Recently, at COP27, one of the world’s largest gatherings on climate action, a group of Web3 companies convened by ConsenSys and Allinfra, joined civil society leaders and the UNFCCC Climate Innovation Hub, “to announce the creation of the Ethereum Climate Platform (ECP).”
Its mission is “to incentivize and fund the development of real-world projects that will mitigate greenhouse gas emissions and deliver positive environmental and social impact long into the future.”
Founding members of the Platform launch team reportedly “include: AAVE, Art Blocks, Celo, CodeGreen.Org, Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA), ERM, Filecoin Green, Gitcoin, Global Blockchain Business Council (GBBC), Huobi Global, Laser Digital (Nomura), Microsoft, Polygon, The Climate Collective, 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.” It will aim to “invest in ongoing science-based climate projects which promise to mitigate in excess of Ethereum’s past emissions by leveraging Web3 native technologies, infrastructure, funding mechanisms and governance protocols.”
In addition to financing and otherwise supporting projects which deliver decarbonization at scale, the ECP will “support new and innovative solutions in need of market validation, ensuring they will achieve tangible impact.”
These projects could “range from nature-based carbon opportunities to green hydrogen, zero carbon power, heating, cooling and other utilities, to carbon removal projects, technologies and ecosystem services.”
It is intended that the Platform’s climate mitigation strategy “will be guided by a formal advisory process with leading players in the global environment space.” Designees of aligned Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and Intergovernmental Organizations (IGOs), plus representatives of regional and international climate organizations such as the Climate Collective, and other expert entities like sustainability consultancy ERM, “are some of the stakeholders being engaged.”
The announcement is “being hosted at the UN Climate Change Global Innovation Hub at COP27.” The Global Innovation Hub, launched in November 2021, aims “to promote transformative innovations for a low-emission and climate-resilient future.”
The Hub “facilitates climate solutions aligned with the UN’s SDGs.” Hosted by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Innovation Hub “leverages the convening power and climate leadership of the UN with the dynamism of the private sector.”
The Hub will “provide a global cross-disciplinary community of practice with an opportunity to share ideas and design climate solutions in a spirit of radical collaboration.”
This announcement “comes only two months after the Merge, the ambitious re-architecture of the world’s largest open programmable blockchain that also represents the largest known decarbonization event of any industry in history.”
After seven years of development, the transition to Proof of Stake made Ethereum “become the first global collective climate action to shed, through innovation, more than 99.992% of its carbon footprint, according to the Crypto Carbon Ratings Institute (CCRI).”
While this shift represents a significant environmental step forward, the technology “leaves behind an estimated carbon debt in the tens of millions of metric tons.”
One of the first projects to be undertaken by the Platform’s launch partners “will be to underwrite a study to attain the most accurate estimate with respect to these past emissions.”
Joseph Lubin, Founder and CEO of ConsenSys, CoFounder of Ethereum, said:
“The Merge set a new and extremely high bar for climate mitigation across the entire business and financial sector. It demonstrated that through sheer force of collective will, we can successfully drive technological decisions that massively reduce carbon output. But the climate crisis requires more radical change. This is why we are excited to come together with collaborators from among the most prominent actors from Web2 and Web3, as well as civil society leaders to accelerate climate innovations through the Ethereum Climate Platform.”
For more details, check here.