The missing data column in every carbon market spreadsheet
Why this recipient benefits: Rathi's beat is exactly carbon-market data quality. Proof-pack disclosure populates the missing quality column on every institutional spreadsheet he and BNEF analysts work with. A Zero podcast long-form episode is the ideal venue for the proof-pack explainer to the Bloomberg Green audience.
Why now: Ongoing — institutional-capital quality demand is continuous.
The ask: Zero podcast conversation or Bloomberg Green background briefing. Alpha data + evaluator roster provided.
Bloomberg is where carbon-market data comes to live. Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) data is what institutional capital uses to size the market. BNEF adoption of proof-pack-equivalent disclosure as a data-quality attribute would be a pricing event.
Dear Editor,
Every carbon-market spreadsheet maintained by every institutional investor has the same missing column: per-tonne evidentiary quality. Today, buyers and analysts proxy it with methodology flags (REDD+, DAC, biochar), registry identity (Verra, Gold Standard, Puro), and vintage year. None of those proxies is quality itself.
The absence of a quality column explains most of the market's pathologies. It explains why analogous projects on different registries trade at similar prices despite having different underlying integrity. It explains why corporate buyers have been exposed to reputational restatement risk on tonnes they retired in good faith. It explains why the response to integrity critiques has been institutional — new integrity bodies, new principles — rather than market-structural.
A January 2026 paper in npj Climate Action by Christopher Reinhard and Noah Planavsky made the case for per-tonne radical transparency: methodology, dollar-per-ton cost, verification pathway, all open for every tonne. Trellison Institute has been operationalising that argument as a signed per-tonne record we call a proof pack. The objective is to populate the missing quality column with data that is computable, comparable across pathways, and audit-ready.
For the Bloomberg reader — the BNEF analyst, the institutional allocator, the carbon desk at a bank — the value proposition is specific. A per-tonne evidentiary artefact makes carbon credits tradeable the way other commodities are tradeable. It makes the instrument compatible with the analytical apparatus that every other commodity category already uses. It reduces the discount that institutional capital currently applies to the category because of information asymmetry.
Bloomberg does not need to endorse a specific instrument. Bloomberg can report on the emergence of a data column that is being added to the category. If BNEF publishes per-tonne evidentiary metadata alongside price, the market will begin to reflect it. If BNEF does not, each institutional allocator will maintain their own proprietary metadata, which is an expensive market-structure failure.
We would welcome an off-the-record briefing. We can provide the alpha schema, a set of test proof packs, and a list of researchers who are evaluating the instrument.
— Rob Stillwell
Director, Trellison Institute
[email protected]