Last week, the acclaimed co-founder of Apple, Steve Wozniak, unveiled his second company, Efforce, with a slick website and much media fanfare. Efforce claims to disrupt the energy efficiency market by using blockchain and “WOZX” tokens to finance energy efficiency projects. The platform encourages the public to directly invest in energy efficiency projects – and receive tokens in exchange for energy saved. Think of a blockchain version of the PACE loan model which allows debtholders to pre-fund efficiency projects. What we (and the market experts) are left puzzling is why the WOZX token? Efforce’s emphasis on crypto is reminiscent of 2017-18 ICOs where this token model failed to be adopted (or understood) at necessary scale.
So in light of Wozniak temporarily forcing the blockchain spotlight back on climate tech, we dug into the evolution of the climate blockchain landscape with new and surviving ventures from the 2018 crypto crash and evaluate opportunities for meaningful applications in energy and the carbon market & accounting.