The United Nations Climate Change Conference of November 2021, known as COP26, in Glasgow, Scotland urged the world to commit to curbing contributions to carbon emissions.
The United Nations Environment Programme has identified transparency, clean energy, carbon markets and climate finance as areas where blockchain technology can accelerate climate action.
At the Middle East and North Africa , and the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia drew together blockchain stakeholders in the MENA region to shape a common understanding of the technology’s potential for supporting countries with climate action, which was followed by the Blockchain4Climate networking event.
Algorand has declared its blockchain to be entirely carbon-neutral; Kickstarter is building a crowdfunding platform on the carbon-negative blockchain platform Celo; and SavePlanetEarth is setting up certified Carbon Credit Smart nonfungible tokens on Phantasma, a green blockchain for developers to build their decentralized applications.
We are seeing a maturation and proliferation of such projects as people innovate for climate action — e.g., TreeCoin sells tokenized assets tied to eucalyptus trees and reinvests them in eucalyptus trees in Paraguay.
Moreover, organizations such as Evercity and Blockchain Triangle are robust integrated platforms that guide and aggregate initiatives and carbon credits, linking them to investors and financial mechanisms, such as digital green bonds through blockchain-driven platforms. The capacity to include these voluntary market credits in national reporting under the Paris Agreement is also being addressed through initiatives such as Blockchain for Climate and its Bitmo platform and the Open Earth Foundation and its Nested Climate Accounting for the Paris Global Stocktake.
Solstroem focuses on accelerating the energy transition in developing and emerging countries, providing off-grid solar and geotagged, timestamped micro-carbon credits that individuals or companies can purchase.
New technologies that significantly reduce fabrication costs and the massive adoption of mobile phones in developing countries make it possible for solar panels to be connected to the blockchain to enable consumers to benefit from distributed generation.
NFTs are increasingly being leveraged for climate change, with initiatives ranging from raising awareness to fundraising; moreover, NFTs are used as an immutable record for impact and carbon credits.
GreenApes deploys gamification to help people understand their carbon footprint, and we can expect to see more games where people can play to earn for climate action.
IAAI GloCha presented its United Citizens organization for climate empowerment plans at MENA Climate Week, which will be a flagship initiative at COP28.