Carbon Mitigation for the NAE: Hospitality Industry Use Case

In our previous post, we looked at a how impactChoice’s carbon mitigation solution works. The basic idea is to divide a natural asset into smaller pieces that are more usable by smaller organizations and businesses and thereby extending carbon mitigation as a solution to parts of the economy that operate at lower scale — and not just large industry and corporates.

In this post, we take a closer look at our first use case for this solution in the hotel industry. We describe a field-tested solution that has been implemented by an impactChoice client hotel who we are in discussions with about joining in the launch of the Natural Asset Exchange (NAE) as a demand-side buyer partner.

Hotel Use Case

Our first field test was to apply the platform to an existing hotel client, one that had been using our solution even prior to us adding the blockchain capabilities.

How it works is, each time a guest pays for a room, part of a ‘source natural asset’ is distributed to the hotel guest in the form of a tangible Carbon Asset certificate. This certificate is also registered on the blockchain. The ledger records the movement of auditable impactChoice Micro Emissions Mitigation Certificates.

By using impactChoice’s Carbon Mitigation Solution, the hotel is able to use the blockchain to purchase the assets at the time their clients book their stays. This means that without an initial outlay for the Carbon Asset, the hotel is still able to participate in the carbon scheme and simply become a conduit for the guests to fund the natural assets directly.

As a net result, and at no extra cost to the hotel, a portion of the cost of a guest’s stay automatically includes the purchase of the Carbon Asset. The guest receives a certificate that clearly shows the purchase. The hotel acts on behalf of the guest and purchases the natural asset in real time.

It is worth pointing out that if the hotel were to engage in natural asset purchases without using the impactChoice blockchain solution, they would need to do so upfront before being able to distribute it to their future clients. Paying upfront has always been a major deterrent for businesses to voluntarily contribute to carbon mitigation schemes.

Effectively, impactChoice’s solution increments and transfers the cost burden away from the merchants and vendors. By adding it at the point of sale, the consumer pays for the natural asset — just as they would have done if it was added to the cost of the product or service. This way, however, the consumer actually walks away with the certificate, which they can use for their own purposes.

Furthermore, it is not only hotels that can take advantage of this solution, the beauty and elegance of this solution means that any customer-facing business or organization can apply it and do their part for environmental sustainability by becoming conduits or facilitators for carbon mitigation trading while conducting their normal line of business.

This carbon mitigation solution described above is currently fulfilled by impactChoice who interface with natural asset providers to purchase portions of larger natural assets. This function can be applied to work on a much larger scale on the NAE which will have global reach. The natural assets loaded on the NAE to be made available for trading will effectively be tokenized and traded in EARTH Tokens.

As seen with the hospitality use case, this means the core natural assets will be made divisible into the granularity required for them to be purchased in accordance to individual natural assets buyers needs — in this case, the corresponding carbon footprint of a one night stay at a hotel room can be fully offset.

Considering the amount of hotel stays that happen daily around the world, applying this use to trading on the NAE has the potential for positive environmental impact on a scale that can only be described as disruptive. And that encompasses the whole idea behind the EARTH Token project and the NAE — the current state of environmental sustainability industry needs to be disrupted if we are to see the earth preserved for future generations.

Check out our next posts which will explore more use cases for the carbon mitigations solutions that will be made available to the NAE.