Blockchain for Sustainability Weekly
Volume 21 | 21-Aug-22 | 14 Projects
This week we have added 14 ‘blockchain for sustainability’ projects to our platform which now has ~330 projects1
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ESG Reporting
Blockchain to attest ESG reporting | Global
Project Description: Despite the growing importance of Sustainability and ESG reporting, verifying the truth of a company’s ESG claims has been a challenge for consumers and investors alike. To make it easy for the consumer, Global Compliance Applications Corp. (GCAC) has created the clearESG platform so that companies in multiple industries can authenticate their sustainability and ESG claims. This solution is based on the company’s proprietary blockchain, Efixii, built on Ethereum. clearESG enables businesses to attest, via a KYC verification feature, up to 50 of their ESG certifications. GCAC’s APIs transfer ESG blockchain attestations to QR codes, facilitating public and verifiable proof of its clients’ ESG certifications in any industry. QR codes can then be used to verify the company’s ESG claims by the consumer. All this data, including the certificates, will get stored on the blockchain, enabling the company to share the data in a secure and immutable format, eliminating data manipulation or third-party mishandling. clearESG converts these attestations (certifications) into ESG badges and renders them on the client's websites in real-time.
Expected Benefits:
A transparent ESG reporting ecosystem will encourage companies to report their ESG claims, commanding a premium on their products.
Small companies that refrained from reporting due to the threat of greenwashing, will now have access to ESG reporting.
Customers will be able to make confident sustainable choices
More Information: Benzinga
Sustainable Agriculture
Encouraging sustainable farming through blockchain | United States
Project Description: The farming industry lays the foundation of economic activities in many economies worldwide. However, sustainability remains a significant challenge for this industry. According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency, agriculture accounted for 11% of overall GHG emissions in the United States in 2020. In addition to this, organic or sustainable farming equipment and materials are expensive, discouraging farmers from using them. To address this situation, FarmLogs, a farm management software is partnering with Nori’s blockchain-backed carbon removal marketplace. This partnership will enable Nori’s integration into FarmLogs, enabling FarmLogs’s customers to use Nori’s carbon removal marketplace. Farmers can opt to share select field-level information required to participate in Nori’s program. Their soil data would be stored on the blockchain, providing secure and immutable data transfer and eliminating data manipulation. This will make it easy for growers to understand the opportunities in carbon markets. Nori’s marketplace provides substantial financial rewards to farmers who use regenerative farming practices that involve soil carbon sequestration. To do this, Nori will tokenize their farmland in lieu with a carbon credit, which will be minted on a blockchain network.
Expected Benefits:
This project will encourage farmers to implement sustainable farming on their farmland.
This project will enable farmers to rake profits from both the yield of their crop and the accumulation of their soil carbon, increasing revenue potential.
More Information: Agriculture and EPA
Waste-to-Energy
Blockchain driving waste-to-energy initiatives | South Korea
Project Description: Population rise has increased the overall waste production. This rise has created a demand for various waste-to-energy initiatives. However, encouraging participants to actively remain involved remains a challenge in this process. To address this issue, Cho Jae-weon, Professor of urban and environmental engineering at Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology, South Korea, devised a lavatory that converts human waste into fertilizer and biomass, under the name BeeVi toilet. This lavatory eliminates the need for water with a vacuum function, saving plenty of water, and then the waste is transferred to an underground tank. The waste is broken down and converted into methane by microorganisms that have been put into the tank. To encourage the involvement of participants in this process, the project is leveraging blockchain. Every participant will receive 10 Ggool, as a reward. This security token is minted using a blockchain network. Blockchain would provide the required security and immutability, eliminating any third-party intrusion and data manipulation. The Ggool is already been used to purchase various items on the university campus.
Expected Benefits:
Drive interest of stakeholders and community toward waste-to-energy solutions.
Presenting a scalable model (using blockchain) where sustainable solutions can be monetized.
More Information: Finbold
GHG Emissions
Digitization of carbon credits using blockchain | Global
Project Description: Carbon credits are a sustainable way to bridge the gap between companies that want to emit GHG and eco-friendly projects that requires funding to operate. However, price differentiation, provenance, the threat of greenwashing, and lack of trust among parties create a bottleneck for the current carbon credit market to scale further. To address this, the International Finance Corporation (IFC) has partnered with Aspiration, Chia Network, and Cultivo to launch the Carbon Opportunities Fund, which will tokenize the carbon offsets through blockchain. The Carbon Opportunities Fund will buy carbon tokens from projects chosen by Aspiration and Cultivo, which will then be tokenized using the Chia blockchain network and tracked using the World Bank's Climate Warehouse database. Additionally, the fund would only source, tokenize, and sell unused credits from an established registry that passes its additional quality checks. This collaboration will be leveraging blockchain technology as the selected carbon tokens will be digitized and all of its data, including carbon sequestration limit, the value of the token, legacy year, and provenance, would be stored on the blockchain network. Chia network uses a unique consensus called Proof of Space and Time, which enables the network to consume 500 times less energy than bitcoin and 200 times less energy than Ethereum, according to their website.
Expected Benefits:
Due diligence and quality checks will eliminate the threat of greenwashing, and all the data stored on the blockchain would be authenticated beforehand.
This project will increase the share of high-quality carbon credits in the market, increasing trust among the parties.
More Information: Reuters and Chia Network
Ensuring transparent and high-quality carbon credits | Bolivia
Project Description: Though carbon credits have been in the ecosystem for a very long time, still companies are hesitant to invest in them. This is because there is a lack of information flow, opaqueness in the system, and an inability to establish provenance, paving the way for fake or low-quality carbon credits. This demands a transparent ecosystem for the verification of carbon credits. To do so, Karbon-X has partnered with BioCarbon Registry to register multiple verified carbon generating projects. These projects are from the plantation of Dipteryx Alata Baru Nut trees in Bolivia. These carbon credits (derived from the plantation) will help the company to develop sustainable charcoal using the waste biomass that the plantation will generate. Once the projects are registered, BioCarbon Registry will QC them through their carbon accounting methodology to filter out low-quality projects. Then the company will use the blockchain to tokenize all these carbon credits, storing all the relevant information regarding the carbon credits on the blockchain. This will ensure a transparent flow of information between the buyer and the seller, in a secure and immutable format.
Expected Benefits:
Carbon credits create a sustainable funding funnel for the carbon credit-backed projects, which can help compensate its operational overheads.
Blockchain will provide a transparent flow of funds from the credit buyers to the project owner.
A third-party registry platform will ensure trustworthiness in the system, ensuring no greenwashing and data manipulation.
More Information: Yahoo Finance
Verifiable carbon credits backed by community projects | Canada
Project Description: Carbon credits can be a sustainable way to fulfill a company’s sustainability commitments. However, opaqueness, the insecure flow of funds, and overdependence on intermediaries are some challenges in the current carbon credit marketplace, that make it inaccessible to a wider market. To address this situation, Will Solutions has teamed up with DeepMarkit Corp to use their MintCarbon platform to tokenize 150,000 carbon credits. The carbon credits being minted on the platform are based on the Quebec Sustainable Community Project (QSCP). The project gathers more than 850 GHG emissions reduction micro-projects carried out by several small and medium-sized companies from various sectors, non-profit organizations, and small municipalities across Quebec, Canada. QSCP is based on the VM0018 methodology that is certified under Verra. The methodology provides a framework for the monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV) of emission reductions for group projects. The tokenization of these carbon credits will be done using the MintCarbon platform, which is built on top of a blockchain network. Blockchain will convert all the carbon credits into a digital security token, while all the relevant data related to the said token will be stored for secure, seamless, and immutable data sharing with relevant stakeholders.
Expected Benefits:
The tokenization will drive the traceability of the carbon credits more securely and easily.
The opening of a new financial distribution channel could increase monetary flows to push climate actions even further.
Blockchain will create a transparent ecosystem in carbon credits trading, ensuring both parties' trust and security.
More Information: Yahoo Finance
Renewable Energy
NFTs as 'Proof-of-Impact' for green investments | Global
Project Description: ESG-focused projects do a great job of addressing the persistent sustainability-related issues throughout the world. However, a lack of transparency and trust in this ecosystem discourages investors from investing, creating a funding gap. According to The Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OCED), this funding gap is estimated to be around $3.7 trillion. To reduce this gap, Reneum is leveraging blockchain. Reneum is launching its Marketplace intending to become the green platform to accelerate climate solutions. Initially, the Reneum platform will focus on mobilizing capital for direct climate action, for both individuals and companies worldwide, resulting in accelerated renewable energy deployment, funded directly by any individual and corporate interested in taking direct climate action. The Reneum Marketplace will direct funds transparently and efficiently to pre-vetted renewable energy producers around the globe. After each transaction, donors or backers will receive a ‘verified green’ receipt in the form of an NFT, which serves as ‘proof-of-impact’ and membership to the Reneum community. This ‘proof-of-impact’ cannot be counterfeited or duplicated. All this will be done through a blockchain network, enabling the company to track the financials of every project.
Expected Benefits:
This project will create a bridge between eco-friendly projects and impact investors/companies, to bridge the current funding gap
A transparent funding ecosystem will foster trust between investors, encouraging an increased inflow of funds.
Minimize the risk of fraudulent activity as all the data would be recorded on the blockchain.
More Information: Eco-Business and OECD
Encouraging the use of green energy through blockchain | Global
Project Description: Renewable or green energy is a sustainable way to reduce the over-dependence on the electricity grid, while also being environmentally friendly. However, the high CAPEX requirement of renewable energy set-ups discourages many potential users, creating a bottleneck for large-scale implementations. This creates a need for a sustainable way to encourage the consumer for using this energy source. Greenpower Network (GPN) is using blockchain to encourage the production, storage, and utilization of green energy, maximize energy utilization and contribute to carbon neutrality. The blockchain-based network partners with power hardware manufacturers who will offer portable Smart Energy Sources in various sizes and capacities that effectively cover the users’ portable, outdoor, and in-home energy requirements. These smart power products will be linked to the GPN’s application and the secured and encrypted power production and consumption data will be transmitted to the app and connected to web 3.0 via blockchain. The application will allow users to pair with the in-app NFT which is upgradeable with the use of the power products via the in-app marketplace. The users will be able to claim rewards or tokens through their paired NFTs with the use of the power products and buy, sell, upgrade or trade their NFTs, encouraging other users to actively participate in this process.
Expected Benefits:
This project takes a positive step toward increasing the share of renewable energy in the overall energy mix.
This project will reduce the over-dependence on the electricity grid, making electricity prices more stable.
The NFT earned using green energy is tradable on any third-party marketplace, encouraging users to increase their renewable energy usage.
More Information: The Coin Republic
Responsible Supply Chain
Tracing ethically-sourced commodities through blockchain | Africa
Project Description: As consumers are swiftly moving toward more sustainable products, the commodities that form the starting point of most supply chains, remain highly opaque when it comes to measuring and reporting their sustainability performance. A significant amount of commodities are exported by the African Subcontinent, where social justice, child and forced labor, and climate change are persistent challenges. This presents an opportunity for companies to source commodities ethically and transparently. To address this, Watr has teamed up with Parity Technologies to create a decentralized solution for tracking ethical commodities, under the name Digital Commons for Ethical Commodities. Services that are being developed under this partnership include a decentralized identity and KYC application, a system for provenance tracing, and a platform for trading tokenized carbon credits. All these services are built on top of a blockchain network. Blockchain will enable the clients of these services to easily track their supply chain operations, giving them full visibility. This will enable companies to track their goods as they move from producer to shipper, retailer, and ultimately consumer, in real-time. In addition to this, all of their data would be stored in a secured and immutable digital ledger, making data sharing secure and trustworthy.
Expected Benefits:
A transparent supply chain would enable companies to showcase their ESG initiatives more efficiently.
This project will support the trade of ethical commodities that are preferentially sourced by discerning buyers.
This project will also support the wider adoption of ethically sourced commodities, boosting sustainable trade, while ensuring a fairer deal for local producers.
More Information: The Guardian
Financial Inclusion
Increasing financial penetration through blockchain | Africa
Project Description: Banking or financial services has become a necessity for many people in the world. However, unbanked populations lack access to even the basic financial service such as the transfer of funds. According to the World Bank, less than 30% of the population of Ivory Coast, Mali, Cameroon, and Senegal has a bank account. In addition to this, heavy paperwork and unwarranted charges discourage them to opt for a bank account. To address this issue, Ejara is leveraging blockchain technology to bridge this gap between financial services and the unbanked population. To do so, the company offers services like interest-bearing savings accounts, buying and trading major cryptocurrencies, and, in late 2022, the option to invest in fractionalized local and international stocks. The company also conducts educational programs via the Ejara School and offers a noncustodial wallet so that users can store their funds. The company is making access to cryptocurrencies easy and simplified for the unbanked population in sub-Saharan Africa. Cryptocurrencies are digital security tokens built on top of a blockchain network. These tokens have a variety of use cases, inexpensive money transfer being the most prominent one. To encourage the use of Ejara, the company has also lowered the barrier of entry by enabling users to deposit as low as $1.56. The project is currently focusing on the CFA franc zone (consisting of 14 African countries), increasing the penetration of the financial services in the region.
Expected Benefits:
By providing financial services to African citizens, the company is helping to open up a new line of investment opportunities, which was not accessible before.
This project could enable a line of credit for the unbanked people in Africa, opening newer business opportunities for them.
Blockchain will store the financial data of all the transactions, eliminating any fraudulent activity.
More Information: Business Insider and World Bank
Diversity and Inclusion
NFTs to drive diversity in sport | Canada
Project Description: Sport has an amazing tendency to bring nations and even people across nations, together. This tendency is much needed in today's world where geopolitical and social tensions have taken center stage, even when the pandemic has not completely receded and the world stares at an uncertain period of inflationary recession. The recently concluded commonwealth games have left a bright tinge of happiness across many nations in these troubled times, even as we look forward to the football world cup later this year. However, it is important that sport remains diverse and unites people of different countries, genders, and races. To do so, On sporting wear and Vancouver Running Co. is teaming up with OddFutur3, to release an NFT collection under the name RAYA (Run As You Are). This NFT collection will be showcasing 10 different characters, including different gender types, races, backgrounds, and running shoes. These NFTs are minted on a blockchain platform, making them unique and immutable. After purchasing an NFT, it will be stored on a digital wallet, and the buyer would have an option to resell it on a third-party marketplace. These NFTs are randomly generated and include certain limited editions as well. The purpose of this project is to increase the minority participation in running, through their engagement in this NFT ecosystem.
Expected Benefits:
The project is trying to bring running enthusiasts from across backgrounds together to encourage broader participation in sport.
NFT will provide a sense of ownership to the buyers, making the product more engaging and impactful.
More Information: Naricity
Improving women's participation in Web3 through NFTs | United States
Project Description: Web3 has tremendously raised to fame in recent years, due to its versatility and potential use cases. However, minimum women's participation has created a glass ceiling in this booming industry. According to a report by Gemini, only 26% of current crypto holders in the United States are women. This will create a problem in the future when the industry matures, and the barrier to entry would get more stringent. To address this situation and encourage more women's participation, Surge Women has launched NFTs as a ticket for various other services they provide. This ecosystem is specifically targeting women on the internet. Surge Women was launched as an education and onboarding platform focused on securing women’s place in Web3. Anyone who purchases a Surge Women NFT gets “Passport Perks” along with their asset. These perks include discounts, subscriptions, and vouchers, plus access to scholarships, festivals, courses, and boot camps. These services will encourage more and more women to purchase the said NFT and avail of these services. The NFTs will be minted using a blockchain network, which would provide a secure and trustworthy asset class experience.
Expected Benefits:
This project will draw new women audience into the Web3 ecosystem, through additional perks it offers.
NFT will provide a sense of ownership to the buyers, which is tradable in any third-party marketplace.
More Information: The Global and Mail, Gemini
Recycling
Tracing recycled plastic through blockchain | United States
Project Description: The changing consumer preference is tipping towards sustainability. A study conducted by IBM revealed that for those who say brand sustainability is very important, over 70% of them would pay a premium of 35% for environmentally sustainable brands. However, it is challenging for companies to keep a track of their sustainability initiatives, especially in complex multi-tier supply chains. To address this challenge, Sea Sweepers Foundation is taking advantage of blockchain technology. The company is using blockchain to create a sustainable supply chain and show its clients the origin of their recycled ocean plastic. In addition to this, clients would be able to verify the authenticity of a recycled product. This is possible because all the relevant information about the recycled plastic, including the place of recycling, who recycled it, who made the final product, and the percentage of recycled quantity, would be stored on the blockchain, to enable easy, secure, and immutable data sharing capability.
Expected Benefits:
A transparent supply chain would enable companies to showcase their sustainability initiatives, encouraging them to participate in ESG initiatives.
This project would enable the company to command a higher premium on their product, which the customers could be willing to pay.
The use of recycled plastic by the company would pave the way for a circular economy around upcycling ocean plastic.
More Information: Miami News Times and IBM
Decent Work and Economic Growth
Taking small retailers to the metaverse | India
Project Description: India’s retail business is steadily growing driven by a huge consumer economy and a growing middle class. On the supply side, a significant driver for this growth has been the MSME sector, as the number of MSMEs in India increased by 18.5% between 2019 and 2020, according to IBEF. However, lack of digitization and lack of access to a physical space has created bottlenecks for this industry, discouraging many business owners. To address this situation, SPR Group is partnering with Metasense to leverage blockchain technology. This partnership aims to digitize micro retailers, through which they can conduct their business seamlessly. Metasense will be developing a metaverse mimicking SPR Group’s offline marketplace ‘market for India’. A metaverse is an integrated network of 3D worlds, which creates an online presence for each stakeholder, enabling them to interact seamlessly. This platform is built on top of a blockchain network, ensuring data security and immutability. This partnership aims to encourage businesses that are unable to afford a physical space to conduct their business. The planned release of this platform is 2025.
Expected Benefits:
This project will encourage micro retailers to digitize their end-to-end operations, optimizing and increasing their margins.
This project will bridge the gap between small retailers/traders and their potential customers.
More Information: EIN Newswire and IBEF
If you have enjoyed reading our newsletter, please let us know which is your favorite project from this week in the comments.
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