Let’s talk about the climate crisis and what we built to fight it.
The XCNT office is located in the center of Berlin near the historic Brandenburg Gate. This historic site is not just a symbol for Germany’s reunification where Germans from both sides shouted “We are one people” when the wall came down. Lately, it has also become a popular site of climate action protests.
The impressive turnout and persistence of the Fridays4Future protesters all around Europe - young and old - have renewed our hope that we as one European people can actually tackle the climate crisis and try to turn the ship around.
The message is loud and clear: We need to succeed on our mission and reach a carbon-free European economy by 2050.
This mission is the ultimate challenge that Europeans are on today. It is what is demanded of us due to our commitment to the 1.5° ambition of the Paris Climate Accord. It is our duty for our and to future generations. It is “alternativlos”, without any alternative.
For this reason we created 50ZERO, a carbon offsetting service with European impact.
50ZERO offers users a way to reduce emissions of carbon-intensive industries directly in Europe by tapping into the European Emission Trading System (ETS). Users of 50ZERO co-fund the purchase of European emission allowances (CO2 certificates) and withdraw them from circulation. By doing so, users effectively reduce the maximum capacity of CO2 that can legally be emitted by heavy industry and energy producers in the European Union. Each ton of CO2 that is purchased at 50ZERO can no longer be emitted by a company under the European ETS.
You might ask yourself: Why would anybody want to do this?
With 50ZERO users prevent greenhouse gases from entering the atmosphere. Hence, the service can be used to offset your personal carbon footprint: from a single intercontinental flight to the annual footprint of your entire household.
Offsetting services have been around for a while now. So why did we build 50ZERO?
50ZERO’s carbon offsetting method differs from other offsetting services that you might have heard of. 50ZERO is the only carbon offsetting provider that allows citizens to reduce their carbon footprint leveraging the European Union Emission Trading System. 50ZERO effectively lowers the emission cap in Europe.
Needless to say, climate change is a global issue and it ultimately does not matter whether greenhouse gas emissions are reduced in Europe or anywhere else in the world. Along all available carbon compensation options, like reforestation projects in Brazil or solar stoves in Africa, 50ZERO now offers a way to impact European carbon emitters on their home turf.
The killer argument for preventing emissions in Europe using 50ZERO is its guaranteed effectiveness thanks to the nature of the ETS. Deleting one ton of CO2 from the ETS has two effects: Firstly, this ton can no longer be emitted by an industrial plant. And secondly, the absence of one ton from the market intensifies the scarcity of CO2 certificates, consequently driving up the price of CO2 in the ETS .
Naturally, the effect of one single certificate is marginal. However, 50ZERO is available to everyone and therefore it can leverage the power of many. We first focused to provide a service for our German speaking community. However, we are hard at work to also provide this possibility to the English speaking community.
We hope you will pay 50ZERO a visit and sign up for our beta phase. Feedback is always highly appreciated.
As a community, we want to make a noticeable difference in the fight against the climate crisis.
One ton at a time.
Title Photo by Nico Roicke on Unsplash
