Looking Beyond Greenhouse Gases: Everything You Don’t Want to Know about the Things You Buy

The briefing highlights the critical need for transparent supply chains to mitigate human rights abuses and environmental damage associated with the energy transition. It proposes using digital tools, such as blockchain data architecture, to track both embodied greenhouse gas emissions and broader ESG factors, moving away from anonymous commodity markets toward a system where data follows the goods.

• Material supply chains for the energy transition are frequently linked to severe human rights violations. Specifically, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which provides 60 percent of global cobalt, 20 percent of mining operations rely on child labor, affecting approximately 40,000 children.
• Current ESG reporting is inefficient and unstandardized, functioning like a "game of telephone" where incomplete information is passed between companies. The document proposes replacing this with a decentralized digital system using barcodes to link ESG and climate data to products throughout the manufacturing process.
• RMI's Climate Intelligence Program is developing an open-source blockchain data architecture through the Supply Chain Emissions Initiative. While initially designed to track embodied greenhouse gas emissions to distinguish high-carbon from low-carbon commodities, RMI plans to expand this system to track broader ESG attributes.
• Regulatory pressure is increasing regarding sustainability disclosures. In February 2022, the European Commission announced plans for mandated corporate environmental and human rights due diligence, and in March 2022, the US Securities and Exchange Commission released initial standards for mandatory GHG emissions reporting for listed companies.

APA

RMI (2022). Looking Beyond Greenhouse Gases: Everything You Don’t Want to Know about the Things You Buy. https://rmi.org/resources/looking-beyond-greenhouse-gases/

Chicago

RMI. Looking Beyond Greenhouse Gases: Everything You Don’t Want to Know about the Things You Buy. 2022. https://rmi.org/resources/looking-beyond-greenhouse-gases/.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=RMI |title=Looking Beyond Greenhouse Gases: Everything You Don’t Want to Know about the Things You Buy |date=1 April 2022 |url=https://rmi.org/resources/looking-beyond-greenhouse-gases/ |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{rmi2022looking, author = {{RMI}}, title = {{Looking Beyond Greenhouse Gases: Everything You Don’t Want to Know about the Things You Buy}}, institution = {RMI}, year = {2022}, month = apr, url = {https://rmi.org/resources/looking-beyond-greenhouse-gases/}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }