Polygon, the leading Ethereum scaling platform bringing millions of people to Web3, announced that its network had reached carbon neutrality on its way to becoming carbon negative. It did this by completely retiring $400,000 in carbon credits to make up for 90,000 tonnes of greenhouse gases that have been released since its blockchain started.
Polygon achieved its manifesto of April 2022
Polygon reached this point after putting out its Green Manifesto in mid-April, which is part of its larger plan for sustainable development. The platform has promised $ 20 million for several community projects that will use Web3 to make a better future for everyone, such as new ways to retire carbon credits on-chain.
Polygon became carbon neutral by working with KlimaDAO, a decentralized group of environmentalists, developers, and business owners widely known as a pioneer in the young, on-chain carbon market. The previously opaque voluntary credit markets are now clear and easy to use, thanks to KlimaDAO.
In the first step of Polygon’s long-term environmental stewardship, KlimaDAO and Offsetra evaluated the network’s carbon footprints to find places with a lot of emissions and devise a good way to reduce them. The scope of the study included:
- Emission levels from staking node hardware.
- The amount of energy used by staking operations.
- Contracts that interact directly with the Ethereum mainnet.
Polygon works with the Crypto Carbon Ratings Institute (CCRI) to check its carbon footprint.
Polygon then bought a $ 400,000 value of tokenized credits on the on-chain carbon market and used KlimaDAO’s offset aggregator tool to get rid of them. All BCT and MCO2 tokenized credits were made from offsets certified under the Verified Carbon Standard. This is one of many independent standards backed by the International Carbon Reduction and Offset Alliance (ICROA), a key industry body that sets best practices and ensures environmental integrity in the voluntary carbon market.
How did Polygon achieve this feat?
Polygon also started working with KlimaDAO to support certain initiatives on its blockchain by retiring the carbon credits that these projects have made. Here are the projects:
- The Bull Run Forest Conservation project in Belize protects pine forests about 14 times the size of New York’s Central Park.
- The Greenko Group’s Ghani Solar Power Project is a 500-megawatt solar power plant in Kurnool, Andhra Pradesh, India. It is part of a larger solar park. Over the next ten years, the project will keep 887,800 tons of greenhouse gases from being released each year.
- The wind power project in Jaibhim, India, was built by Suzlon for the Serum Institute of India, which makes vaccines. The institute set up 16 Wind Turbine Generators (WTGs), which produce 50,662 megawatts of electricity annually and reduce 53,000 tons of greenhouse gases.
- Moss.MCO2 Earth’s token pays for several projects to protect the Amazon rainforest.
What did the project-associated people say?
Archimedes, a spokesperson for KlimaDAO, said, “We are very happy to be working with Polygon, which is our home chain. We must keep working together to move the on-chain carbon market forward and make KlimaDAO and Polygon the most innovative companies in this space.”
With blockchain technology, offsetting carbon emissions is more powerful than ever because carbon credits of any amount can be retired transparently. People and businesses can buy carbon offsets, look at real-time market data, and speed up the funding of high-impact carbon projects worldwide.
By offsetting all of the network’s past emissions, Polygon has made sure that every transaction, whether it’s the minting of an NFT or a DeFi trade, is accounted for, and its impact on the environment is balanced out.
Sandeep Nailwal, the co-founder of Polygon, said, “The world is facing an environmental crisis, and the blockchain industry needs to do much more than just say it won’t add to the problem. Reaching carbon neutrality is an important first step, but there is still more work. Polygon will lead the way as the industry becomes good for the environment overall.”
On July 13, Polygon will organize The Green Blockchain Summit, a virtual meeting for Web3 leaders to work on solutions to the blockchain industry’s most pressing environmental challenges. The event aims to set standards and best practices for the Green blockchain space. It will bring together founders, operators, investors, academics, and other people from Web3 and beyond.
