
It’s Time to Move on From Fossil Fuels—What was their Impact in 2023?
The annual Global Carbon Budget reported a 1.1% increase in fossil fuels, carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, reaching 36.8 billion tonnes in 2023
ClimateTrade 🠒 Climate Change News

The annual Global Carbon Budget reported a 1.1% increase in fossil fuels, carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, reaching 36.8 billion tonnes in 2023

As the UN Climate Summit, COP28, draws to a close, the urgency of addressing the climate crisis is more apparent than ever.

In 2015 world leaders made a promise to reach the 17 sustainable development goals by 2030. We are halfway there and only 15% of SDG’s are on track. So what’s next?

The European Union enters the transitional phase of its climate action strategy (CBAM), while it faces pressure to tackle carbon-emitting industries.

Slowing down global warming hinges on stopping deforestation while embracing natural climate solutions holds the potential to generate fresh avenues of income as global carbon markets develop.

In order to tackle the climate crisis, it’s important to determine priorities. These are the world’s most polluting industries – those it is crucial to decarbonize if we are to meet our climate goals.

The agreement between Inproyen and ClimateTrade aims to decarbonize mining, fossil fuels, agriculture, waste and industry. A Coruña, October 11, 2022 – Inproyen, the international business group for technical-scientific environmental consulting and the development of green technologies, has signed a collaboration agreement with ClimateTrade, the blockchain-based climate solution provider, to decarbonize the mining, fossil fuels, agriculture, waste and industry sectors. Through this collaboration, Inproyen and ClimateTrade will prepare decarbonization plans for their clients, to whom they will also offer services such as Inproyen’s carbon footprint calculation and ClimateTrade’s climate marketplace. They will also work on the joint development of educational content on climate change mitigation for these sectors. “Our strategic and pioneering alliance with ClimateTrade aims to support decarbonization and achieve carbon neutrality, which will not only give importance to the technical work of our collaborators, but also to their environmental awareness,” says Diego Arán , CEO of Inproyen. Inproyen’s long experience supporting innovative environmental projects in companies with high CO2 emission levels in Spain and Latin America, and the versatility of ClimateTrade as a blockchain-based platform for transparent offsetting of the climate impact of companies, constitutes a great synergy to achieve the global goals of decarbonization and sustainable development. Francisco Benedito, CEO of ClimateTrade, comments: “We are proud to work with Inproyen for the decarbonization of some of the most polluting sectors in the world. The synergy created by this agreement will generate benefits not only for both parties, but also for the planet.”

Understand how this technology brings innovation and transparency to the carbon market. In the Kyoto protocol (1997) signing countries agreed to limit the emissions of six greenhouse gases, here is where carbon credits were born. This meant that polluting companies, instead of paying taxes to the governments, could pay directly to the companies which generate those credits. Likewise any traditional market, brokers started to speculate and get most of the profit, preventing money from reaching the green projects and hence hindering their development. This not only left unprotected carbon credit sellers but also buyers who could be sold the same credit several times (due to the lack of transparency and traceability of the carbon credits cancellation mechanism). The problem as it usually happens was that the market was centralized in the hands of traditional brokers, who used to manage their own databases which can be manipulated at their own discretion, being able to write, change, delete and restrict access or other actions. The process also becomes more expensive, lengthy and tedious, discouraging many companies from buying / selling carbon credits. ClimateTrade brings this situation to an end, allowing companies and project developers to benefit from blockchain technology. Blockchains are distributed ledgers which replicate the data across the different nodes involved in the network.That is, instead of being centralized on a single server, the information is decentralized on different computers, each saving its own copy. This prevents any record from being changed or deleted, since it only allows adding new data, thus preventing data from being altered or manipulated. The information on a public blockchain is accessible to everyone and visible on any block explorer, facilitating the traceability and transparency of canceled carbon credits. Neither ClimateTrade, nor the creators of the blockchain itself could alter the information since all nodes have replicas of the data and are required to follow the consensus algorithm, which ensures the immutability of the data stored in them. The consensus algorithm used in the blockchains we work with is Proof of Stake. The first blockchains are Proof of Work (Bitcoin and Ethereum 1.0) which involves spending huge amounts of energy to produce new blocks and concentrate the power in the hands of a few miner pools. On the contrary, the Proof of Stake allows to process a greater number of transactions per second, decentralizing the rewards per block to anyone who operates the blockchain token together with a laptop or mobile connected to validate the blocks, thus saving on fees and reducing the environmental impact in more than 99%. To go further in the process of automation, ClimateTrade created a REST API available to company developers who wish to integrate this innovative system. This allows the incorporation of already existing projects called from this API into its code, thus offsetting the carbon footprint generated in their business processes.

IETA promotes carbon credits for bridging the emissions gap, but emphasizes responsible use through new guidelines for climate action.
