The United Nations Climate Change Conference of November 2021, known as COP26, in Glasgow, Scotland urged the world to commit to curbing contributions to carbon emissions. Achieving a net-zero world in less than 30 years is causing many to turn to blockchain technology, buy carbon offsets, and spark renewed interest in carbon capture.
The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has identified transparency, clean energy, carbon markets and climate finance as areas where blockchain technology can accelerate climate action. At the 2017 Paris Summit, the UN Climate Change Secretariat joined a multi-stakeholder group of organizations to establish an open global initiative, the Climate Chain Coalition, signaling its early support for blockchain for the climate.
At the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Climate Week, UNEP, the International Association for the Advancement of Innovative Approaches to Global Challenges (IAAI GloCha), and the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia drew together blockchain stakeholders in the MENA region to shape a common understanding of the technology’s potential for supporting countries with climate action, which was followed by the Blockchain4Climate networking event. Drawing from these discussions, I will shed light on how we use blockchain to address climate action.
Green digital asset solutions
Although the digital asset industry has been slammed for its high energy consumption, such an accusation is misleading. It is essential to differentiate between cryptocurrencies and underlying blockchain platforms that are energy efficient and underpin climate initiatives. Few climate initiatives leverage cryptocurrencies. Algorand has declared its blockchain to be entirely carbon-neutral; Kickstarter is building a crowdfunding platform on the carbon-negative blockchain platform Celo; and SavePlanetEarth is setting up certified Carbon Credit Smart nonfungible tokens (NFT) on Phantasma, a green blockchain for developers to build their decentralized applications. The game is on, and platforms are transitioning to more sustainable energy and consensus mechanisms. Polkadot has also been highlighted as a climate-friendly blockchain.
Related: Green ‘light’: The EU’s approach to crypto balances eco-values with regulatory relevance
The renewed interest in carbon reporting, sequestration, and capture-leveraging voluntary carbon markets has opened the door for green digital asset solutions, which can be tokenized and used as commodities in a market system — e.g., green utility tokens, a reward for lowering carbon emissions; green asset tokens, tokenized carbon credit or biodiversity off-sets; green crypto, programmed only to be spent on green products; and green security token offering issuance platforms designed to enable green proof of impact reporting.
We are seeing a maturation and proliferation of such projects as people innovate for climate action — e.g., TreeCoin sells tokenized assets tied to eucalyptus trees and reinvests them in eucalyptus trees in Paraguay. Carbonland Trust also has a tokenized carbon credit for forest conservation, while the Cambridge Centre for Carbon Credits is looking to purchase carbon credits to fund nature-based solutions preserving biodiversity. ClimateCoin incentivizes the offsetting of carbon emissions by awarding tokens to persons who plant trees or reduce CO2 emissions. Carbon Offsets To Alleviate Poverty supports projects that reward farmers who plant and maintain trees on under-utilized portions of their land. Evercity is working with GloCha on a green chain solution toward COP28, the 28th session slated for Nov. 6–17, 2023.
Related: UN’s COP26 climate change goals include emerging tech and carbon taxes
Several projects are also focussing on tradable carbon credits. Universal Protocol allows certified projects to turn greenhouse gas reductions into tradable carbon credits. First, NFT-based carbon credits provide carbon credit issuers…
Read More: cointelegraph.com