About DECARB

DECARB collects free climate-policy data in one place: carbon pricing inventories, trade exposure, revenue splits, city transport fees, corporate internal prices, and a simple global pathway tool. Figures stay cited; empty cells stay empty.

What DECARB is

DECARB (Data-driven Emissions & Climate Analytics Research Base) is an open inventory and analysis app. You can browse World Bank and ICAP-style instruments, look at border-carbon exposure on free trade series, try revenue and city fee controls, read disclosed corporate internal carbon prices, and run a documented global lever model. It is not a country ranking or a paid benchmark product.

The point of the page below is practical: what peers already do well, what this app puts next to each other with shared citations, and where it stops short.

Who it is for

People who need policy data they can cite and compare, especially on Latin America, Africa, and Southeast Asia:

  • Researchers tracing instruments, coverage, and free-data vintages across modules.
  • Practitioners moving from a carbon price or ETS design to trade exposure, revenue mix, or city fees without opening several separate sites.
  • Government analysts reviewing inventories, scenario links, and source licenses in one place.
  • Students learning how carbon pricing, CBAM-style border measures, and municipal levers connect, with a documented pathway tool rather than an opaque black box. Start at /learn for definitions and legal foundations. Optional Beginner mode adds plain-language tips; leave it off for dense inventory views.

What the reference platforms do well

DECARB is not a replacement for these products. Each one is strong in its lane.

  • World Bank Carbon Pricing Dashboard is the authoritative compliance inventory: taxes, ETS, and crediting, with jurisdiction factsheets, coverage methodology, and an annual State and Trends refresh. If you only need carbon pricing instruments, start there.
  • ICAP ETS Map is the ETS specialist: lifecycle status, design features, compare, and allowance price exploration. Taxes and crediting are outside its remit by design.
  • Climate Watch (WRI) owns historical GHG depth, NDC tracking, pathways, and a public REST API. It is the emissions and targets reference, not an ETS design or CBAM tool.
  • En-ROADS (Climate Interactive) is the decision-support system-dynamics simulator. Economy, population, fuel feedbacks, and calibrated pathways live there. The DECARB simulator borrows the information hierarchy (results above, levers below), not the physics.

What DECARB combines that they do not ship together

These pieces share one app, free-data citations, and optional scenario URLs:

  • Carbon pricing inventory with map, table, and charts on World Bank instruments plus ICAP design merge, and click-through factsheets for instruments and crediting mechanisms.
  • ETS explorer as a dedicated path: annual allowance prices, ETS-only filters, factsheet cards, and side-by-side compare.
  • Trade and CBAM on free merchandise series (World Bank WITS first, then WB indicators, then IMF Direction of Trade). No UN Comtrade subscription in the default path.
  • Revenue allocation with interactive recycling mixes and a projected distributional view tied to carbon pricing revenue where the inventory has it.
  • Municipal policy for cities and zone maps (Natural Earth places, OSM zones, OpenAQ / Open-Meteo air quality), not just national choropleths.
  • Corporate ICP from free disclosures (SEC EDGAR and related public filings), linked into trade-oriented supplier hubs when rows exist.
  • Policy simulator with documented linear levers on Climate Watch / IEA / IPCC baselines, IPAT-style lever groups, cited Paris / AR6 markers, and shareable links. Global pathway only.
  • Per-page citations and a sources catalog, citation factsheets, shareable detail pages (instruments, cities, corporates, partners, countries), and scenario links under /s.

World Bank CPDB does not ship trade, municipal zones, corporate ICP, or a lever model in the same product. ICAP does not ship taxes, CBAM, or cities. Climate Watch does not ship ETS design factsheets. En-ROADS does not ship a compliance instrument inventory. DECARB puts those surfaces in one app so a Global South case can move from instrument to export exposure to city fee without changing sites.

Design choices

  • Free data only. No paid API keys are required for the default stack. If a fetch fails, the UI stays empty rather than inventing a series.
  • No mock numbers. Live counts come from ingested SQLite or Postgres after real downloads. Demo fixtures are not the product path.
  • Citations on KPIs. Module chips and vintage labels point at /sources and citation factsheets under /sources/[id] so a figure can be traced to a license and fetch date. Catalog filters sync in the URL (?module=, family, license, search).
  • Click-through factsheets. List views open instrument, city, corporate, partner, country, and citation detail routes instead of trapping everything in a drawer.
  • Cross-module joins. Country hub, country pages, instrument factsheets, and the share landing carry filtered deep links into carbon pricing, ETS, trade, revenue, municipal, and corporate. The simulator chip stays labeled global-only.
  • Beginner mode (optional). Default expert density stays on. A sticky header toggle adds plain-language callouts and glossary tooltips; with the mode off those layers render nothing. See /learn and /docs.
  • Shareable scenarios. Country focus and levers travel in the URL so a colleague can reopen the same filters and slider settings.

What DECARB does not claim

DECARB is behind the specialists where licenses or physics say so:

  • No UN Comtrade in default trade ingest (WITS → WB → IMF). HS6 needs a licensed BACI parquet via Admin, not invented rows.
  • No ICE-style daily allowance prices; use ICAP for live ticks. ETS here stays annual World Bank USD.
  • The simulator is not En-ROADS: linear teaching coefficients only. ?country= is for share links, not a national pathway.
  • Corporate ICP uses free SEC filings, not CDP Gold bulk coverage.
  • NDC text and full GHG explorers stay on Climate Watch; country hubs link out and do not invent targets.
  • Jurisdiction coverage % and crediting project-country ISO stay n/a when World Bank exports omit them; issuance is charted only where sheets exist.

When a module is a simplified model or a projected incidence view, the page labels it. Empty states are preferred to fake completeness.

How to run locally

Prefer the one-click launcher: double-click DECARB.command in the repo root, or ~/Desktop/DECARB.command if you linked it there. That starts the API on port 8000 and the web app on port 3000. Stop with ./scripts/stop-decarb.sh.

Full notes live in the repository under docs/runbook.md and docs/local-dev.md. In-app maps into those files sit on /docs; OpenAPI is separate at the API Swagger UI.