Bitgreen Pioneers Climate-Positive Action for the Polkadot Ecosystem

In collaboration with the Web3 Foundation and the development team Sequester, Bitgreen will lead a carbon footprint audit and programatic offsetting of all emissions on the Polkadot and Kusama blockchains.

Web3 stakeholders are increasingly concerned about the environmental impact of the blockchain networks they use. Long gone are the days of blockchain adoption when the environmental costs of validating transactions and mining blocks were conveniently ignored. Blockchain teams are increasingly scrutinized and expected to include ESG criteria in their planning, design, and strategy.

As Bloomberg reported in 2021, Polkadot has the lowest carbon footprint among leading Layer 1 protocols. But having the lowest carbon footprint isn’t enough. To pioneer an environmentally friendly protocol, a network needs to aspire beyond carbon “neutrality” and actively regenerate the environment.

A Proposal for Climate Positive Action

Bitgreen is a leading parachain project in the Polkadot ecosystem designed to establish an epicenter for decentralized digital sustainability and impact. Sequester is a proposed common good parachain that will coordinate a first-of-its-kind multichain initiative to establish climate action among Dotsama projects.

The two teams are introducing a Proposal for Climate-Positive Action to the entire Polkadot and Kusama ecosystem to:

1. Volunteer anonymized transaction data to assess the parachain’s electricity consumption, greenhouse gas emission, and e-waste. At a minimum, this reporting will include Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions — ie. those produced as a direct consequence of the parachain’s core activities.
2. Enable parachains to open-source and publish this Scope 1 and Scope 2 accounting, and invite examination and recommendations by third parties for footprint minimization and mitigation.
3. Pledge an allocation of native tokens to purchase qualifying carbon credits that will verifiably offset the chain’s surveyed environmental impact.
4. Pledge an auxiliary climate-positive action allocation that is additional to any calculated offset. This allocation will be earmarked to enhance and extend the commitment by Dotsama teams to environmental regeneration and reinvigoration.