Blue Foundation at Blockchain Summit announced the launch of the Bluenote, a new blockchain-based currency to stimulate investment in zero-emission cities. The first Bluenote projects leveraging the blockchain platform will be investments in emission-reducing technology upgrades of commercial office buildings.
The initial coin offering (ICO) for the Bluenote token sale has already launched for private investors and will be open to the public shortly.
Thirty percent of global CO2 emissions are caused by buildings and the electricity they consume. At the same time, energy-efficiency investments have been shown to be the least-expensive method of reducing CO2 emissions.
The initial building retrofit projects will demonstrate how the platform can create new markets to identify, finance and implement replicable projects that achieve environmental, economic and social benefit. The Bluenote will operate on an open and transparent platform, allowing any number of “Blue” projects to upload their raw performance data and receive a community-verified calculation of the carbon-emission reduction or social impact – a permanent, tradable attribute that is traceable to its data source.
The launch of Bluenote comes on the heels of last week’s discussions among international climate experts at the 23rd annual COP23 conference in Bonn, Germany, where the world’s climate negotiators sounded a clarion call for major new investment in low-carbon strategies. Bluenote will fulfill the need articulated by the conference’s attendees – in particular by unlocking the opportunity for $1.5 trillion in new climate investments each year in order to meet the goals of the Paris Accords.
“If the world is going to succeed in meeting its climate goals, someone needs to prove that investing in carbon reduction is good for the bottom line,” said Michiel Frackers, chairman of the Blue Foundation. Jeremy Adelman, energy venture capitalist and Bluenote co-founder adds: “Markets will only open up to a broader range of greenhouse gas-reduction strategies with greater, more-granular transparency. You need to build trust that the impacts are real and that the investments pencil out.”
Private capital and markets have played a role in carbon emission reduction policies when outcomes are easy-to-measure – such as renewable energy-generation at its meter – but fail to take off when results are harder to measure. The Bluenote data-analysis platform will bridge this gap, leveraging the transparency and auditability of blockchain to help users streamline and even automate data analysis and gain insights to fuel and justify investments. Third parties will be able to develop other modules to analyze their own unique emission reduction projects.