Blockchain for Sustainability Newsletter | #32
New Projects, Funding updates, and Industry Events
Featured News
Ethereum Climate Platform (ECP) announced at COP27 to ‘deal with’ historic Ethereum carbon footprint and drive sustainability-focused innovation by the blockchain community.
In a show of solidarity towards their commitment to environmental goals, the blockchain community has come together to launch the Ethereum Climate Platform, with an aim to incentivize and fund the projects that mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, and have positive environmental and social impact. The initiative is led by ConsenSys and Allinfra and includes other prominent tech companies, as well as civil society leaders: AAVE, Art Blocks, Celo, the Climate Collective, Codegreen.Org, Enterprise Ethereum Alliance, ERM, Filecoin Green, Gitcoin, Global Blockchain Business Council (GBBC), Huobi Global, Laser Digital, Microsoft, Polygon, UPC Capital Ventures, and W3bcloud, in collaboration with Gold Standard. The commitment of the Platform is to redress and counteract the Ethereum-based carbon footprint dating back to the network’s launch in 2015. This initiative follows a couple of months after the Ethereum Merge, which has reduced the current energy consumption of the Ethereum blockchain by more than 99%. | more
We believe that this initiative will act as an additional catalyst to the Blockchain for Sustainability Ecosystem, where we are already seeing strong momentum and new projects announced every week.
New Projects
Climate Action
As the calls for climate action get louder, corporations are increasingly looking at purchasing carbon offset tools to neutralize their carbon emissions. However, there has been a question mark on the quality and authenticity of carbon credits generated in recent years. Furthermore, companies find it challenging to claim climate-based sustainability progress due to the threat of greenwashing. The last two weeks have seen four projects that aim to address these issues.
Companies Involved: Seafields, JustCarbon, Carbonwave, TÜV SÜD, Asia Carbon Neutrality Assessment Center (MVGX),
Seafields Unveils 1 Billion Carbon Removal Project Off West Africa | more
Sustainability Leader TÜV SÜD Partners with MVGX, Launches Holistic Carbon Neutrality Rating System for Enterprises | more
PureWest grows the market for certified gas through a partnership with EarnDLT and Project Canary to tokenize verifiable environmental attributes | more
Razer, GoNetZero™, and ESGpedia jointly offer traceable and fractionalized carbon neutral checkout | more
Renewable Energy
As governments are setting their net zero targets for the future, the limelight is on renewable energy, and therefore scaling its supply is critical. Renewable energy is a sustainable alternative to current energy solutions used at an industrial scale like oil and gas. However, claiming the use of renewable energy is still under a question mark, as determining its provenance is difficult, preventing companies to adopt it at a wider scale. Technology solutions like blockchain can help these companies to verify their renewable energy provenance, which is demonstrated in the project showcased below.
Companies Involved: OCBC Bank, UBS Singapore, and Sembcorp.
OCBC Bank partners GoNetZero™ on a renewable energy certificate aggregation programme with financing support | more
GoNetZero™ and UBS in Singapore launch Asia’s first pilot of hourly matching of renewable energy generation and consumption | more
Sustainable Mining
The mining industry has a significant environmental impact. As consumers are demanding accurate supply chain information, it becomes imperative for companies to share their supply chain data. However, accurately capturing and storing this data is challenging for these companies, creating a hindrance in their sustainability initiatives. Blockchain’s secure and accurate record-keeping functionality enables companies to store their supply chain data, as showcased in the projects below.
Companies involved: Microsoft, HB Antwerp, Prada, and The Aura Blockchain Consortium
‘Moments of truth’: Belgian company HB Antwerp is using blockchain to track each diamond’s story | more
Prada debuts first-ever sustainable fine jewelry collection | more
Recycling
As the circular economy is gaining its well-deserved attention over the past few years, recycling companies are faced with growing demands. However, manual sorting and other recycling operations conducted by such companies are hampering their recycling rate. In addition to this, waste-to-energy companies find it difficult to track and trace their inputs, which creates a challenge in sorting operations. Blockchain can prevent low recycling rates by providing safe and secure data storing solutions, which is demonstrated in the two projects below.
Companies Involved: International Recycling Group, ZeLoop, Klean Industries, REI Global (RGH Systems), and City Circle Group.
ZeLoop uses blockchain to safeguard the environment | more
Klean Industries Partners With RGH Systems to Develop a Waste Plastics to Energy Facility in the Philippines | more
Klean Industries & City Circle Group Partner to Build a Tyre Pyrolysis Plant to Recover Carbon Black & Renewable Fuels| more
Biofuels
Biofuels are considered a sustainable alternative to traditional fuels used in aviation, transportation, and other industries because of their low environmental footprint. However, lack of transparency and verifiability is creating a roadblock to the wider adoption of Sustainable Aviation Fuel, a variant of biofuels. This is also creating a hindrance in the decarbonization of the aviation industry, which is one of the biggest carbon emitters in the world. Emerging technologies like blockchain can create a proxy for companies to store verifiability certificates of SAF, which can be used to convey sustainability claims, as seen in the project below.
Companies Involved: Energy Web Foundation, RMI, and Sustainable Aviation Buyers Alliance (SABA).
New blockchain registry for Sustainable Aviation Fuel backed by McKinsey, JP Morgan, Meta | more
ESG Investing
ESG or Impact investing has gained its fame in recent years due to the shift of focus towards ESG and sustainability-related initiatives. However, the inability to verify the impact of these investments and the lack of transparency in the process is driving inefficiencies in the ecosystem. The rapid growth in this ecosystem demands a more secure, transparent, and autonomous environment, which technologies like blockchain can provide. Blockchain provides tokenization and record keeping, which can enable trust building in this ecosystem, as shown in the projects below.
Companies Involved: NOAH ReGen, Crystalchain, Sewa Energy Resources (SERL), Bitgreen, Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet (GEAPP), ESG DAO, and NEAR Protocol.
How Blockchain will Help Ocean States Profit from Their Ecological Transition | more
Bitgreen partners with GEAPP and Sewa Energy Resources to build a $110M Hydroelectric Facility in Sierra Leone | more
NEAR Protocol partners with ESG DAO to support the creation of 'OpenESG,' an open and credibly neutral ESG scoring system | more
Food Safety
Ensuring food safety is critical for food processing companies as their end product can impact human health. However, for companies having complex supply chains, like food companies, ensuring every product is of A1 quality tends to be difficult. Blockchain’s immutable record-keeping feature enables these companies to store every result of the QC in a safe and secure format. In this edition, we also saw a unique project where a humanitarian organization is using blockchain to secure food items for refugees, as shown in the project below.
Companies Involved: The GrowHub Innovations Company, ManukaLife, KSrelief, and The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP).
The GrowHub inks partnership with ManukaLife for the distribution of premium-grade honey products in Southeast Asia and China | more
WFP welcomes KSrelief’s contribution to support food assistance to Syrian refugees| more
Funding Updates
Recent Fundraising Activity
BeZero: A London-based climate tech startup has secured $50 million in a Series B round to scale its carbon rating platform and expand into the US and Asia. Quantum Energy Partners led the round and was supported by other investors such as Molten Ventures, Norrsken VC, Illuminate Financial, Qima, Contrarian Ventures, EDF Pulse Ventures, Hitachi Ventures, Intercontinental Exchange (ICE). The company works with leading blockchain-based carbon trading platforms such as senken and Aircarbon. | more, and more
Circularise: A leading software platform that provides end-to-end traceability and secure data exchange for industrial supply chains using blockchain, raised €11 million in series A funding. It will use the funds to advance its mission to bring a circular economy to industrial supply chains. The round was led by Brightlands Venture Partners and was joined by Asahi Kasei, Neste, and existing investor 4impact capital; and was also supplemented with grants from the European Commission. | more
Anode Labs: A technology company committed to building a more stable, sustainable, and abundant energy system for humanity, has raised $4.2 million in a seed round to establish a decentralized network that will compensate people and small businesses for their energy storage assets. The round is co-led by Lerer Hippeau and Lattice Capital. VaynerFund, CoinShares, and Digital Currency Group are among the other investors. | more
DLTx ASA (“DLTx”): A vertically integrated technology company expanding Web 3 capabilities by deploying blockchain infrastructure at scale across major global industries. The company raised an initial $3.5 million for the first phase of development of a Bitcoin division in DLTx Digital Assets. With a focus on sustainability for Bitcoin production methods, DLTx intends to harness power where there is either overcapacity, no viable connection to the grid, or an ability to turn waste into power, such as with flare gas (preventing methane release). | more
Thallo: The company is building an efficient and transparent Carbon Offset Marketplace using blockchain technology. On November 14th the company announced that it has closed an oversubscribed $2.5 million seed round. The funds will be deployed to accelerate the development and marketing of its flagship Thallo carbon exchange. Investors include enterprise blockchain and crypto company Ripple and lead investors Arcan LLC and Friendly Trading Group 2, as well as Allegory, Cerulean Ventures, and Flori Ventures. | more
Queen of Raw: A New York-based B2B SaaS company, that aims to turn waste into profit for large corporations has raised funds from Future Planet Capital. The company has a Blockchain and Machine Learning-based platform that intelligently meets businesses’ needs, turning pollution into profit and solving the world’s water crisis. | more
JustCarbon: A company simplifying the offsetting of carbon emissions and supporting “high-quality, hyper-scale” carbon capture projects to combat climate change, is seeking to raise $5 million in its seed round. The firm has partnered with SeedLegals, a London-based legal automation platform for startup funding. | more
Upcoming Events
Puerto Rico: BUIDL HERE: 5 December, Puerto Rico, United States. Includes session on women in web3 and innovating community microgrids through blockchain.
The Institution of Engineering and Technology: 6 December, Online. Includes lecture on reducing food waste in the Agri-Food Supply Chain using Blockchain and AI.
CoinAgenda Caribbean 2022: 5-7 December, Unites States. Includes session on crypto and sustainability.
Immerse Global Summit: 5-7 December, Florida, United States. Includes keynotes on women's participation in web3, using technology to boost quality education, web3 connecting philanthropists across the world.
Israel Crypto Conference: 7 December, Israel. Includes session on customer privacy through blockchain.
Blockchain for Global Supply Chain: 7 December, Online. Includes discussion on how blockchain is driving corporate transparency in industrial supply chains.
How to improve the return on investment with sustainable supply chains: 9 December, Online. Includes session on how emerging technologies like blockchain can help accelerate the journey tracking KPIs.
Taipei Blockchain Week. 12-17 December, Taipei, Taiwan. Includes session on how to manage privacy and security in the blockchain ecosystem.