I’m planning on developing Gaja again.
Learn more at https://climategaja.wordpress.com/
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Hi James, I’d be happy to help you with this. I was part of developing the EU Carbon Market in the early 2000’s, well, at least some of the trading behind it. I would however suggest not trying to focus only on emissions. Come at it from a more holistic perspective i.e. climate change is about so much more than just emissions. Read Charles Eisenstein’s free online book for more on this…
Climate: A New Story | Charles Eisenstein
You’re in Australia, I’m in South Africa. We both have massive coal mining industries on our doorsteps. Miners are struggling to secure funding and they need to change their business models dramatically. If there’s a currency that valued the cost of all emissions (Scope 1, 2 and 3) as well as the cost of polluting water, destroying topsoil, acid mine drainage etc. then that could be quite useful. Why? Because miners would be perpetually “short” this currency and would need to buy it / fund it. Businesses who go about restoring coal mines and the “Just Transition” could be paid this currency as investment in their businesses, in order to do their good work.
I think if you broadened the scope of Gaia or Gaja, you could attract funding from ESG and Impact investors for this type of work.
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Hi Bevan, thanks for your feedback and interest in helping!
Perhaps in the long-term the scope can be expanded as you suggest; and what you suggest is a good idea. However, in order to develop something useful more quickly, I think it’s better to limit the scope initially to rewarding emissions removal and abatement (possibly with an initial focus on rewarding specific abatement and removal projects that may be easier to measure, verify and reward emissions removal/abatement, such as renewable energy generation, energy efficiency), while keeping the design flexible and modular enough to use for rewarding the avoidance of other negative environmental impacts and for replacing them with opposite positive impacts.
It will be challenging enough to implement this limited scope initially, as well as integrating with Decentr to provide a sort of exchange rate for goods and services and individuals that accounts for environmental performance.
Additionally, my thinking is that it is more important to reward emissions removers and abaters than to add on costs for emitters. The writing is already on the wall for fossil fuels—they can’t compete with solar, batteries, and wind, purely on economics. This is the case for new-build fossil fuels, and all centralized, utility-scale generation is or will be (depending on location) stranded assets, unable to compete with SWB as costs continue to decline below transmission and distribution costs. In Australia, this has already happened. Right now, emissions removers typically depend on grants, loans, donations, or government regulated ETSs that are limited by jurisdictions. So while fossil fuels are in decline, and renewable energy is on the rise, emissions removal is still struggling to gain traction. Hopefully Gaja will change that.
In any case, reducing the cost of emissions/pollution/environmental harm through rewarding abatement and cleanup/removal of pollution/etc., and making it more expensive to cause environmental harm, through Decentr “community consensus” and a personal exchange rate, will help to accelerate the move to a safer climate and healthier environment, and a better, happier world.
Regarding your interest in helping, we’ll have to discuss that in more detail.
recently the KLIMAdao was launched, that allows you to stake in the CO2 emissions market. I guess there’s some overlap and a likeminded community? KLIMA dApp | dapp.klimadao.finance
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This is my particular take on it, clean up the whole system!