Zero Carbon Project

Taking on Climate Change

The climate change is real, and countries put significant efforts into reducing carbon emissions, which cause it. On the one hand, there are green energy producers, using solar panels, wind turbines, in other words, the power of water, air, and the sun. On the other hand, there are various international climate agreements, including Kyoto Protocol and Paris Climate Agreement, which established a system where countries stimulate the reduction of the amount of carbon dioxide emissions through three different approaches. The first two are the limit on the total amount of emissions, and carbon dioxide emissions taxation. In other words, some sort of regulation. The third option is interesting though since it's an economic model. The idea is that every enterprise has a right to emit a specific amount of greenhouse gases. This right is also represented by the special form of asset called International Carbon Credits. The thing is, Carbon Credits can be traded. For example, if I own an enterprise that produces, say, steel, (presumably I'm in a country, participating in the climate agreement scheme), I have the right to contaminate the atmosphere with a certain amount of carbon dioxide while producing steel. But I also have another option. I can sell this right to pollute the atmosphere to somebody else (who's in more dire need of polluting the atmosphere) and get money. If then I invest that money into new technologies that would reduce the amount of pollution that my factory produces, it will allow me to sell my rights to emit carbon dioxide again and again. It gives me an economic incentive. Since my production becomes clean, and I don't need my quota of emissions anymore, I can get financial benefits by selling it.

To make it more clear here's an analogy. For example, the government wants to reduce the number of smokers. I smoke regularly, and there are two ways to convince me to cut down: to pressure me with restrictions and fines, or just say that I'm allowed to smoke as many cigarettes per day as I do now, but also my right to smoke is a commodity that I can sell to somebody else. In this way, he/she will be able to smoke one and a half times as much, and I, in turn, will get money, but I'll need to reduce the number of cigarettes to the half of what I smoke now. Still the idea of getting money just for cutting down on smoking sounds enticing. If the goal is to reduce smoking among the population in general, I think, it would work just fine. A key "rabbit from the sleeve" trick, showing that the concept was invented by the Economists, is that it doesn't really cost anybody anything. Like, the government won't need to pour a lot of money into anti-tobacco programs. The only thing it has to do is to announce that everybody has a quota on daily smoking, which can be traded as an asset. Another thing is that it doesn't require unpopular measures, like heavy taxation on tobacco products for example. So this is a pretty smart idea, and this smoking example is an analogy to a system that has actually been implemented to stimulate reduction of carbon dioxide pollution.

It can work in a similar way, for example, with electricity producers. The electricity produced using clean methods like solar panels or wind turbines is more expensive than electricity produced in a traditional way, like, burning a lot of coal. As a result, the overall consumer prices are higher. In order to convince electricity consumers to switch to green energy, they need some economic incentive. If we consider a marketplace, where different energy suppliers compete with each other and, at the same time, the marketplace wants to give a competitive advantage to clean energy producers, the mechanism of International Carbon Credits can be used to offset the imbalance where traditional electricity producers have an advantage of lower production costs.

Zero Carbon Project aims to organize such a marketplace. The project has several objectives. The first objective is to create a platform where multiple small producers of electricity can offer their product and find customers. The customers, in turn, will have a wide choice between multiple energy companies and can pick the one, which terms suit them the best. To make the pricing even more flexible, the platform is planning to offer reverse auctions, where among bids, placed by different energy suppliers, wins the one with the lowest price. The second objective is to stimulate clean energy production. In order to do that and to give clean energy producers an edge over traditional electricity producers, the latter would need to buy International Carbon Credits. This is going to balance the prices and make green energy producers more competitive. Moreover, the platform, in fact, offers a market for Carbon Credits where green energy producers can get immediate financial benefits, selling their pollution quota, i.e., International Carbon Credits. The whole scheme is in line with the principles of international climate agreements, which, as I mentioned before, are designed to stimulate companies to reduce their carbon footprint.

Zero Carbon Project is a subsidiary of Beond, an award-winning energy consultancy company based in the UK. Among Beond’s clients are Knight Frank, Capita, The Salvation Army, and Salford County Council. The project has lined up all major electricity producers in the UK, which are ready to start working with the platform starting from October 2018, when the project will be officially launched in the UK. In 2019 Zero Carbon Project is going to expand its operations globally, including US, Germany, France, Spain, the Netherlands, Japan, Italy, Canada, New Zealand. Overall, considering the Zero Carbon project's background and support of electricity producers and suppliers, it seems like it's a trustworthy startup. Also, taking into consideration growing concerns about global warming and its potential and actual consequences, as well as the fact that governments pay more and more attention to the problem, I think the project with its agenda of supporting green energy producers and its contribution to the reduction of carbon emissions is going to get a lot of support.

During 2018 Zero Carbon Project will conduct a public token sale with an aim to distribute 33,330,000 Energis tokens, plus any tokens remaining from private pre-sale. The hard cap of the sale is $5,000,000