Blockchain is an insanely potent tool for enhancing transparency, accountability, and traceability in greenhouse gas emissions. The carbon-neutral XRPLedger has just taken a leap forward to pioneer global climate goals.
On the occasion of Ripple’s Swell conference (November 16-17) in London, the said announcement ensued. The conference was attended by over 500 customers, partners, financial institutions, investors, and crypto stakeholders.
Announcing the promising initiative, Ripple tweeted:
#Blockchain is a powerful tool that can improve the transparency, accountability and traceability of greenhouse gas emissions.
— Ripple (@Ripple) December 14, 2022
Learn how the carbon-neutral #XRPLedger can help achieve global climate goals. https://t.co/UINglRDIcH pic.twitter.com/GjGDS8Xclh
The two-day event comprised a stellar panel delivering remarkable keynotes, interesting insights, and trends across various topics.
The topics discussed Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs), real-world assets’ (RWAs) tokenization, the internet’s future, financial inclusion, sustainability, carbon markets, etc.
The Swell’s central theme in 2022 was blockchain and crypto-based solutions delivering real-world value across industries and use cases for businesses.
At Ripple’s Swell 2022 conference, Newlight Technologies, Inc. and CarbonCure Technologies, Inc. shared their initiatives and visions for social impact and sustainability.
Newlight reproduces microorganisms’ natural processes in oceans and ecosystems to turn greenhouse gasses (GHGs) into AirCarbon or PHB. Aircarbon is a meltable material possible to be used to develop a biodegradable carbon-negative material as a plastic or leather substitute.
The technologies tabled by CarbonCure mineralize concrete to turn it into rock via CO2 injection (in the production process).
This carbon mineralization leads to carbon sequestering, whilst also strengthening the concrete, thereby leading to cement footprint reduction.
Ripple, with partners, is set to create measurable business value.
CarbonCure is striving to make the measurement, reporting, and verification (MRV) process of its technologies transparent to its stakeholders.
CarbonCure’s Reilly O’Hara says,
Stakeholders need to know where the CO2 comes from, how it was transported to the plant, how much was injected, etc. It’s about capturing that data efficiently, storing it in an immutable way, and surfacing it for the buyer. Blockchain is one of, if not the, most elegant solutions for solving this.
Newlight also uses blockchain to make its MRV data transparently available.
Newlight’s Mark Herrema says,
What we would love to see and be able to plug our data into is a constant public ledger that shows every single credit that we’ve generated, attributes of that credit, who we sold it to and when it was retired. Blockchain offers an incredible opportunity to be that central place.
Newlight envisions a future wherein carbon offsets would not be commoditized.
Newlight’s Herrema says,
Just like you have this massive differentiation between stocks, you also have that in carbon reductions,” he explained. “One of the things that we find very important about blockchain, and specifically the XRP Ledger, is the ability to differentiate and have an individuated value for carbon credits. I think that is something that’s important to developing the carbon market.
The underlying intention of Newlight and CarbonCure is carbon credit generation. Ripple has committed $100 million to scale voluntary carbon markets, as a commitment for net-zero by 2030.
