BELER™

Open standard · CC BY 4.0 · CEITA SL

Every tonne of CO2e, counted once.

BELER is a consumption-based carbon accounting framework. It attributes every kilogram of CO2-equivalent emitted anywhere in the economy exactly once — to the party that consumes the value those emissions created.

Try the calculator Read the whitepaper Explore the framework
Allocation
Unique & consumption-anchored
Principles
7 — TPGN
Accuracy tiers
5 — SINTRA
Uncertainty narrows toward a single, uniquely allocated figure
±50% 0 · counted once ±1%
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§01 — The premise

Emissions exist because someone, somewhere, consumes something.

Nearly every established accounting system — national inventories, corporate reporting standards, product labels — assigns emissions where they are produced. The result is fragmented accountability, double counting, and carbon leakage between jurisdictions.

BELER closes that gap. It follows emissions to the point of consumption, where the value they create is finally enjoyed — and lands them there, once. Where emissions serve no consumer — waste, accidents, negligence — they fall to the owners of the enterprise responsible.

Conventional Counted where produced
BELER Counted where consumed

BELER reads the economy through four lenses

  • 01

    Economic

    Which goods and services are purchased — and by whom.

  • 02

    Production

    Which emissions arise to create those goods and services.

  • 03

    Geographic

    Where emissions occur, under which energy mixes and infrastructures.

  • 04

    Demographic

    Which individuals and institutions ultimately consume the output.

The framework rests on two pillars — applied together at every scale, from a single meal to a national economy.

Pillar I — how it allocates

TPGN

Transversal Principles of General Normativity

Seven allocation principles that govern who bears a footprint — identically at every scale.

7 principles → Pillar II — how precisely

SINTRA

Structured Intensity Levels for Nested Tiered Resource Accounting

Five nested accuracy tiers — choose your trade-off between effort and precision, stay compatible across all.

5 tiers →

§02 — TPGN

Seven principles that decide who bears a footprint.

The normative core of BELER. Each principle constrains the interpretation of the others; they are designed to be applied together, regardless of scale, geography, or accounting tier.

The footprint of any good or service is assigned to the party that consumes it, at the point of consumption — not to the producer, retailer, or intermediary. Paying is not consuming: if Person A buys a meal Person B eats, the footprint is B's.

An enterprise's emissions split in two: those embodied in useful output pass to consumers through products; those that create no consumer value — waste, accidents, recalls, negligence — fall to its owners, in proportion to ownership.

Footprints use the emissions factors of the moment they occur: real-time grid intensity for direct consumption, historical factors for embodied emissions. A product made in 2019 carries its 2019 factors permanently.

Emissions factors must reflect the geography where emissions occur — energy mix, infrastructure, supply chains, and climate. Local and regional factors replace global averages wherever the tier permits.

Every footprint must be auditable: data sources, factors, methods, and assumptions documented and disclosed. Every figure carries its SINTRA tier; SINTRA 4 and 5 require independent verification to be asserted publicly.

Accounting must not penalize people for circumstances beyond their control, and must distinguish subsistence from discretionary consumption. Contextual baselines reflect climate, infrastructure, and income; medical necessity is never treated as discretionary.

Footprints cover all greenhouse gases as CO2-equivalents, across the full life cycle, at the resolution the chosen tier defines. Whatever the tier's boundary, it is complete — no silent omissions.

§03 — SINTRA

Choose your accuracy. Stay compatible across all of it.

Five nested tiers resolve the central tension of carbon accounting: precision demands effort, participation demands access. Each tier is usable on its own and produces figures consistent with — merely less precise than — the tiers above. As you ascend, the uncertainty band narrows toward the true value.

↕ Nested by design. Higher-tier measurement continuously refines the defaults used below it; lower tiers feed participation upward. A composite figure is always reported at the lowest tier it uses.

§04 — Why it differs

What a unique, consumption-anchored ledger makes possible.

A

Counted exactly once

Under scope-based corporate standards, one company's Scope 1 is another's Scope 3 — the same tonne counted several times, owned by no one. BELER allocates each tonne once, to a consumer or to owners.

B

No carbon leakage

A country can flatter its inventory by offshoring production. On a consumption basis, imports carry their embodied footprint home and exports leave with the goods — national figures become honest reflections of demand.

C

Rewards better, not cheaper

Spend-based models infer carbon from money spent, and can't tell an efficient producer from a wasteful one at the same price. BELER tracks real consumption with product-resolved factors — lower-carbon choices actually register.

D

Owners answer for waste

CAP routes the footprint of recalls, spills, and idle overhead to shareholders — a direct, investment-side incentive for operational discipline that production-based systems cannot express at all.

§05 — Ecosystem

The standard stays open. The trust layer sustains it.

The BELER specification is, and remains, an open standard under CC BY 4.0 — free to implement, free to adapt, attribution required. Future commercial services sit around the standard and remain gated; the current phase is documentation, architecture, and build readiness only.

core Open Standard CC BY 4.0
  1. 01 Open methodology and reviewed reference tooling
  2. 02 Corporate consulting, then defined assessments
  3. 03 Gated exchange services preserving source-registry authority
  4. 04 Project submissions and issuance only after assurance gates
  5. 05 Consumer and remaining services follow later
  • 01

    Corporate Consulting

    Future scoped advisory engagements with evidenced deliverables and explicit limitations.

    Not operating · activation required
  • 02

    Assessment Services

    Defined future assessments kept separate from validation, verification, certification, and issuance.

    Design stage
  • 03

    Exchange Services

    A future narrow market workflow for eligible credits, subject to custody, money, market, and legal review.

    Future · gated
  • 04

    Projects & Issuance

    Evidence intake, analysis, human review, and registry integration after methodology and assurance approval.

    Future · gated
  • 05

    Consumer & Assurance

    Later consumer services and separately governed assurance or certification systems after their required reviews.

    Future · gated

Current boundary — no certification program, credit issuance, exchange, or consumer service is operating. Future services require their documented methodology, governance, legal, and production gates; commercial arrangements never modify the specification.

§06 — Roadmap

Build in dependency order. Launch only through explicit gates.

The project remains conceptual and under review. The roadmap is dependency-driven, and completing software never authorizes commercial operation.

  1. current · build readiness only

    Foundation & Review

    • Synchronize and harden documentation, calculators, and CI
    • Complete emissions-factor source verification
    • Recruit independent methodology reviewers
    • No prospect outreach or commercial operation

  2. after explicit activation

    Phase 1 — Corporate Services

    • Scoped Spain/EU corporate consulting
    • Defined assessment services
    • Controlled evidence, claims, and conflict handling

  3. gated

    Phase 2 — Exchange Services

    • Legal and custody perimeter approved
    • One eligible third-party programme profiled
    • Narrow spot workflow before broader market features

  4. gated · methodology review

    Phase 3 — Projects & Issuance

    • Project evidence, analysis, human review, and appeal
    • External methodology validation and assurance rules
    • Registry integration and test-only issuance prerequisites

  5. later · gated

    Phase 4 — Consumer & Remaining Services

    • Consumer purchase and retirement only after earlier stages
    • Sponsored activity backed by actual funded retirements
    • Certification only after scheme and independence gates
Interactive tool · SINTRA 1–2

Carbon Calculator

Calculate your consumption-based carbon footprint. Food, energy, transport, goods — with regional factors and disclosed uncertainty.

Open the calculator Specification · v2.1

The BELER Whitepaper

The canonical statement of the framework — TPGN allocation, the SINTRA tiers, market integration, and the full ecosystem architecture.

Read the whitepaper Reference implementation · Python · Apache 2.0

The Reference Calculator

An open-source SINTRA 1–2 calculator: category factors and product-category LCA mapping. Public release lands with Phase 1.

View on GitHub

§07 — Get involved

An open standard is only as strong as who builds on it.

BELER is stewarded by CEITA SL, which welcomes feedback, collaboration, and partnership from researchers, developers, and sustainability practitioners. Contributions to methodology, emissions-factor data, and reference tooling are particularly sought.

Start a conversation
Organization
CEITA SL — CEITA Environmental Services (CES)
Address
Carrer Escacs 9, 08191 Rubí
Barcelona, Spain