AUSTIN, Texas – For the past three decades, national governments throughout the world have sought to reduce carbon dioxide gas emissions using various financial incentives. Although a well-known factor in climate change, most of these efforts have failed.

Enter Swytch, a blockchain-based platform that tracks CO2 emissions and verifies the impact sustainability efforts have on them worldwide. By leveraging open Oracle technology, Swytch acts as a distributed authority, awarding tokens to people, companies, and other organizations that make a meaningful and measurable difference in reducing CO2 emissions.

For instance, producers of renewable energy can create Swytch tokens by generating solar, wind, and other forms of renewable energy. In the future, Swytch also intends to factor in energy demand response, electric vehicle usage, and other sustainable actions as a means to earn tokens . Token holders will have the right to claim carbon offsets, access the platform that houses oracle data, and continuously engage in the platform’s development. Thus, the Swytch network aims to produce a self-regulated universal token standard.

Evan Caron

In February 2017, a former Wall Street energy trader named Evan Caron co-founded Swytch . He recognized the need for standardizing how people track, verify and exchange energy data. As Caron notes, achieving this goal will enable smart cities to adopt new technology, cooperate in reducing climate change, and create a better power grid.

Expanding Access

Caron contends that his Swytch network will resolve several issues that currently plague energy market systems. “There Is no standard (for tracking energy) now,” Caron said. “The (energy) markets are factored. Each has its own rules and administration. It’s also hard to certify (green) compliant assets. We’re building the technology to streamline that process to make it easier to afford. We hope to increase (sustainable energy) adoption.”

As a consequence, corporations seeking to offset carbon emissions will be able to do so in a more timely and distributed fashion. In addition, energy sector firms will be able to use their tokens to access energy-usage data sets relating to energy production and ROI estimators.

Governments will also value Swytch, particularly if it succeeds as an off-the-shelf incentive program. Individuals passionate about accelerating the adoption of renewable supply and sustainability programs will also benefit from tokenization.

Reforming Incentives

Today only about 10-15 percent of carbon emissions are covered under some form of a green incentive program. Many types of these programs exist, from carbon taxes to feed-in tariffs to renewable energy certificates. As Caron notes, each sponsoring state, country, or region uses its own approach to promote sustainability. Unfortunately, this patchwork approach leads to incredible complexity and limited effectiveness (as they seek to impose artificial political borders on a borderless problem).

“We also have the classic issue of centralized, government regulations, many of which are not particularly well designed,” says Caron. “These programs use old data to inform incentive structures that don’t reflect current market conditions. Also, they are decades behind on the technology front which means the programs end up being very manual and therefore expensive to administer for governments and participants.”

Moreover, the current system also favors entrenched players, like utilities, while cutting out innovative start-ups and individuals. Caron noted the enormous pent-up demand to participate in the fight against climate change, one which government programs are not designed to tap into and never will.

Solar Panels

Finally, all of these existing incentive programs operate as cost centers.

“Basically, we ask responsible companies to become green martyrs and charge them for their proactive approach,” Caron said. “Why not create a fungible asset that holds real value, is inversely correlated to the decline of the fossil-fuel economy, and provides a real incentive to accelerate adoption of renewable technologies and sustainable behavior? We can use Swytch to actually reward globally beneficial behavior instead of penalizing it. Makes sense to me.”

To learn more about Swytch, click on https://swytch.io/