Automated systems and blockchain technology are being increasingly utilized to improve the efficiency and accuracy of the carbon market, a critical component in the fight against climate change. Cointelegraph spoke to Bill Kentrup about the role of blockchain technology in digitizing verifiable data in the carbon market. Kentrup is the head of Origination and co-founder of enterprise software Allinfra Climate — a platform designed to help institutions achieve their sustainability goals. According to him, on-chain monitoring, reporting, verification, issuance, allocation, and retirement of carbon credits and carbon claims, could bring about efficiency and predictability that hasn’t existed in the past. …

2022 saw the continued advancement of green crypto projects as more industry companies focused on sustainability to reduce carbon emissions. A series of elemental forces drove the paradigm shift, including user demands for faster and more energy-efficient blockchains, growing climate change awareness among investors, and rising government concerns about energy consumption in the crypto sector. Among the most notable eco-friendly crypto developments in 2022 was the transition of the Ethereum blockchain from a proof-of-work (PoW) to proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus layer. The Merge, completed in September, joined the original execution layer of Ethereum with its new PoS consensus layer, the Beacon …

Climate change has become one of the most pressing issues in the modern world with mounting pressure on companies to develop and implement climate strategies. Politicians around the globe have also been actively involved, with several nations pledging to go carbon-neutral in the next couple of decades. Amid all the initiatives and conferences led by politicians and billion-dollar companies over the years, the threat of global warming and the carbon emissions spilling into the atmosphere have only risen. The 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference, or Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCC, was the 27th United Nations climate change …

The Climate Change Coalition (CCC), a network of organizations dedicated to leveraging blockchain technology for effective climate action, including Cointelegraph as a member, delivered on Nov. 11 its stock take report at the United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP27, in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt. Founded five years ago, the coalition has been working on initiatives related to the consumption accounting system and greenhouse gas emissions accounting. Tom Baumann, chair and founder of the Climate Change Coalition, stated: "During those years, the Coalition has grown from 12 founding organizations to over 360 organizations in 69 countries. The coalition was founded on …

Filecoin Green, a Protocol Labs initiative designed to reduce the environmental impact of FIlecoin and make Filecoin verifiably sustainable, has spearheaded an initiative to power Web3 technology with verifiably clean energy. According to the announcement, the company is set to address the shortcomings of traditional carbon storage solutions by “marrying blockchain’s granular tracking functionality with the information-sharing infrastructure of Web3”. Filecoin Green launched CO2.Storage, a Web3 data storage solution, which intends to enable transparency for carbon offsets, address traditional storage solutions for all types of digital environmental assets, and renewable energy credits. As part of the initiative, Filecoin Green said …

Since the founding of Ethereum in 2015, an animating question that plagued the community was answered at exactly 06:42:59 UTC on Thursday, Sept. 15, 2022. Ethereum, the technological layer where a new class of applications and self-organizing organizations are being built, eliminated its reliance on an energy-intensive consensus mechanism called proof-of-work (PoW) to a more sustainable and secure consensus mechanism called proof-of-stake (PoS). In what has been described as one of the most significant milestones in blockchain history, the Merge has set the template for how Ethereum will continue to be the most powerful, most used, most credibly neutral, and …

While Ethereum (ETH) fans are enthusiastic about the successful Merge, Swan Bitcoin CEO Cory Klippsten believes the upgrade will lead Ethereum into a “slow slide to irrelevance and eventual death.” According to Klippsten, the Ethereum community picked the wrong moment for detaching the protocol from its reliance on energy. As many parts of the world are experiencing severe energy shortages, he believed the environmental narrative is taking the back seat. In an exclusive interview with Cointelegraph, Klippsten said “I think the world is just waking up to reality and Ethereum just went way off into Fantasyland at the exact wrong …

The South Korean government has put the lid on a science program that created toilets designed to turn human waste into electricity, heat, and digital currency. The Science Walden project was revealed in July 2021 to the amusement of the crypto community and the wider public alike — introducing the “BeeVi” toilet which turned human excrement into methane gas and rewarded its “depositors” with a digital currency called Ggool. Speaking to Cointelegraph, Science Walden lead, and Professor Cho Jae-weon however revealed that in February this year, further development of the BeeVi toilet and its associated Feces Standard Money (FSM) digital …

Bitcoin (BTC) mining has always been a controversial topic. But, Bitcoin’s proof-of-work (PoW) model has reached new levels of concern as senior decision-makers and investors pay closer attention to environmental, social and governance factors. As such, many crypto miners are highlighting environmentally friendly practices by acquiring carbon offsets. Yet, some would argue that this isn’t enough to guarantee green Bitcoin mining. Other risk factors may also be involved with carbon credits. For instance, Kevin O’Leary — the Canadian entrepreneur better known as “Mr. Wonderful” for his role on Shark Tank — told Cointelegraph that he typically indexes public mining companies …

Greenpeace, along with other climate groups, and co-founder and executive chairman of Ripple, Chris Larsen, has launched a new campaign aimed at changing Bitcoin (BTC) to a more environmentally friendly consensus model. The “Change the code, not the climate” campaign aims to pressure key industry leaders, Bitcoin miners, and influencers like Elon Musk, and Jack Dorsey, into moving over to a new consensus model saying: “If only 30 people — the key miners, exchanges, and core developers who build and contribute to Bitcoin’s code — agreed to reinvent proof-of-work mining or move to a low-energy protocol, Bitcoin would stop polluting …

It's a controversial topic in the blockchain community that comes up from time to time — just how much impact Bitcoin (BTC) mining has on the environment. Last year, Tesla's CEO Elon Musk brought forth a sharp correction in the cryptocurrency market by tweeting that his namesake car company would abandon plans to accept BTC, citing "rapidly increasing use of fossil fuels for Bitcoin mining and transactions." However, a recent report published by CoinShares notes that despite the widespread use of coal, oil, and gas for Bitcoin mining, the network accounts for less than 0.08% of the world's CO2 production. …

In a new report published by CoinShares on Monday, the firm estimated that the Bitcoin (BTC) mining network emitted 42 megatons, or Mt, (1Mt = 1 million tons) of carbon dioxide, or CO2, in 2021. In context, the number amounts to less than 0.08% of the world's total emissions of 49,360 Mts of CO2 in the same year. CoinShares came to such figures using a variety of estimates regarding the efficiency of the Bitcoin network, its energy use, hardware, etc., on a global scale. As a result, it may not reflect the actual CO2 emission of the network. But the …