Chao! This is Takeshi, CEO of su-re.co
We have been working on the biogas digester that is affordable to farmers without any financial aid such as subsidy and microfinance. We have been building the digester based on mature technology such as PVC bags. This is the so-called frugal innovation which is focusing on the affordability of solutions in developing countries. For example, the price of our biogas digester is roughly USD 300 including installation and training. Its price is one 10th of a conventional digester price. We have been installing our biogas digesters in several locations in Bali and Bajawa, East Indonesia.
As the next step, I wanted to sell our emission reduction as a carbon offset program, but there is a problem to register our mission reduction value because of the expensive certification system. In the last year, I had a meeting to discuss the initial cost to get the certification to register our CO2 reduction value, but it was too expensive. They said it costs roughly USD 200,000 to start with and then they need another USD40,000 every year to validate if our digesters are working properly. This is perfectly understandable ;-)
Emissions trading means "selling invisible carbon dioxide gas", so we need a credible standard. Until now, certification companies have played that role, but there may be other ways.
Something cheap, ridiculously cheap, how cheap can we get a certification. How about blockchain? Information that has once entered the blockchain is almost impossible to forge. Rather than paying USD2,000,000 to get certified once, it makes more sense to have a system that allows us to use it forever with the blockchain and the system will not take an annual fee even. If I have to pay the same amount, this is better, but I probably do not need to pay a fraction of the amount.
That's why we decided to start a project to connect blockchain to our biogas. We have already created a math model to measure the reduction potential of carbon dioxide from our biogas digester. I also bought a meter to record gas emissions indicating the real potential.
This is a project that, unlike frugal innovation, solves social significance with advanced technology, DeepTech.
It's an interesting idea! We know that climate change and emission issues are real, we have to do something to close the gaps and solve the problems. This blockchain idea will do that!