Universal Carbon Registry (UCR) — India’s premier voluntary standard and registry, has announced a partnership to collaborate with KlimaDAO, the leading provider of blockchain-based market infrastructure for carbon credits. The partnership will integrate UCR carbon credits into the real-world asset (RWA) market — which is primed to grow from $50 billion by 2025 to a staggering $16 trillion by 2030 — in a compliant, transparent, and secure manner.
This collaboration aims to integrate UCR-issued carbon credits into KlimaDAO’s ecosystem, enhancing global access and expanding the scope of carbon credit tokenization. This collaboration aligns with Article 2.1(c) of the Paris Agreement which calls for a realignment of the financial system as a critical enabler for the sectoral transitions required to address the current climate crises.
“At KlimaDAO, we are proud to lead innovation in global carbon markets, leveraging blockchain technology to redefine transparency, integration, accessibility, and impact,” said Juned Khan, global Head of Growth at Klima Foundation. “Our collaboration with UCR marks a pivotal step in advancing the tokenization of verified carbon credits, unlocking real-world utility, and fostering trust in market mechanisms while accelerating meaningful climate action. By bridging traditional carbon markets with decentralized finance, we are delivering sustainable, efficient, secure, and scalable solutions tailored to the needs of climate-conscious investors and institutions.
This partnership underscores KlimaDAO’s unwavering commitment to aligning global financial systems with international frameworks and the Paris Agreement’s requirements. It facilitates robust participation in climate action and channels critical funding toward sustainable projects, driving positive outcomes and measurable progress toward net-zero goals.”
“Our partnership with UCR represents another step forward for the integration of carbon credits onto scalable, transparent, and efficient blockchain systems. We are committed to working with all carbon registry providers to support their transition to technology that can increase the velocity of carbon markets, by making access to their carbon credits more easy for market participants. Furthermore, through the integration with our technology stack, we can find new use-cases for carbon credits. For example, over the past 3 years, through excess profits, 1,112,490 tCO2e have been retired via the KlimaDAO ecosystem — as we continue to use smart contracts and distributed ledger technology to programmatically retire credits and directly address issues of excess supply within the market. Diversifying the assets within our ecosystem that can be integrated to our ecosystem can help us continue to contribute to addressing market pain points and issues,” stated Scott Kilduff, Executive at the Klima Foundation.
“KlimaDAO is a leading innovator in this space and was involved in helping scale the VCM to over $2 billion in annual volumes a few years ago. Climate finance, be it from Web2 or Web3, needs to become affordable, transparent, accountable, predictable, accessible and more focused on supporting less developed and developing nations. UCR is the only alternative for renewable energy project developers wanting to generate carbon credits without the bureaucracy and our tokenization feasibility offers lower technical complexities for all RWA Web3 plays globally. The permanence and irreversibility of the base carbon RWAs at UCR are other important considerations for securing investor interest in the carbon markets. This collaboration aligns with UCR’s vision to become the global premier repository for carbon RWAs,” said Kishore Butani, co-founder and director at UCR.
About UCR Credit Tokenization
The transfer of UCR credits to the KlimaDAO ecosystem entails a cancellation in the UCR registry and re-issuance within their blockchain-enabled infrastructure. This process is akin to the ‘’inter registry transfer’ that occurs when e.g. CDM credits are canceled and re-issued on other voluntary registries.
This type of cancellation and re-issuance prevents double-counting of the original offset since an unretired offset in UCR’s registry could still be claimed after bridging the offset onto the blockchain. The “cancellation” is a book-keeping operation that transfers the underlying offset credit from UCR’s registry to blockchain infrastructure which serves as a ledger of transactions; including the tracking of carbon credit issuance and retirement. Importantly, the environmental benefit was never claimed during the transfer process. Thus, UCR credits retired via KlimaDAO’s infrastructure and through partner interfaces, such as Carbonmark, have full validity for any offsetting claims users would like to make.
About UCR
UCR ranks among the global top 10 environmental programs for registration, issuance, and mining of verified carbon credits from avoidance and reduction projects. Since 2021, UCR has registered over 350 projects and issued more than 85 million credits, and offers innovative RWA products for digital asset investment markets. For more information, visit www.ucarbonregistry.io or contact info@ucarbonregistry.io.
The RWA market is projected to grow from $50 billion in 2025 to $16 trillion by 2030, highlighting the significant potential impact of this partnership on the future of carbon markets and climate finance.