Every person and business should be rewarded for being Green.
In January 2017, China, the world’s largest carbon emitter, announced its highly-anticipated emissions trading scheme (ETS) to help fight global climate change. Across the world, carbon credits were also a key issue of concern when it was announced that the United States would be withdrawing from the Paris Climate Accords.
The founders of New Era Energy (“NewEra”), a blockchain-enabled carbon credits certification protocol, realized there are many flaws and inefficiencies in green technology. For example, historically it has been both costly and slow for companies to get certified for carbon credits. Given the carbon credits market is expected to grow to over $1 trillion by 2030, this creates a massive opportunity to disrupt the carbon credits market and improve current processes.
NewEra is doing just this by using blockchain technology and recently announcing a patent-pending Carbon Credits Certification Protocol to make the process more transparent, safe, and efficient.
Current Issues
One of the biggest problems with most major climate regulation is that it is a group of governments patrolling companies, whose ambition is to maximize profits. This has led to programs such as Cap-and-Trade being major failures through economic loopholes. Furthermore, most green tech projects, particularly in Asia, are missing funding, due to inhibitors from the global finance system. Overall, NewEra knew there had to be a better way to monitor people’s footprint on the Earth and incentivize them to limit it.
The management team from NewEra has spent the last few years exploring the green tech space and understanding just what are the biggest problems. While many believe there is a lack of funding for green tech, they believe the problem lies with the governments and regulation.
As they have seen in Vietnam, many local projects require international funding, but cannot get it, due to investment regulations. In order to help bring about wider adoption of climate change policy and innovations, the world needs a transparent, trustless entity that incentivizes people to personally regulate their actions.
NewEra Launch
What makes NewEra’s launch so interesting is that its decentralized ledger is able to prevent company abuse. Cap-and-trade was an international initiative to “cap” countries’ carbon emissions to certain rates based on current levels and then fine them for going over.
However in practice, wealthy polluting countries simply “traded” credits with other countries and paid less than the tax and poor polluting countries that do not have green investment were the ones that bore the largest tax burden. NewEra’s emission ledger has a patent-pending technology requiring certification by other NewEra users and NGOs and Institutions in their ecosystem, offering protection to the decentralized system.
Tokenizing Incentive
Even with governments removed from the process through decentralization, incentivizing people to regulate their own environmental impact has been troublesome in the global effort to reduce pollution. NewEra is able to solve this incentive problem through cryptocurrency.
NewEra’s token, NERA, can only be earned through “mining”. Mining in the NewEra community means producing Emission Reduction Units (ERUs), which consists of data and digital footprints on the NewEra ledger. Once NERA is obtained, it can be used in the NewEra marketplace.
Every Green Act Counts
NewEra’s blockchain allows for every green act to be rewarded, regardless of how big or small. Where it is installing rooftop solar panels or using a reusable bag at the supermarket, a user will just need to log his activities into NewEra’s system conveniently via app for verification by NewEra’s consensus protocol and be rewarded with tokens from the NewEra blockchain.
Power of the Blockchain
Some of the best features of the blockchain include its ability to regulate economic systems based on trust and transparency. So it is perfectly suited for regulating people’s actions and incentivizing people to protect the environment. Additionally, since it is a decentralized verification network, there is no single entity that can control the data or system. No one can tamper with their reporting or escape the rules, unlike with how current climate initiatives play out on the global level.
The result of using such technology has a direct impact on costs and time as well. For example, issuance of emission certifications will be less than three days with NewEra, compared to the 12-18 month standard time. Also, costs for users are eliminated on the NewEra platform, helping save an average of $30,000 to $80,000.
Eco-friendly Mining
One of the drawbacks of cryptocurrencies is that they typically require energy-intensive mining processes that are bad for the environment. NewEra utilizes processing powered by green energy and so this prevents their blockchain network from further contributing to carbon emissions. This helps solidify the feasibility and impact that the ICO will have upon launch.
Everyone knows the climate needs to be dealt with and that current climate initiatives are not working. Countries and companies are able to bend the rule as they see fit and no one is held accountable. NewEra is helping increase trust and transparency in this complex economic system and will help protect our environment from further decay.
Keep an eye out for NewEra’s upcoming ICO and roadshows that will take place around the world in February.