Social Alpha Foundation grant will fund decentralized carbon tracking

By Jalen Fargharson 

 Yale openlab, the university’s incubator for disruptive new technology, has just received a $150K grant from Social Alpha Foundation,to develop decentralized carbon emissions tracking tool.

Yale University, which has recently been expanding its use of distributed ledger technology, will execute the project between two of its branches: the Tsai Center for Innovative Thinking at Yale, and the Yale Center for Business and the Environment. 

According to the university’s experts, the scale and rate of climate change is moving at which the present models of mitigation are insufficient. That’s where decentralized tech comes in to streamline the process.  Regarding the joint initiative, Martin Wainstein, PhD, founder of the Yale openlab and Innovator-in-Residence at the Tsai Center for Innovative Thinking at Yale, said:

“At present, if emissions continue to be left unchecked, our limited carbon budget could be consumed in as little as 15 years. This challenge requires people and organisations to collaborate at an unprecedented scale, and reimagine traditional business models and paradigms.”

Social Alpha Foundation’s grant will support two of Yale openlab’s main priorities. First, it will help grow blockchain-based skill development programs for its members, such as ‘blockchain bootcamps.

’Second, it will aid the launch of the project’s main initiative: the ‘Open Earth Challenge,’ which seeks to leverage blockchain technology to build a decentralized consensus on the earth’s carbon budget.International trust between systems is another obstacle preventing global collaboration on climate change projects, which Yale openlab intends to tackle.

Wainstein continued:

“The Paris climate agreement has set the world on a path to zero emissions by 2050, but we lack the global tools that can help us track our environmental actions in a trustless and competitive world. We believe a constellation of blockchain technology, data oracles, and internet-connected sensors under open source protocols and standards may provide the fabric for globally trusted procedures to emerge.”

Through projects like Yale openlab’s Open Earth Challenge, decentralized, trustworthy networks agnostic of any national affiliations could eventually become the norm, and bring about a true globalization not only of financial systems, but of digital systems on the whole.