Web3 leaders create Ethereum Climate Platform

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) at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP27).

The ECP said its mission is to incentivise 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 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 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 decarbonisation 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 Organisations (NGOs) and Intergovernmental Organisations (IGOs), plus representatives of regional and international climate organisations such as the Climate Collective, and other expert entities like sustainability consultancy ERM, are some of the stakeholders being engaged.

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 decarbonisation 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 percent 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 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.”

The platform is being built for and by the Ethereum ecosystem but the intention is to serve as a model to the global tech and business community to offset their own historic carbon footprint.