the road annually!
We can only achieve the reductions we need if we can measure our progress publicly. By claiming your building and providing additional data, you are helping us calculate a more accurate carbon balance and provide a more accurate picture of all of our aggregate emissions—data that is increasingly relied upon by several groups.
Additionally, if you rent out your building, studies show that green buildings lease up faster and command higher rents.
Property owners must verify ownership via public records, and only owners are able to modify data associated with the building. Other interested parties (e.g. employees or tenants) can contribute building data, but the owner must confirm/validate that data for it to be published on Carbon Title.
That said, Carbon Title is an early-stage platform that runs to some extent on the honor system. Verification does matter, and we plan to keep improving on this front as the product matures. But what matters more is creating a shared public record of carbon emissions for every building. We believe, as the saying goes, that “what gets measured gets managed”. Publicly available carbon emissions data will drive radical transparency and influence actions needed to decarbonize the real estate industry.
If someone else has claimed your building, please reach out to Carbon Title support. Our team will investigate and transfer the building to you on our platform upon verification of ownership.
We’ve been referring here to “the blockchain” as if there’s only one, but in fact there are many blockchains. Early versions of blockchain were quite carbon-intensive because they created new ‘blocks’ via a validation process called ‘mining,’ which involved running lots of calculations on lots of computers. Because computers run on electricity, it required a lot of real-world carbon emissions to generate these digital records—counterproductive for a decarbonization company!
Many blockchains have switched from this ‘mining’ process (known as ‘proof of work’) to an alternate method called ‘proof of stake’ that uses a fraction of the energy. We at Carbon Title have chosen to work with XRPL and Celo as the foundation of our blockchain records precisely because they already run on this lower-carbon method of creating new blocks and in fact are carbon-neutral.
After you’ve claimed a building, you’ll be able to edit its details in the Carbon Title Manager, and have the option to “save” your changes (in which case they will stay private to you) or “publish” them, at which point they will show up on the map and be written to the blockchain.
We write a building to the blockchain when the owner claims the building on Carbon Title Explorer. We also update the blockchain record for that building when you make changes to the building data and publish those changes. Until you elect to publish changes to Carbon Title Explorer, any changes you make to the building’s data remain off the blockchain and private to you.
We do not record any data on “draft” buildings (typically buildings in the planning or construction phases) to the blockchain. The data remains private and limited to you until the time you choose to “publish” the building. At this point, we will write the data to the blockchain and the building and any published changes will show up on the map.
When you claim your building, you confirm details which allow us to express the building’s CO2 emissions as a number instead of a range. It also gives you the opportunity to share additional information about the building to further increase accuracy.
Many people think of art when they hear the word “NFT,” but an NFT (“non-fungible token”) is really just a unique digital identifier that cannot be copied, substituted, or subdivided that is recorded on blockchain. We create an NFT when you claim a building on Explorer in order to create a permanent, secure record of the building ownership and emissions.
The NFT is associated with your building and held for you inside of Carbon Title’s systems. If you sell your home or building, you can contact us to have ownership of the NFT transferred to the new owner.
Carbon Title records certain data, such as emissions balances, on a public blockchain that anyone can access using our free Carbon Title Explorer tool. This record is both transparent and immutable, meaning each update cannot be edited by anyone else and will be preserved even if Carbon Title ceases to exist. We believe this is crucial to drive radical transparency around building emissions.
Carbon Title Explorer uses public ownership data for buildings. As a result, condominiums in a single building will typically show up as separate addresses, each with its own carbon title and emissions data.
However, we aren’t able to provide this granularity for apartments, co-ops or TICs. These buildings will have a single carbon title and emissions data for the entire building, not individual units. This is due to the nature of publicly available ownership information.
Once you claim your building and set up an account with Carbon Title, you will be able to purchase several high-quality carbon credits within the platform. Once you purchase credits, you can apply them to any building in your portfolio as an offset, thus reducing the carbon balance of that building.
If you have credits you have purchased elsewhere, please contact us to get them added to your building.
Carbon Title has a group of vetted, high-quality carbon credits you can purchase within the platform to offset your emissions. You can access these after you have claimed a building and created an account.
In order for Carbon Title Explorer to default to your current location, you must enable location services in your browser and, for some types of computers (such as Apple Macs) also in your system settings.
We verify all building ownership claims against public records. If we are not able to verify your ownership of the building, we will let you provisionally claim the building and add it to your portfolio. If this happens, you may still contribute data or manage the building as with any building you claim.
However, data updates to any temporarily claimed buildings are themselves contingent on independent verification by Carbon Title. The Carbon Title team may reach out to you requesting additional information to update our records and resolve the issue.
Carbon Title estimates the CO2 emissions for each building based on a variety of high-quality data sources including some publicly available information. Because some data about specific buildings is only available to the building’s owner, we estimate both the worst-case (high-carbon materials and high energy use) and best-case (low-carbon materials, efficient energy use) scenarios, which leads to the range of carbon emissions.
As property owners add more specific data and claim a building, the accuracy of the carbon balance increases and the Explorer starts displaying a single carbon balance number versus an estimated range.
Claimed buildings
These are buildings you or your organization own and have been claimed in the Carbon Title Explorer. New buildings that you’ve added and published from “drafts” (i.e. new construction that’s been completed) will also appear here.
Followed buildings
These are buildings which you have chosen to follow from the Carbon Title Explorer. You cannot manage the buildings or update information on them, but you will be able to see a listing of all the buildings you follow and track how the building’s carbon balance changes over time.
Draft buildings
These are new or under-construction buildings that have been added to the Carbon Title platform. They will not be visible on the Carbon Title Explorer until they are published.
In the event of a legal sale of the property, you’ll be able to transfer the building’s carbon title. Contact us to initiate an ownership change.
The “carbon balance” of a building is made up of its base emissions (both embodied and operational carbon) minus any carbon reduction actions taken, including any offsets purchased and applied to the building. We depreciate embodied carbon over a 60-year timeframe.
The building’s base emissions are estimated using key data points about the building including its structure type (e.g. mass timber, concrete & steel), primary usage (e.g. office, residence), size, and location. Our model is also built based on geography and takes into account regional differences in building materials, the percent of renewable energy on the local electric grid, and other factors.
As property owners add more detailed information about a building, its ongoing energy usage, and any mitigation actions (e.g. solar panels, usage of low-carbon materials), the accuracy of its carbon balance increases.
Learn more about our methodology here.
Carbon Title uses data obtained from a variety of high-quality sources including publicly available data and third-party data providers. Our clients also provide data for projects that are under construction.
Despite aggregating all of these sources, there may still be buildings for which we don’t have the necessary information to calculate carbon emissions. It’s important for property owners and stakeholders to contribute detailed data for their buildings to help build out a more complete and accurate resource.
Here are some reasons you may be having trouble claiming your building:
If the building has already been claimed but you believe there is an error, please contact us to let us know what's going on and we'll take a look!
If the building has not yet been claimed but you’re having trouble claiming ownership in the system, try again and we will provisionally let you claim the building.
If you are a renter or tenant, not an owner, you can not claim the building. However, you can contribute data or information about this building by setting up an account with us and 'Follow' the building, which will allow you to track how the building’s carbon balance changes over time.
Some buildings are too new or are not yet cataloged in the data sources we use. We’re constantly adding new data, so please check back, or you can let us know about your building here and we’ll look into it. There's also a chance that you're the first to search for an address in this particular area, so come back in a little while to see more data populated around this address.
Carbon Title’s Explorer requires location permissions to display the map properly. To allow this, check in 2 locations:
