Correos will offset the CO2 emission caused by its shipments through ClimateTrade. The funds to offset the CO2 emission will go to the Acciona environmental projects.
The Correos y Telégrafos de España State Society, also known as Correos, will use blockchain technology to compensate for the carbon footprint that that entity leaves with its shipping and parcel services in the Spanish territory. This project was announced during the World Climate Summit (COP25), held in Madrid, capital of the European country.
It was reported that the initiative arises from an agreement between Correos and the Climate Blockchain Initiatives startups, which created ClimateTrade, the blockchain that issues the Climatecoin token to compensate for its customers’ carbon footprint; and Acciona, a Spanish company with carbon dioxide (CO2) emission reduction projects.
In a brief explanation of the project, the Correos website states that the objective is “to minimize the number of emissions.” For this reason, the institution “compensates for all emissions caused by the parcel and correspondence shipments made by individuals and small businesses from any of its branches.”
The Way ClimateTrade Works
Through ClimateTrade, environmental mitigation projects register and sell their credits to polluting companies to offset their CO2 emissions. In other words, every time a company ships through Correos, the state company compensates with contributions to environmental projects registered in the ClimateTrade blockchain, such as the Acciona projects.
Among all the advantages of using a blockchain for this type of initiatives, the possibility of tracking funds and greater transparency for this process are the most prominent, as stated by Francisco Benedito, CEO of the firm Climate Trade.
The executive added that carbon credits “could be resold” before, which led to some problems. It happened to be that “the projects to combat climate change did not receive the necessary funds, there were difficulties to conclude them well, and new initiatives were cut.”
Blockchains in Environmental Initiatives
It should be noted that the Correos agreement is not the only recent initiative that involves a blockchain in efforts to mitigate the environmental impact of CO2 emissions. Also from Spain, the energy startup Greenb2e has a tokenization project aimed at the use of renewable energy. In particular, the project seeks to promote ecological practices so that companies adopt them.
Another Spanish project presented in recent weeks is promoted by the department store chain El Corte Inglés, in partnership with the Energías de Portugal (EDP) group. Through this project, both companies will certify the use of renewable energy in El Corte Inglés stores, starting with a pilot in the towns of Malaga, Seville and Cádiz, in the south of Spain.
Concerning Latin America, the government of Chile promoted the Solar Token project, which includes the launch of an Initial Coin Offer (ICO). This project is said to include the commercialization of renewable energy. Solar Token would be an ERC20 token in the Ethereum network, whose value is equivalent in kilowatt-hours to the electric energy produced by projects focused on sustainability.
By Willmen Blanco
