CO2POOL donates 100% of its margin (currently 1.9%) to climate protection. For this purpose, we send the Ada from our Pool Operator Rewards every few epochs in a separate wallet (see here) to keep the sum transparent. Every quarter, we transfer the collected Ada to an exchange to support a climate protection organisation with the proceeds from the sale (unfortunately, it is hardly possible to support organisations directly with Ada so far).
Beforehand, we ask our delegates for their suggestions on which organisation to support and have them vote on it. In spring 2021, we created our own grove with the organisation TreesForLife, which initially started with 50 trees; before that, we had already donated to the preservation of forests in Germany (see also our accountability report of the last donations). At the end of June, we have now planted an additional 150 trees with the collected 930 Ada (equivalent to 900 British pounds / 1,053 €uro / 1,242 US dollars at the end of June) from the 2nd quarter.
Our Cardano grove for climate protection
Little by little, a real grove is being created: the Cardano Grove, dedicated to Ada Lovelace. Since one of our delegates also donated a tree, 201 trees will now be planted in the Scottish Highlands, where they can grow up sustainably and contribute to climate protection.
We already operate our pool climate-neutral through the use of renewable energies (from hydropower). By donating trees, an average of about 2.5 tonnes of CO2 are sequestered annually (12.5 kg of CO2 per tree per year on a long-term average, assuming a lifetime of 80 years), which allows us to offset the emissions of at least 2 other pools from the Cardano blockchain that have not yet switched to renewables. Our goal is to make the Cardano Blockchain carbon neutral overall. The best way to do this is for pool operators to switch to renewable energy, and/or use hardware that consumes (very) little energy. Cardano’s Proof of Stake concept generally provides a good opportunity to make the blockchain climate neutral.
Already a third of all pools in the network use renewable energy, and the effort to compensate for the remaining CO2 emissions is very manageable. According to our estimates, the effort for this is around 24 € per pool and year – a very small amount that makes it very likely that one day we will really be able to achieve our goal of a climate-neutral Cardano Blockchain.
We thank all our delegators and our friendly pool operators from the Cardano Climate Neutral Blockchain Group CNBG for their support. Together we can succeed in creating a future-proof, innovative and climate neutral Cardano Blockchain and revolutionize the world financial system.
Stefan Rehfus, CO2POOL, July 2021