Digital MRV for carbon credits: integrating AI, satellites, IoT and blockchain for reliable climate claims
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: Digital measurement, reporting and verification (dMRV) is increasingly proposed as the operating system for carbon markets. It combines earth-observation data, field and device sensors, machine-learning models, digital data infrastructure and distributed ledgers to make climate claims more frequent, traceable and auditable. Yet digitization does not by itself establish additionality, permanence, net greenhouse-gas benefit or a valid baseline. This review develops a reliability-first assessment of four dMRV building blocks satellites, Internet-of-Things (IoT) sensors, artificial intelligence (AI) and blockchain and explains how they should be integrated with a crediting methodology, independent assurance and registry controls. The paper synthesizes technology roles across forestry, agriculture, clean cooking, renewable energy, waste, industrial energy efficiency and carbon dioxide removal. It proposes an end-to-end assurance loop, a net-credit data model and a quantitative capability scorecard. The analysis shows that satellites are strongest for broad spatial coverage and disturbance detection; IoT is strongest for high-frequency operational evidence; AI enables prediction, fusion and anomaly screening but imports model and training-data uncertainty; blockchain strengthens tamper-evident provenance and serialization but cannot validate the physical truth of an input. A credible digital credit therefore rests on triangulation: independent sources must agree within pre-defined uncertainty thresholds, exceptions must be reviewable, and the final issuance quantity must be calculated conservatively. The review concludes with a practical architecture and governance checklist for developers, standards, verifiers, registries and buyers.
Language: English
Subfield: Information Systems
Field: Computer Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7172010364