How blockchain is empowering climate protection projects

“Dear future generations: Please accept our apologies.
We were rolling drunk on petroleum” ~ Kurt Vonnegut

With alarming deforestation, shrinking biodiversity, and extinction of over 100 species every day, the first signs of the dire impact of climate change are visible all over the world. Human progress has cost the planet dearly. The words of the late American writer, Kurt Vonnegut, make perfect sense. We will owe an apology to our future generations if we continue exploiting Earth without considering the impact of this mindless cashing of our planet’s resources.

Many people blame technology and progress for these circumstances. While it may be valid to some extent, it is critical to understand that technology can both benefit or destroy our planet. Luckily, blockchain technology is working for the former. Our team decided to find out how blockchain technology is helping organizations take a stand against climate change.

How technology can help in the fight against climate change

One of the primary problems with climate change initiatives is the lack of transparency. Donors or high-level management often struggle to identify and measure the impact of their efforts because of the traditional management models. Not to mention that there have been several scams associated with environmental projects, such as the provision of carbon credits.

Blockchain technology is built on the principles of transparency, immutability, and self-governance. The distributed nature of a blockchain and its consensus protocol ensure that no single party can manipulate the network. The public nature of blockchains makes it easier to track transactions and receive live updates.

Here are some interesting use cases for blockchain technology in environmental projects:

Energy

Everyone knows that traditional power grids are often centralized. The concept of net metering leads to many inefficiencies that end up creating more harm to the environment than usual. With blockchain’s peer-to-peer energy sharing models, there won’t be any reason to transmit electric power to longer distances. Energy producers will have the option to sell energy to their neighbors or local customers. Additionally, energy storage won’t be necessary anymore.

LO3 Energy, WePower Network are some exciting examples of P2P energy trading using blockchain technology.

Carbon footprint

Another excellent way blockchain is helping environmental conservation is through the development of transparent carbon monitoring services. It is difficult to identify the carbon footprint of a product without critical information pieces such as its origin, transit details or production methodology. In most cases, consumers don’t get to know which products come with higher or lower carbon footprints. With blockchain, however, these carbon footprints can be tracked, protected, and used by customers to identify the carbon footprint of individual products. Now consumers can buy products that are environmentally friendly by simply scanning the QR code or bar code on their packaging.

Recycling

Recycling is an effective way of reducing human waste. However, most of the nations do not have the necessary infrastructure to run country-wide programs and require cities to operate individually. Blockchain technology can help unify this fragmented model and make it easier for national authorities to monitor local initiatives. Based on the real-time data available through the blockchain, countries can divert more resources towards underdeveloped facilities. With blockchain’s involvement, it would be straightforward to track and monitor regions that have a high carbon deposit.

An excellent example of an ongoing blockchain project related to recycling is the Social Plastic project (AKA Plastic Bank). The project operates multiple plastic collection centers across underdeveloped regions and rewards people for depositing plastic wastes.

TreeCoin: Using blockchain technology for sustainable timber management

TreeCoin aims to leverage blockchain technology for its sustainable timber production and management operations. It is using blockchain technology for its fundraising and operations, allowing investors to participate in its project by purchasing TREE tokens. In addition to contributing to a sustainable timber production project, investors will receive utility tokens and dividends throughout the project’s lifecycle. TreeCoin plans to develop a local ecosystem where its utility token TreeCoin (TXC) will be accepted by local retailers and TreeCoin’s online marketplace.

Do you want to know more about our project? Check out our whitepaper and register for our hybrid token offering (HTO).

Originally published at https://tree-coin.io on September 30, 2019.