Energy Web Is Starting With Ripple in Its Bid to Make Crypto Provably Green

Announced Wednesday, Energy Web, a non-profit focused on decentralized approaches to decarbonizing the grid, wants to show how a large blockchain platform can switch to a zero-carbon footprint.

To start with, the organization is teaming up with San Francisco-based Ripple and the XRP Ledger Foundation.

Ripple's support of this venture is intended to open the door to other blockchains with more energy-intensive operations like Bitcoin, said Jesse Morris, Energy Web's chief commercial officer.

This initial deployment uses energy attribute certificates from renewable energy sources to decarbonize electricity, the companies said.

"Blockchains are a massive energy hog and a lot of that electricity is not coming from wind, solar, hydro or other sustainable facilities," said Morris.

"So we have been thinking for a while now about how we could help the crypto industry decarbonize blockchains, given the distributed nature of the technology."

In the case of Ripple, a 500-person fintech company focused on crypto-powered banking, there is an obvious starting point when it comes to reducing the firm's carbon footprint.

Ripple uses a consensus system quite unlike Bitcoin's proof-of-work mining, an algorithm that by definition must burn through a ton of electricity.

"Ripple is leveraging the fact that people associate heavy energy consumption with blockchains, but that's only really proof-of-work," said de Vries.

"Imagine in the future having a wallet interacting with some blockchain, and as a part of that wallet you can actually increase your transaction fee just a bit and you've just contributed to decarbonizing the blockchain by purchasing a certificate somewhere," said Morris.