Polygon pledges to go carbon negative in 2022

Polygon announced its “Green Manifesto: A Smart Contract with Planet Earth” today, a commitment to go carbon negative this year. 

They also pledged $20 million to implement a multi-layered sustainable development strategy to build a more sustainable future for their ecosystem, customers and the planet, Coin Journal learned from a press release. 

First collaboration is with KlimaDAO 

The first initiative will be in collaboration with KlimaDAO, the most high-profile proponent of facilitating the nascent on-chain carbon market. 

KlimaDAO, in partnership with Offsetra, has provided Polygon with a carbon footprint analysis to evaluate the network’s carbon intensity and, in turn, inform emission management and mitigation strategy.

The completed analysis includes emissions from staking node hardware, emissions from the energy consumption of their operations, and emissions from contracts directly interacting with Ethereum Mainnet.

Ethereum responsible for 99% of emissions

The analysis showed checkpointing and bridging activities that involve transactions on Ethereum Mainnet are responsible for over 99% of Polygon’s emissions. Since the network was created, checkpointing has resulted in over 16,000 tonnes of emissions and bridging has resulted in nearly 74,000 tonnes. 

As of February 2022, the total emissions for Polygon since the network’s inception were 90,654 tonnes of carbon. 

Polygon to purchase carbon credits

To offset the carbon impact of its ecosystem, Polygon will purchase high-quality, traceable BCT and MCO2 carbon credits via KlimaDAO’s on-chain carbon market Klima Infinity to offset 90,654 tonnes of carbon. 

Polygon has commissioned the Crypto Carbon Ratings Institute (CCRI) to provide a secondary audit of its carbon footprint to substantiate this data and ensure validity.

Pledging $20M to offset emissions

Polygon has pledged $20 million to offset carbon emissions and implement a series of community initiatives. They will fund projects using technology to combat or solve climate change to sustain their focus on sustainable practices.

Polygon improves the usability and ecological viability of Ethereum by means of scaling solutions such as Polygon PoS, Polygon Edge, Polygon Avail, Polygon Nightfall, and Polygon Hermez. The ecosystem’s sustainability pledge precedes Ethereum’s transition to PoS, which will reduce the network’s energy consumption by almost 99 percent. 

Sandeep Nailwal, co-founder of Polygon, commented:

We have reached a decisive point in human history. The actions we take within the next decade will determine the fate of the entire planet. Our outlined measures may eliminate the emissions of the Polygon ecosystem, but that’s not enough to effect the kind of change needed to combat the climate crisis at scale. Together with Polygon, the broader blockchain industry needs to form a united front to fund, support, and leverage technology that helps heal the earth, rather than destroy it.