A Look into the OCP’s
Pilot Methodology
I felt clear and well informed from the beginning. This was preferable to the black box registries I dealt with historically.
CASE STUDY
CLIMATEWELLS
The Open Carbon Protocol (OCP) is a collaborative registry platform, partnering with stakeholders across the industry to create peer reviewed, transparent methodologies. We are a new platform in a market where there are many choices for partnership– from established registries to novel startups. We want to share the story of our partnership with Reid Calhoon, founder of ClimateWells and author of our pilot methodology, to demonstrate how we helped overcome some of the challenges he faced when launching his methodology.
BACKGROUND
ClimateWells was founded because Reid saw an opportunity to make an outsized and immediate impact on emissions by focusing on the oil and gas industry. In 2021, Reid began to measure the discrepancy between net-zero goals and pathways to meet them. He realized that we would need more economically viable climate projects that could scale to billions of tons this decade. After hearing about the Rockefeller foundation’s work on early remediation of coal fired plants, he landed on a field where he had familiarity: oil and gas. He was aware of how many aging oil and gas wells had declined in revenue but increased in methane emissions and decided to develop a protocol to use carbon credits to finance a solution.
CHALLENGES
Reid spent two years working on the methodology himself. He tried to work with traditional registries, but found them to be quite frustrating. He was seeking a registry with a faster response time, less bureaucratic processes and more transparency. Reid shared with us that he frequently had no responses for up to six months, and when they did respond, they were often vague and uninformative about their review process.
Throughout these initial conversations, Reid was the most educated person in the room on remedying aging oil and gas wells. With existing registries, Reid found a lack of upstream oil and gas expertise, ultimately delaying the process even further. Using in-house staff also caused some hesitations around incentives and the implications of a registry both creating the methodology and issuing credits through it.
WHERE THE OCP COMES IN
The OCP’s unique process brings in a panel of external industry experts to review methodologies. This allowed Reid to spend less time upskilling staff before methodology evaluation began. “The Open Carbon Protocol goes and finds the skills, brings them to the table, and then does a review with the right people,” Reid said.
After assembling the right expertise, the OCP functions as a platform for scientific exchange and ideation by allowing the methodology curator and the experts to work towards consensus. This is a change from the traditional methodology development processes where two parties sit against each other (but both with an incentive to pass the methodology). By relying on the power of differing opinions amongst those who know the science and best practices, the OCP empowers experts to decide whether they can reach consensus that the methodology will result in high integrity carbon credits.
“if you can’t make it through an anonymous panel, you’re not going to pass the Wall Street Journal test”
Reid Calhoon, Climatewells
After Reid found the OCP, it took 7 months to get the methodology polished and published. Reid appreciated having clear communication about our process and timeline from the beginning. “I felt clear and well informed from the beginning. This was preferable to the black box registries I dealt with historically.”
Rather than worrying about the sector of the project, his initial conversations with OCP leadership were simply a matter of: is this a legitimate form of emission reduction? Let’s quantify the impact.
Reid also said he liked our web platform, highlighting the way comments were exchanged between him and the experts. The Open Carbon Protocol pays attention to the user experience. Streamlining communication and efficient processes remove a lot of the friction so project developers can just focus on making the methodology better.
Speaking to a fellow project developer debating launching their methodology on the OCP, Reid said: “Your goal is to improve your methodology by leveraging the necessary expertise. By partnering with the highest quality experts, you can de-risk many concerns about integrity and quality. The Open Carbon Protocol is directly designed to do that.”
We are excited to see ClimateWells’ credits enter the market and look forward to our future partnership with Reid. We are honored to assist others towards making a positive impact, as we’ve done with ClimateWells.