EcoTech Approach – KeeganD

For this project, I’ve developed a framework for a system that both monitors, aids in, and provides rewards for corporate clients looking to reduce their carbon footprint and overall achieve a more environmentally friendly business model.

This idea is a broad one, and it could manifest in a number of different ways, it could be run by the government, and reward clients in tax cuts, or it could be an independent company that rewards companies by more direct means, such as with new equipment, grants, and discounts with partnered businesses. This is probably my most vague project yet, but it’s because it could be done in so many different ways and I really don’t know what would work best in practice so I want to cover all the bases.

The general idea would go something like this, every farm, factory, office building, etc. that wants to participate in the program would sign up to allow us to monitor things like their electricity usage, waste disposal, etc. as well as things like their profit margins and total produced goods or services, which would all be recorded on a blockchain. To quickly recap, all a blockchain is is a super secure database. In the case of bitcoin, it’s considered a ledger, since it primarily records transactions and accounts, but blockchain is adaptable to any digital information structure, any type of database. Now, the blockchain is not a crucial part of this project, rather I just see no reason the technology wouldn’t be utilized for its various benefits, which I wont get into here. Additionally, part of or all of the rewards program could be run on a digital token that lived on the blockchain, further cementing its usefulness, more on this later.

When a company signed up for this program they would be analyzed for a week to a month’s time to determine a base environmental rating. There would be some sort of formula that looked at all the aforementioned metrics, and determined an “environmental rating”. The equation would roughly be something like ER = [TOTAL BENEFICIAL OUTPUT] / [TOTAL ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT]. This way, the rating is a measure of how clean a company can be while still being productive. The reason we would reward companies based on a ratting like this, rather than just on how much they reduce their carbon footprint. Is because it would be easy for a business to simply scale back production so they have a smaller environmental impact, just to reap the benfits of the program, but the goal of this system would be to reduce the carbon footprint per every good or service produced or provided. Be it agriculture, manufacturing, or R&D, we want to make sure that companies maintain if  not improve upon their efficiency while simultaneously reducing their impact on the environment.

Let’s say a company applied to the program, and we accepted them for consideration, we would then equip their facilities with whatever is needed to log the appropriate information on our blockchain. This may include sending an employee to do frequent checkups to make sure no foul play is being done. We would then spend anywhere from a week to a month, gathering data to determine their base rating. Let’s say a company was given a base rating of 65/100, we would accept them into the full program which would involve laying out “goals,” basically meaning, if you raise your score to 70/100 we will provide X tax breaks, or Y discounts on good’s with these partners, etc. If you raise it to 80/100, you’ll earn tax cut Y, etc. etc.

The last part of all this would be that we would actually work with our approved clients to help them improve. We would have an entire sector devoted to providing tools, resources and ideas on reducing carbon footprints. Examples include, connecting clients with solar manufacturers

Now this is just a side idea I had, I don’t know if this would have more benefits than downsides as compared to just working with the US dollar, but there is something to be said for self-feeding economies, so a possibility to explore would be to pay out all rewards in the form of tokens on the blockchain. Now I know what you’re thinking, no it’s not just another bitcoin. Using a cryptocurrency, in this case, would have no benefit over a fiat currency. It would literally be more like a token, that can only be redeemed on our website for everything from equipment to consultation. This coin would not be listed on any “exchanges” and would therefore not have a specific USD value. It would be completely exclusive to exchanging for things that aid your business in being environmentally friendly. We could either allow it to be accepted on parter company sites as well, or simply host their products on our site. (I’m thinking in the realm of companies that actually manufacture eco-friendly equipment, such as solar panels.) One HUGE benefit of this would be that you can be 100% sure that the rewards we provide are being used for further environmental progress.

As for a budget, I hope you dont think I’m taking the easy way out when I say there’s really no way I could estimate this… This could be anything from a project in a small community to an international service. I’d also have no clue where to start estimating costs of certain things.