Polygon Ecosystem Vows to Go Carbon Negative in 2022

Polygon Ecosystem, the leading Ethereum scaling and infrastructure development platform, also pledged $20 Million for sustainability efforts

Dubai —  Polygon, the Ethereum scaling platform onboarding millions to Web3, today announces its “Green Manifesto: A Smart Contract with Planet Earth”  — a commitment to go carbon negative in 2022, along with a $20 million pledge to implement a multilayered sustainable development strategy to build a more sustainable future for Polygon, their ecosystem, customers and the planet. Polygon intends to become an exemplar in sustainable best practices for the wider blockchain ecosystem.

The first initiative will be in collaboration with KlimaDAO — a decentralized collective of environmentalists, developers, and entrepreneurs, widely recognised as the most high-profile proponent of facilitating the nascent on-chain carbon market. KlimaDAO, in partnership with Offsetra, has provided Polygon with a carbon footprint analysis to help gauge the network’s carbon intensity and, in turn, inform emission management and mitigation strategy.
The completed analysis includes emissions from staking node hardware, emissions from the energy consumption of their operations, and emissions from contracts directly interacting with Ethereum Mainnet — checkpointing and bridging activities, in particular.
Per the analysis, checkpointing and bridging activities that involve transactions on Ethereum Mainnet are responsible for over 99% of Polygon’s emissions. Since the network’s inception, checkpointing has resulted in over 16,000 tonnes of emissions and bridging nearly 74,000 tonnes. As of February 2022, the total emissions for Polygon since the network’s inception equate to 90,654 tonnes of carbon. A full report of Polygon’s Carbon Footprint analysis can be found here.  
Using KlimaDAO data, Polygon will be able to calculate and offset the carbon impact of the Polygon ecosystem in its entirety, and become carbon negative. To do so, Polygon will purchase enough high-quality and traceable BCT and MCO2 carbon credits — via KlimaDAO’s on-chain carbon market, Klima Infinity — to offset 90,654 tonnes of carbon. Using KlimaDAO’s offset aggregator dApp, Polygon will selectively retire carbon offsets within the aforementioned carbon token pools that meet the highest standards for additionality and positive environmental impact. All BCT and MCO2 tokenized credits were created from offsets certified under the Verified Carbon Standard, which is one of a number of independent standards endorsed by the International Carbon Reduction and Offset Alliance (ICROA), a key industry body setting best practices and ensuring environmental integrity within the voluntary carbon market.
To substantiate this data and ensure validity, Polygon has also commissioned the Crypto Carbon Ratings Institute (CCRI) to provide a secondary audit of its carbon footprint. CCRI’s Cryptocurrency Sustainability API provides data on the climate impact of cryptocurrencies and tokens and the carbon exposure of holdings and transactions.
As part of its broader carbon-negative strategy, Polygon has pledged $20 million to implement a series of community initiatives and create a climate offset vertical within the Polygon ecosystem. 

This includes funding projects that are utilizing technology to solve or combat climate change. This is another measure to ensure that Polygon, and every project built on the platform, remains focused on sustainable practices.

Polygon was devised to ensure the Ethereum network operates in the most energy-efficient manner possible. By implementing a fast and low-cost, Proof-of-Stake (POS) based layer-2 solution, Polygon improves both the usability and ecological viability of Ethereum. 

Polygon achieves this via its array of scaling solutions, including Polygon PoS, Polygon Edge, Polygon Avail, Polygon Nightfall, and Polygon Hermez. 

Polygon’s sustainability pledge comes ahead of Ethereum’s transition to PoS, which will reduce the network’s energy consumption by almost 99 percent. After Ethereum’s transition to PoS, and once the CCRI analysis is complete, Polygon will move beyond carbon neutrality to attain carbon negative status. 

Sandeep Nailwal, co-founder of Polygon, said: “We have reached a decisive point in human history. The actions we take within the next decade will determine the fate of the entire planet. Our outlined measures may eliminate the emissions of the Polygon ecosystem, but that’s not enough to effect the kind of change needed to combat the climate crisis at scale. Together with Polygon, the broader blockchain industry needs to form a united front to fund, support, and leverage technology that helps heal the earth, rather than destroy it.”