Measurement helps bring out our best collaborative selves. Nobel prize winner Elinor Ostrom (2009b, p. 2009) remarked that humans have an evolved capacity to adopt norms of trustworthiness and reciprocity, “Gaining reputation for being trustworthy is an asset that can increase individual-level outcomes.” Panchanathan and Boyd (2004) also showed that norms and institutions nudge our cooperative behavior through reputation and monitoring. In fact, individuals self-regulate more effectively when a behavior is monitor-able (Rand, Yoeli, & Hoffman, 2014).
As data innovators, we in the Environmental Innovation Initiative are engineers, social scientists, economists, and environmentalists, committed to bringing transformations and transparency to open up environmental collaboration.
While we are starting with innovation for participation in carbon markets, we aspire to use open, interoperable data and processes to make socio-technical-ecological evidence practical and affordable. We aim to help environmental issue participants to map, translate, calculate, model, visualize, verify, policy-certify and update a variety of data types.
The Environmental Innovation initiative is starting with a carbon liability-and-asset Measurement, Monitoring, Reporting, and Validation (MMRV) accounting framework, called SCOOP. SCOOP stands for Sustainable Carbon Options with Open Protocols (SCOOP). The SCOOP vision is summarized in a 2025 article Robust Carbon Accounting for Corporate Sustainability Strategies by co-leaders Enrique Castro-Leon and Katrina Pugh.
Carbon markets are broken as there is currently no single methodology for producing, conveying, and using carbon accounting data. First, many carbon offsets are issued under bespoke processes that lack industry-wide credibility. Second, year-end reporting cadences are far too coarse for actual accounting. Third, investors, regulators, and corporate offset buyers cannot reliably compare projects, restate historical figures, or trace a credit back to its dynamic physical origin. This is the missing infrastructure layer of the climate economy. It is also exactly the kind of problem that the Auster Center exists to support: a technical, transdisciplinary, and translational problem with a clear path from research to deployed practice.
SCOOP is primarily a data platform – developing and/or connecting applications that normalize carbon claims and emission against standards, calculate dynamic carbon measures, and enable market participants to peel back the lineage of carbon instruments.
A foundational project led by SCOOP founder, Enrique Castro-Leon, is the Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) standards committee for carbon accounting. The goal of IEEE P7892 is to develop the frame and protocol for carbon measurement, monitoring, reporting and verification across the supply chain. All SCOOP team members get to attend the IEEE meetings and meet industry practitioners from around the globe.
SCOOP serves a range of stakeholders, from carbon asset or liability owner, to carbon project rater, to carbon registry owner, to carbon exchange, and a multitude of different local and country policy makers. The goal of SCOOP is to bridge the fragmentation across the carbon supply chain.
Katrina (Kate) Pugh is Auster Center’s Environmental Innovation Faculty Fellow and teaches at Tufts Gordon Institute's MS in Engineering Management. Dr. Pugh is a consultant, researcher, and educator focused on strategy, networks, and sustainability. Dr. Pugh leverages AI to analyze social systems — such as how conversation features influence outcomes. She employs systems thinking and quantitative modeling to improve knowledge sharing, open source, impact networks, and project performance. She co-leads sustainability conversation skills-building through the Conversation for Civility network and teaches changemakers on impact networks as a Partner with Weaving Futures. She has been published in various journals, including KM for Development Journal, MIT Sloan Management Review, and Harvard Business Review. She is the author of Sharing Hidden Know-How. Dr. Pugh is an Adjunct Professor for Columbia University’s Information and Knowledge Strategy master’s program, where she also served as Academic Director. She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics from Williams College, a Master of Science degree and an MBA from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a PhD in ecology and environmental sciences from the University of Maine.
Enrique Castro-Leon is Founder and Executive Director of the SCOOP Carbon Accounting Project, a volunteer-driven, open-source initiative developing cross-industry information technology frameworks for environmental accounting, beginning with greenhouse gas accounting. The project's objectives are to advance environmental accounting toward a level of rigor comparable to financial accounting and to facilitate the acquisition, exchange, and assurance of environmental data across supply chains and organizational boundaries. SCOOP research and development activities will be conducted under the leadership of the Auster SCOOP Environmental Innovation Initiative, where he serves as a member of the Board of Advisors.
Dr. Castro-Leon is also Chair of the IEEE P7802 Standards Working Group, which is developing standards for measurement, monitoring, reporting, and verification (MMRV) in climate action projects. In addition, he is Chief Technology Officer and a founding member of OptimiLabs, a startup focused on systems integration and technology innovation. His professional experience includes leadership roles at Intel, where he helped drive the transformation of traditional engineering laboratories into cloud-based Lab-as-a-Service environments. He also led initiatives to integrate power monitoring and control capabilities into data center solutions and, as an enterprise architecture consultant, advised senior executives on technology strategy, integration, and transformation.
His academic experience includes appointments as Adjunct Professor at Portland State University, the Oregon Graduate Institute, and the University of Costa Rica. Dr. Castro-Leon has authored or co-authored four books, contributed to IEEE publications and peer-reviewed research, and is an inventor on three patents.
He holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Costa Rica, and both an M.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Purdue University.
If your work touches sustainability measurement, data science, carbon reporting policy, open data, resource markets and exchanges the Environmental Innovation Initiative may be a natural home for collaboration. We welcome researchers from across Tufts and beyond.
Foundations, civic organizations, government agencies, and community groups are invited to reach out. This initiative is available for naming by a donor or foundation whose values align with its mission.
Students interested in sustainability measurement, data science, carbon reporting policy, open data, or resource markets and exchanges can explore fellowship and research assistant opportunities.
The initiative is currently hiring students for three positions in Fall 2026, if you are interested please click here to learn more.
Environmental Innovation Initiative Board Members will be added in Fall, 2026