Blockchain: Is it the solution to reduce carbon emission
Do mankind should abandon all the resources and start living on mountains as monk to protect this earth?
According to an article published in Guardian, the use of more coal, oil and gases in developing nations such as India and China continues to grow and renewable energies fails to offset the use of fossil fuel.
The following is the real statistics to prove the above assumption:
Frauds in Carbon Offsets:
1) Corruption: Major consultancy in Mumbai copied and pasted large chunks of documentation from one CDM project to another. In fact, carbon markets have created a lot of income for consultants, carbon brokers and project developers, not to mention the validators, policy makers, NGO professionals and academics who have made a living from these markets.
2) Lack of Integrity: The GFL gas project in Gujarat, India, for example, has been one of the biggest producers of CDM carbon offset credits in the world, selling them, many of the biggest polluters in the EU. GFL has profited immensely from the CDM, and Europe’s polluters have had a cheap way to offset their climate responsibilities without actually greening their way at all.
3) Negative after effect of offset money: The offset money is creating deforestation rather than afforestation.
4) Lack of third party: The offset intentions are not verified, permanent, and transparent and are not enforceable.
Let’s discuss the background around reducing the carbon emissions:
The Clean Development Mechanism(CDM) allows emission-reduction projects in developing countries to earn certified emission reduction (CER) credits, each equivalent to one tonne of CO2. These CERs can be traded and sold, and used by industrialized countries to a meet a part of their emission reduction targets under the Kyoto Protocol.
The mechanism stimulates sustainable development and emission reductions, while giving industrialized countries some flexibility in how they meet their emission reduction limitation targets.
The central feature of the Kyoto Protocol is its requirement that countries limit or reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. By setting such targets, emission reductions took on economic value. To help countries meet their emission targets, and to encourage the private sector and developing countries to contribute to emission reduction efforts, negotiators of the Protocol included three market-based mechanisms — emissions trading, the CDM and Joint Implementation (JI).
Blockchain Integration
Blockchain is the technology which can be integrated to counter the frauds in Carbon Offsets.
In this case of the distributed network of Public blockchain architecture, each node within the network maintains, approves, and updates new entries. Each node ensures that all records and procedures are in order, which results in data validity and security. Thus, parties that do not necessarily trust each other are able to reach a common consensus.
Thus Blockchain can create a platform which is decentralized, immutable, trustless which can trade carbon credits and sell it to the projects which are really genuine and can then offset the carbon emissions.
Projects credibility can be verified and recorded on Blockchain and at the same time the carbon credits buyer can easily buy the credits without the risk of the frauds.
This does not completely eradicate the above levels of carbon emissions but atleast lower it when people or countries start trusting the mechanism involved behind it.
Apart from that, yes it’s the duty of every individual to reduce its carbon footprint and offset it by taking some small steps towards a green ecosystem.
Conclusion:
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