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SUMMARY:Scalable and Verifiable Carbon Accounting in Supply Chains: Toward
 s an Integrated Framework - Jonathan Heiss (TU Berlin)
DTSTART:20251021T130000Z
DTEND:20251021T140000Z
UID:TALK236566@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Alexandre Pauwels
DESCRIPTION:Recording link: https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/research/security/sem
 inars/archive/video/2025-10-21-t236566.html\n\nCompanies need reliable emi
 ssion data for their products and services to take effective climate actio
 n\, yet obtaining it is challenging. In today's interconnected economy\, p
 roduct and service carbon footprints (PCF) cannot be determined in isolati
 on but require emission data exchange throughout supply chains. Typical cr
 adle-to-gate accounting models require companies to include suppliers' PCF
 s as scope 3 emissions\, making the trustworthiness of this externally pro
 vided data critical. This calls for effective emission data verification t
 o prevent greenwashing and ensure consistency\, but current methods face f
 undamental limitations: they are either non-scalable (e.g.\, relying on in
 dividual auditors) or require access to suppliers' confidential business i
 nformation. Trust-enhancing technologies like zero-knowledge proofs (zk-SN
 ARKs)\, combined with verifiable decentralized data structures\, can resol
 ve this tension by enabling verification without exposing confidential tra
 ding information. This talk introduces verifiable carbon accounting (VCA) 
 as a framework that synthesizes multiple such technologies to enable scala
 ble\, confidentiality-preserving emission data verification. We provide an
  overview of recent and ongoing research\, present open challenges\, and d
 iscuss practical adoption strategies. While still in its infancy\, VCA has
  the potential to transform data-driven supply chain collaboration by offe
 ring a scalable alternative to existing approaches while delivering the tr
 ustworthy emission data urgently needed to combat climate change.\n\n*Bio*
 : Jonathan Heiss is a postdoctoral researcher at TU Berlin\, Germany\, and
  a senior research engineer at SINE Foundation. He earned his Ph.D. in com
 puter science from TU Berlin in 2023 and holds two master's degrees from T
 U Delft (computer science) and TU Berlin (ICT Innovation)\, both completed
  in 2017. He received his bachelor's degree in information systems from TU
  Dresden in 2015. Jonathan's research focuses on trustworthy distributed s
 ystems engineering\, with particular emphasis on incorporating trust-enhan
 cing technologies such as zero-knowledge proofs\, secure hardware\, and ve
 rifiable data structures into platform-based system architectures. Target 
 platforms include cloud systems and blockchain networks\, and their synerg
 istic combination and interplay. He employs research methods drawn from so
 ftware engineering and distributed systems\, including systems modeling\, 
 prototyping\, and experiment- and measurement-driven approaches. Recent wo
 rk applies these technologies to contexts such as decentralized federated 
 learning and carbon accounting.
LOCATION:Webinar &amp\; LT2\, Computer Laboratory\, William Gates Building
 .
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