Unleashing the Power of Blockchain for Sustainable Development | European Blockchain Convention 9

[Music] 3 2 1 lovely as you can see we can prepar and to be certain please know that I hope you found your way here because it was quite a challenge Beyond this point um first off thank you Victoria thank you what his name already Daniel for inviting us today and to be able to exchange great ideas to together number one I'm very pleased to be able to uh present you our sads we are try to do great stuff to reduce carbon footprint make something sustainable in a planet which is apparently heating especially in this month of October so number one I will allow my dear friend to present himself coming from Slovenia yeah it's work better if it's turned on yeah it's correct hello everybody my name is Gregor Novak I'm coming from Sun contract uh first worldwide peer-to-peer energy Marketplace uh uh we are on the market already 5 years we are kind of special energy provider uh using blockchain and enable peer-to-peer tradings without intermediates thank you a lot and we have a dlad coming from Switzerland hi uh my name is Andes from the codos foundation and I ask myself everyday questions as how we can make a token economy that is not py schemed that we can still reward people with a token that is valuable and then we have Nora F guided from UNICEF hi hi everyone this is Nara thuta CD for Giga UNICEF and the lead for the tech center that we just launched here in Barcelona and a bit of background because some people might be surprised of having UNICEF here G Isa partnership between UNICEF and itu to connect every school in the world to the internet and for that we leverage both technology and blockchain thank you a lot uh me I'm Eve Michelle I'm working for neurochain and we try to for instance uh build some logistic system to improve traceability tracking and reduce it observed so far by about 30% and it's just a start so as you can see here we have real practitioners people who are makers not something like when moon when Lambo so great moment and the second point of interest is that most of the time when you look at the TV show specialist and so on they speak about ghd cdb sbti I think they are try to R the alphabet what we tried to do today is actually to present you what the real topic is and how we concretely challenge the CO2 impact so number one the big point is how does a blockchain which is considered to be burning Planet only Bitcoin right now trust me um how can we actually use blockchain techn to harness and enhance transparency on one side and the accountability of CO2 footprint on the other side for instance yes this actually a great topic and great needs uh we know that uh we need Renewables we need to come going down with CO2 emissions and yes everybody would say yes blockchain is using also the energy for for that reason uh but uh of course if we do blockchain on the proper way let's say if we do uh uh uh like ethereum now or some other blockchains which are not energy consuming a lot uh but but blockchain can brings really something new it means brings a business new business models these business models where we can enable people they used to be not able to be enabled let's say especially in renewable energy sector where we can enable people they come to the to the sector so they can install solar power plants they can use the energy and we can manage that they these people who are producing and consuming energy can meet each other can trade each other and of course we need trust we can do it you know even in one country usually is trust is a problem and transparency in energy I can tell you there is no transparency you don't know from where your energy is coming from and we actually this we change this with Niche that you know exactly from which provider and from which type what energy you are using and even more you can even decide the price uh for this energy and you do peer-to-peer so this was actually able with uh technology which is blockchain which brings us trust and transparency in this behalf thank you a lot and trust me being in Germany or in France all the big Tech is trying to to prove they are green energy so it's a real current topic second in UNICEF Giga how do you actually put accountable the CO2 footprint sure um you you talked about the energy sector but the te Telco sector not it also lacks a bit of transparency and it's a sector where um often times you don't know what's happening Telos get contracts to connect schools or other public institutions but then um these public entities don't have a way to know whether the money they are investing it's actually being delivered and whether connectivity is being delivered uh one of the things that Giga is doing it's first of all mapping every school in the world this may sound maybe simple but the truth is that we don't know how many schools there are in the world um we believe that there are around six million schools in the world but we don't know for sure so the first thing that we do is to map schools in the world map their connectivity status in real time know what's their quality of service and put that on chain so that we know what was their status on in a moment of time uh and then use that to better manage contracts and increase transparency so we are matching this data that we are gathering against contracts that governments issue to make sure that the service level agreements and the terms in the contract are being met and then we can use again eventually smart contracts to automate payments based on performance if you see that school is connected then the payment can go through uh whereas if you see that connectivity it's not working in a school then the the payment can be put on hold until connectivity it's put back to make sure that the the money that we are investing is really reaching the hardest to reach schools so in other word it goes beyond money control Bank beware beyond that point actually we have a thir sector which is represented thanks to transportation and commuting how do you actually control or even make statement of what is a current CO2 footprint and how do you prove your approach that you encourage really reduces CO2 or any equivalent I mean just to say that as my colleague said there's a lot of applications for blockchain and the idea that blockchain equals uh CO2 creation rather than saving just comes from this proof of work which I think was great that Bitcoin started uh the whole blockchain uh space in that way but I think we are it's clear that we are moving away from that and using blockchain has so many applications and it's just exciting to see what can develop and one thing that we are developing at quos Foundation is rewarding users for commuting sustainably and it's just crazy how much of the world actually commutes by car and so many of them use a car for one person uh it's actually 5% more than 5% of CO2 emissions globally come just from car commuting so what we're trying to do at codos is by rewarding users to use sustainable ways of Transportation uh to shift from car commuting to train bike uh walking and just we're trying to find a thres hole of where is enough for people to make that transition right because somehow there is an inherited uh feeling in everyone that when you get something for free or for very little effort it doesn't have to be huge but you still make the effort and if the effort is just taking a few more minutes driving on a train rather than on your car and you have a community to back that up where your friends see oh you're making an effort he's making an effort it can really spread and be like sustainable commuting can become sexy and through that awareness of CO2 uh like of knowing how much CO2 you would spend if you are commuting by car as opposed to another mean of transportation that can make a big change so there's the tangible part of I change from car to train for example and that you can quantify and there is an intangible part of now that I'm aware of CO2 emissions and I have it more in my mind then I will make a bigger effort in other aspects of my life and I will become interest about this so it's really about bringing awareness to everyone so basically if you take just a wonderful Google Map you have two choices this morning either you take the subway either you take the cab trust me same time for both but it's maybe a single city on Earth you see it I took the ebag by the way let's go to the next step if you don't mind because you said well we could at least reduce CO2 footprint but how do you promote thanks to your activity renewable um energy creation for instance actually what we do actually we promote self sustainability people if they're sustainable even the household the companies we actually the receive I mean the goal is there so and um we actually Sun contract actually enabled the tools that people can manage their sustainability so for example uh they can install solar power plant they can use energy and exceed of power they can move to another part of the country uh even next year will be another country uh and use this energy there of course renewable energy only we have only Renewables in the on the platform uh this is let's say one example second example the the companies uh which are now really Under Pressure because of the high energy prices they would like to hatch they would like to hatch their energy at least for let's say half of of the portfolio they are buying because they are very dependent on the energy prices for the product and their competit competitors I mean their uh the competition they have so uh actually we enable them they do let's say long-term contract on our platforms with some renewable energy energy providers Hydro solar Co generation and they do peer-to-peer with them for let's say one two three years and they they hatch uh the the cons the production they they they they agree uh directly with this producers and of course they save some uh money and they know predictions what the energy price will be the rest they go uh to the spot market so we actually enable them they do peer-to-peer with other produc users or they can enter to the spot Market maybe for your introduction if you're not for energy sector you as a as a company or you as a household you cannot go to the energy exchange your I mean energy is totally different so it's the energy exchange you there is just a few hundred of companies in Europe Union that can go to European energy exchange l in liic so this is we enable them they come to energy exchange they can enable or they do with other peers they do so they hedging so so it means we enable these companies to be more self-sufficient and they can have control the costs and then everything is done and also the savings they are doing are done by Renewables so actually we convert them to be self-sufficient C this is our aim we are not a energy let's say classical provider who are selling energy but we are actually the our mission is to convert our customers to be self-sufficient if more customer is self-sufficient more is community is more self-sufficient and also the the plant is more s sufficient thank you and for the record I've been working lucky boy for to uh I've been working with utilities and systematically here yes but it's just cryptos you don't see the engineering the voltage and the ampers and all this stuff is going to explode no technical tools exist number one number two when you work as a utility provider for electricity trust me you are not working alone you work with literally thousands of small producers users so it exists its daily routine and just for the country of France for a big utility the average was 9,612 people with whom you have to work each plant so it's feasible and right now they spend Millions literally to try to monitor it and make it stable but what would be interesting is what do they do about codos to actually promote renewable energy usage I mean our we roach is really centered on this commuting part of course it's not the whole of the problem in CO2 but we cannot tackle everything at the same time and then here the idea is as I said before rewarding the users for sustainable commuting and then in order to I mean we use blockchain two ways right one way is the blockchain gave us the infrastructure out of the box almost to create uh all this complicated trans actions right so you can make a token and you solve the problem of how to transact with that token without I don't know for anybody that is not very technical it sounds like very easy I send you five of whatever and you just receive it but how do I verify it that I'm not sending you five and Gregor five and naroa five uh without and I only have five right five tokens of something so that gets solved by blockchain and that's really cool uh and then we use that to create a token economy and then of course we need to monetize it uh in order to not have just a pony scheme token as so many other tokens so actually you have the humility to say well we are doing commuting we are not doing everything yes that that's our uh let's say starting point yeah you're an enabler for that congratulations and what do you do by giga um well as Andre said earlier we believe that free things don't last over time so at Giga we are building an economy and a sustainable a model for connectivity so that it can last over time we are building this Marketplace similar to carbon credits but for connectivity where the goal is to incentivize providers to go to remote areas or to places that wouldn't be as attractive otherwise um depending on how difficult it's to connect a school depending on the impact by connecting that school providers will be rewarded by a number of tokens and then they'll be able to redeem these tokens for tax extensions tax breaks cheaper access to Spectrum access to Shared infrastructure Etc and through that we are promoting this um access through uh the entire Globe another important thing is that to connect or to bring internet to to anywhere basically you need electricity and you need energy without electricity there is no internet um so at the same time as connect ing schools we are also bringing electricity to many communities and many schools and in when doing that we are also promoting the the green energy and solar energy so basically internet also has a carbon footprint and through this Marketplace similar to carbon credits we are also incentivizing good behavior if a provider connects a school using green energy then the the reward will be greater than if they are using a generator or electrical GD or other types of energy so through that and we are also trying to minimize the carbon footprint and the impact that uh will be making in the in the environment by connecting the schools that's absolutely amazing do you want to add something yeah no not to this point yeah okay because some things that really interesting the more I hear kodus speaking the more I see that we need to build new business models and to innovate we can't stand the fact that we have to create the same kind of product again again again year to year the point point is that the more you try to stick to the L models that is when lumo when Moon buy you my nfts trust me the first time I try to sell nfts to people well I was able to give it but it was not as easy to find on the other side for plenty of reasons so right now how do you actually create some new business model in UNICEF we're looking into different ways for doing that and maybe I'll focus on the ones that are blockchain Centric we have more than that you talked about nfts um a while ago over a year ago we launched I believe it was the largest un nft collection a 1,000 nfts that would represent our data and schools in the world H it was kind of like a snapshot of the status of the school connectivity at that moment in time each nft had a set of schools some schools were not connected and they were in another part of the world based on whether they were connected or not and through that we were able to raise at that time over 700,000 us that then helped of course fund School connectivity we are now shifting also because I think the nft trend has also shifted a little bit H we are now building and launching the our new collection this time it's not going to be for fundraising but for creating the largest decentralized school database where we'll be able to crowdsource this data and the public and the crowd will be able to maintain this public um digital public good that will be accessible to anyone and then that can be linked to access to funds schools will be able to own these nfts and through that um access and different types of funds also exchange value through that and maybe the the last thing that an experiment that we did also last year H we uh we had couple of notes staking notes and then the rewards from this staking would go towards School connectivity towards this monthly fees that the schools have to pay uh and in that way you can have the sustainable way of paying for school connectivity over time I this vision of decentralized H physical infrastructure where each school could be running its own node and through that they'd be able to sustain and pay for their connectivity over time without necessarily having to fund that uh publicly how do you actually transform the way to commute on an Innovative Way by kodos on a what sorry Innovation Innovative way yeah so I think what is interesting about codos is that there are so many business possibilities regarding uh this idea of rewarding users because that that's what the user gets they download the app they get rewarded they go sustainably to work but how do you make a business out of that and if you think about it like the simplest thing that comes to me now is uh your car insurance I have a car I go I take the train every day to work and then of course my car insurance will be very happy that I'm not using my car during the week and that's just one thing so there you could monetize the data of uh the the people going to work uh with a train or with a bus or with a bike uh and then there is the aspect of companies you know maybe a company wants to motivate their employees to go sustainably to work so they could actually make extra rewards for them or they could make a competition like who bikes more to work I used to have that at my previous University uh we had a like a big pot for whoever would bike to work the most and it was all on our base how much you were biking to work and of course we have machine learning algorithms checking that what you're saying you're doing you are actually doing uh so that's just another way and there's really countless ways like you can have the governments support the project uh you can have companies that are interested in ESG like say uh support say 1,000 kilometers of sustainable commute and then in a way they could be offsetting all of their employees commutes to work regardless of whether they're going by car or by Train by supporting other people that are commuting sustainably so instead of like CO2 bonds it's like sustainable commutes to work please note that right now in Europe at least if you're an employer you do not have a metric saying what is a global CO2 footprint for all your company but you have to put targets per employee specifically so that it reduces and this is also why if you have this wonderful ESG that is absolutely mandatory for every citizen who have a company above 50 people to show okay now reduce commute favor um how can I say um work from home so the question is today when you have all these additional electricity consumption because it was before I would say generalized in one office you can see the bill now you have to multiply it multiply a coffee machine very important one for French trust me and multipli the teams meeting or with wonderful stuff of metaverse how do you actually turn your business into Innovation always look uh how we can let's say solve some problems to our customers to the people we are coming from this maybe other energy companies they're looking a little bit from the grid perspective but we are looking from the customer perspective and our next Innovation which is coming out uh in in in the q1 next year is actually we are going to uh to issue nfts for the solar panels what is going to be done real solar panels which are already in operation will tokenize each of them and you everybody will be able to buy these solar panels and have their own personal power plant so you can build your own personal power plant like you maybe all remember the what Microsoft said personal computer you know 30 years ago it was not not possible how who will have personal computer these are just University factories whatever have but now everybody has the personal computer in their pocket this we are doing with the solar power plants so that you will be able to buy solar power plants whatever is one panel 10 panels thousand panels for one country two countries you put on your virtual power plants and you use energy because I told you before we have peer-to-peer infrastructure which is working you use energy or if you don't need this energy you can sell on the marketplace and advantage of course also for for the energy crisis actually in this way that you can sell on a higher price so but you actually in this in the same time you you are supporting Renewables you're supporting Sal efficiency and also the the reduction of the carbon uh CO2 emissions so on so that and our go our aim is that you you enable you can buy and we will also have a Marketplace so where you will be able to also sell these solar power plants I mean the the nfts which is part the represented the the panels so that you are also that the solar power plants become also liquid it means now solar power plant is like real estate it's not liquid it becomes liquid by that so this is actually that you can uh for example that I'm quitting that that so that you have your own production you can bring it you share with your families you share with your companies you sell it or even you bring it with you and let's say fulfill your electrical cars of course this is not yet possible where is not uh uh the the Electrical uh uh charger is not s contact enabled but in the future it will be more and more those enabled so it means you actually bring your solar power plants with you even it stays somewhere doesn't matter virtually you are bringing with you and this is we know how to do it we already have it and we launch it this in next year so and everybody will be able to buy nfts but the tokenization will be will will be able to do just in countries where sound contact is present because of the all electricity regulations all we need to fulfill but everybody can can be able to buy this and let's say uh B benefit from the this uh this business model so this we see Innovation Next Step patched solar panels with nfts together with real asset that's it as something new also for the for the blockchain industry or something good that we have some concrete uh uh business models which are backed with concrete uh let's say assets behind so long story short what is really interesting that something I think was in 2008 a company called solar chain trying to to create it like sharing locally bio vegan without gluten electricity and the point is that they right now what we see is that we transform a liability electric consumption into an asset and without blockchain you turn that's really interesting and the big Point here is that systematically when you want to reduce CO2 you number one want to measure what is current state plenty of companies do it today you have green Le swi per or even green VT you all these companies right now on the market so big point that if you are to choose only one and then it's going to be finished what would be the single challenge most important one you have to face right now for your businesses yeah uh actually U somebody can offer the whole picture the whole service because this is the the most important let's say if you're talking about energy you know in energy sector if you're a provider they can immediately close you if you're not not fulfill all requirements so you have to have you have to have knowledge and business models on blockchain and the other part you need to also fulfill all requirements from the energy sector which is actually pretty hard and we did this together so if somebody shows me this they have those together then I confirm I I would go in the same direction uh I come up with many ideas of how we can have our talkking work and then it's always the question okay but we need to check with legal so that that's a t fun of course regulation but maybe to add to that is that our users are usually risk aage we work with governments all over the world and they tend to be risk a so how do we introduce a new technology in a way that they don't um feel scared H today here you talk about blockchain and people get excited you talk about blockchain or you mention the word blockchain to governments and they get scared um so something that we learn is that blockchain should be underlaying and that that the like these users shouldn't even almost not even know whether we are using blockchain or not they should just see the value on the products the applications and the tools that we are building so that eventually they adopt the technology because they find Value in it thank you a lot so basically the key point is that blockchain turns to become a commodity to really host real use cases point is if you want to speak to Dear speakers after this meeting please enjoin because I definitely believe there are plenty of things to learn and listen learn over the past years for me it was a pleasure to host you please enjoy the rest of your day