True to our “Zero Emissions” ethos, we’ve been very silent about our work, until now. For the past year, we’ve been heads down, working hard to create a tech stack that makes it super simple for anyone, business and individuals alike, anywhere in the world, to buy renewable energy, for any type of consumption, and prove it. Today we’re proud to share our achievements over the past year and hint at the cool things that we’re going to do going forward
A Mission to Zero Emissions
The climate crisis has many interconnected challenges, but the biggest of them all is energy: consumption and production of energy still produce more than 70% of the climate-destroying greenhouse gas emissions.
The IPCC tells us that we must reduce emissions by 45% before 2030 or we’ll have catastrophic consequences.
Zero Labs was born to tackle this problem: we are on a mission to reduce emissions from the energy sector to Zero. And we need to do it fast!
Zero Labs’ Theory of Change
The “Labs” part in our name suggests the approach: we don’t have time to go at it through the traditional routes. Instead, we need to experiment and build new ways to solve the problem.
“You can’t solve the problem with the same kind of thinking that caused it” — Albert Einstein
Traditional energy markets are slow, gated, and accessible only to a few large commercial and industrial players. While we, the individuals and small organizations, who care about the climate problem, face endearing problems and barriers every time we want to take climate action; we are going to smash those too.
At Zero we believe that climate action should instead be (an “Easy APP”):
- Easy = anyone should be able to be sustainable, independent of their expertise or budget. It should be as simple as not having to actively do anything at all and have it…👇
- Automatic = nothing is easier than if it happens automagically, without you even having to think or act; wherever we do an electricity-based behavior, it should already be decarbonized;
- Programmable = this is needed to make anything automatic, but programmable renewable energy is a powerful tool that can also unleash the creativity of every developer in the world to create new green-first products and services. “Let there be (renewable) light”!
- Provable = we want the impact to be real, meaning we want the receipts of it; and they should be easy to understand too: everyone should be able to verify sustainability claims without a PhD in climate accounting and reporting.
To accelerate the transition and reduce emissions at the speed the world needs, we must “embed” renewable energy into every behavior that we do that is powered by electricity: everything should be automatically decarbonised by default, and we should also be shown the proof.
So, at Zero Labs we built tech to create just that: turn renewable energy into a digital building block to decarbonize any electricity-based behavior, helping companies make it instantaneous and automatic by programming decarbonization into their apps, software and workflows; and helping individuals find it embedded in their day-to-day digital behaviors.
The Building Blocks
We’ll go more in detail on the tech achievements in other posts but these are the 3 main pillars of the Zero Labs tech stack:
1 — Digitization protocol
This protocol digitizes the classic, standard PDFs created by the renewable energy certificate (REC) registries around the world, quasi-government institutions that count how much renewable energy has been added to their grids,
These digital RECs, transparently tracked on the blockchain, enable fractions of any amount of energy to be delivered to end-customers, empowering even small buyers, anywhere in the world, to participate in the energy transition by buying renewable energy for their own uses.
By using traditional RECs and plugging into legacy REC registries, our digitization protocol complies 👉 with industry’s best practices and sustainability reporting standards. 👈
📌 We just make the process digital, faster, easier and more accessible to anyone.
2 — a Decarbonization API
That abstracts away the complexities of working with energy and digital RECs, and allows every developer to easily “embed” renewable energy into their apps.
3 — the Green Proofs
Every buyer (automatically) receives a delightful and easy-to-understand Green Proof that both tells the story of their impact and enables anyone to verify the actual environmental claim. You’ll see many in this post.
Zero Bullshit — ⚡️Zap to the point
Here are some of the highlights and projects we’ve developed in this first frenetic year of accelerating decarbonization:
Filecoin
ℹ️ About
Filecoin is a distributed cloud storage network, designed to store humanity’s most important information, with built-in economic incentives to ensure data is stored reliably over time.
The history of Zero Labs is deeply linked to Filecoin Green who has been a visionary and pioneering organization wanting to decarbonize the Filecoin network since its inception in September 2020 and that supported us since the beginning: Filecoin is our first user, client, and generous supporter.
We will write more about the collaboration with Filecoin and in that post, we’ll go more in-depth on the Technology that we developed for their specific needs.
🤩 What’s cool
- Energy dashboard: Filecoin built a dashboard to raise the bar for energy transparency allowing anyone to estimate the energy use of any node in the network. The Dashboard integrates with the Zero Labs API to track how much green energy each miner has used as a building block for their reputation score.
- Big Impact: More than 2.6 TWh of REC purchased, that is roughly equivalent to the electricity consumed by almost 359.000 US homes for one year.
- Filecoin is storing the evidence: all attestation PDFs are stored on Filecoin itself.
- Open source code and processes: Filecoin Green does everything in an open source and transparent way with the objective of inspiring and empowering other organizations to easily decarbonize their operations.
🏆 Tech & Milestones
- Developing the digitization / tokenization protocol v 0.
- Going to production on the Energy Web Chain (EWC).
- Full automation: integration with Filecoin Green System.
- FutuRECs launched: on chain agreements for future RECs.
- Maybe soon: deploying the protocol to the upcoming FVM, Filecoin Virtual Machine.
✅ Proof
These are among the oldest proofs we’ve created. You’ll notice the progression from these to the newest ones.
- A Green Proof with the old UI for the energy consumed by a Filecoin Storage provider in September 2020, when the network was launched:
https://proofs.zerolabs.green/partners/filecoin/purchases/b329a59c-024c-4aeb-b1df-79fa88679385 - Another Green Proof for a Filecoin SP, with the newer UI.
Remember, Green Proofs have two sides: the impact view and the verify view.
[2022.04] Zumo App Decarbonization
ℹ️ About
Zumo is a decentralized finance platform that includes a cryptocurrencies wallet, and a B2B Crypto-as-a-Service platform to help banks roll out compliant and ESG-aligned crypto products to their customers.
Zumo is one of the longest lasting partners of Zero Labs and a pioneer in researching the appropriate methodology for measuring Bitcoin’s energy consumption. Through Zero Labs’s digitized RECs they decarbonized the Token holdings of the Zumo App
Following the estimates of their methodology and “Zero Hero” pilot project.
🤩 What’s cool
- Partners and integrations: interesting case of a partner integrating our API to create novel use cases in the financial sector.
- Decarbonized Bitcoin: laying the groundwork for converting the massive electricity use of proof-of-work cryptocurrencies into new demand for renewables.
- [Secret project coming soon]: stay tuned for more great news coming out soon from this partnership on the deployment of decarbonized financial products for Scope 3 emissions.
🏆 Tech & Milestones
- Intensive requirements gathering for API & Green Proof product.
- Validating tech and market case.
✅ Proof
Green Proof for the decarbonization of Zumo’s App Bitcoin Holdings.
This is also one of the earliest proofs; more recent proofs will be richer on the methodology description side.
https://app.proofs.green/proof/81d54964-58ef-487a-88f0-5ec01bbb5bb4
[2022.07] — Filecoin Sustainable Blockchain Summit (SBS) and hackathons
ℹ️ About
We launched some cool updates at the Sustainable Blockchain Summit, the coolest event in the ReFi / Regenerative CleanTech space. It’s organized by Filecoin Green to gather every project working on building solutions to the climate crisis with decentralized technologies and beyond.
Watch it here
📼 Video Presentation: Embedding Clean Energy Everywhere
🤩 What’s cool
- Decarbonizing work buildings: Third type of consumption entity supported, and first showcase of decarbonizing something beyond cloud storage or crypto — proving the Studio-Workshop of the Berrocal Foundation is powered by clean energy.
- The power of fractionalization: the minimum amount that legacy RECs can represent is 1 MWh, while with Zero Labs digital RECs, the Foundation managed to decarbonize 0.743 MWh for 6 months of energy consumption.
🏆 Tech & Milestones
- Reveal of the new Green Proofs layout.
- Launch of the Green Proofs product and site.
- Third type of consumption entity supported: work buildings.
✅ Proof
Proof of Decarbonizing the Berrocal Studio-Workshop in Andalusia, Spain
https://app.proofs.green/proof/8ae4172f-8cb0-4827-a77a-74d5f3211597
[2022.07] — Ecosoul.xyz a Green Score (SBS Hackathon Winner)
ℹ️ About
Ecosoul.xyz built a green reputation score for Filecoin Storage Providers using also the Zero Labs API and won the Filecoin Green SBS Hackathon.
A simplified explainer of the methodology is that it creates a proportion between the energy consumed, calculated by the Filecoin.energy dashboard, and the amount of renewable energy certificates (RECs) bought by each Storage Provider, transparently stored on chain. All this is possible thanks to the Zero Labs API, that makes the REC amount conveniently accessible and also provides links to the automatically generated, human-readable web proofs to enable anyone to verify every single purchase.
You can watch the whole presentation by Jeongmin here that goes more in depth on the methodology, or jump to see the Green Proofs
🤩 What’s cool
- Proving the Power of Programmable Decarbonization
this is not a project we build ourselves but shows the power of digital/tokenized Renewable Energy as a building block to enable smart developers around the world to invent new super cool decarbonization projects and solutions. - Green score = new ways to incentivize climate positive behaviors
With this green reputation score, Storage Providers have new incentives to become provably sustainable: they will programmatically win more storage deals.
This kind of innovation is what we set out to unleash and what the world needs to accelerate the transition to the Zero Carbon economy.
🏆 Tech & Milestones
- API release, independent devs starting to use our tech in the wild.
- New ideas around what can be built with embedded renewable energy.
✅ Proof
Post tweets
[2022.10] — Gitcoin decarbonization
🖼️ cover img from their blog post https://go.gitcoin.co/hubfs/Screen_Shot_2022-09-15_at_12.58.04_PM.png
ℹ️ About
To Celebrate the Ethereum Merge, the upgrade that shifted the network from the energy-intensive proof-of-work to the more sustainable proof-of-stake consensus mechanism, Gitcoin invited Zero Labs and other companies to decarbonize the energy consumed or carbon emissions of a Gitcoin Grant Round.
We decided to assign Gitcoin’s energy consumption to a global distribution of RECs, in this case from Europe (France) and from Canada.
You can read Gitcoin’s Blog post for all the details https://go.gitcoin.co/blog/the-merge-gr15
🤩 What’s Cool
- Alpha version of accounting and decarbonizing Ethereum transactions — a preview for Blocks.garden.
- Decarbonizing project emissions = an act of Public Goods service.
🏆 Tech & Milestones
- Multilocation Green Proof.
✅ Proof
Explore Gitcoin’s DAO Green Proof
https://app.proofs.green/proof/b77b35c2-3d2e-412c-b24e-e122dcffb493
[2022.12] — Blocks.Garden
ℹ️ About
🎯 Blocks.garden, built on top of the Zero Labs stack, is a platform to decarbonize blockchains’ historical energy consumption, starting with Ethereum, by using fun and community competition.
💡🖼 Inspired by the Million Dollar Homepage, Blocks.garden is a giant canvas of 15+ million pixels that each represent a block from Ethereum’s proof of work (PoW) history.
⚡♻️ When someone buys and claims pixels on the canvas to display their brand, content, or imagery, they simultaneously decarbonize the corresponding Ethereum blocks with a tokenized Renewable Energy Certificate.
The “Day 1 — The Merge” app is live now on app.Blocks.garden and you can already contribute.
We’ve been cooking this project since the summer, preparing to celebrate the Ethereum Merge that reduced the energy consumed by the network by 99%. We Even gifted the special block before the merge to Vitalik to celebrate it.
ℹ️ If you want to know more you can
- Read the announcement Blog post, The future is a shared canvas…,
or tweetstorm 🐦 - Watch the video presentation that we gave announcing the project at SBS Bogotá during Devcon VI week.
🤩 What’s cool
- Everything! Let’s face it, Blocks.garden just showcases how cool, and automatic, climate action can be.
- 22 Stellar Launch Partners.
- Showcasing an example client/project building on top of the base Zero Labs tech stack.
- Historical emissions: Ethereum is the first blockchain (and second crypto project after Filecoin) showing the world that decarbonizing historical emissions is important.
- New climate positive behaviors (v2) — leveraging the invisible hand, so that companies and individuals, by getting an advertising block for their own self interest can, “without intending it, without knowing it, advance the interest of the society” and automatically contribute to decarbonize a portion of the blockchain’s historical emissions.
🏆 Tech & Milestones
- Going Multichain: launching on Ethereum mainnet.
- The Zero Labs stack v.1: after many iterations on the protocol, API and Green Proofs, the Zero Labs Stack is now robust enough to build complex new apps like Blocks.garden on top of it.
- Fourth consumption entity type: Blocks.garden Block NFTs that represent Ethereum Blocks.
- Blocks.garden protocol alpha version launched.
- Developing a robust methodology based on Kyle’s McDonalds to account for counting Ethreum’s historical energy consumption.
✅ Proofs
The projects generated many proofs: each of the 22 Green Heroes (the “beneficiaries” of the Renewable Energy Certificates) have each decarbonized one or more Ethereum blocks, each of which comes with its own proof.
Head to 👉 app.Blocks.garden, click on any of the blocks with the launch partners’ images, and click on the “view proof” buttons, to access a page from which to explore all connected proofs.
You can also jump to the block owned by Zero Labs or directly to its green Proof
[2023.03] — Green Wizard
️ℹ️ About
The Green Wizard is a web app that enables anybody to simply request Renewable Energy Certificates for any type of electric consumption through a simple guided process. For now, it’s just an MVP, but you can already use it. We’re looking for beta testers to do some user testing sessions: want to try it with us on a call?
🤩 What’s cool
- Empowering everybody: opening a direct channel for small-scale consumers, not just companies who can integrate our API.
- Customizable buying experiences: eg Filecoin Storage Providers can get a custom renewable energy buying flow.
- Customer discovery catalyst: the Green Wizard is a great tool for rapid prototyping and user testing with many use cases in different industries. Stay tuned, we’ll be releasing some soon!
🏆 Tech & Milestones
- B2C oriented front-end app.
✅ Proofs
Head to 👉 https://wizard.proofs.green and get your own proofs (to decarbonize whatever you want).
Or 📆 ☎️ schedule a demo and user testing session with us.
Renewables are the way. Just start today!
These are just a few of the many applications that we’re currently working on.
We have to electrify everything and every industry will have to decarbonize.
Wherever you are on the green path, whether you want to get started but don’t know how, or you are already advanced, let us help you get there faster: Zero Labs is the fastest, easiest and cheapest way to reduce your carbon footprint today. Reach out (/ let us help you get there faster)
🔗 Other options for you
- Try the Green Wizard to power anything with renewables
- And stay up to date with our Zero Emissions, following and engaging with us on Twitter and Discord
