220
What would a DeFi metaverse for energy look like in 2030? How can new crypto mechanisms help solve the energy problems of today and improve people’s lives for the future.
Crypto and energy have had a love-hate relationship over the last ten years. One of the biggest controversies in crypto and energy is how much energy is consumed to mine cryptocurrency. The University of Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index, for example, calculates that the global bitcoin network currently consumes about 97 terawatt-hours of electricity annually, more than the annual output of 23 coal-fired power plants, which is more than the entire nation of the Philippines consumes in a year. The rise in solar energy adoption also gave rise to crypto protocols aiming to enable more peer-to-peer transactions, with large players, like Mitsubishi, coming into the mix.
But one fundamental problem remains: how crypto as a virtual system can be easily integrated into complex physical systems of energy. It seems the problem is not peer-to-peer, and it’s not generation, it’s integration. Clean energy is now the world’s cheapest energy source, but the existing grid requires $500 billion annual investment to be able to integrate the renewable energy we need to achieve 2050. Even more, if the world is to move to net zero emissions by 2030 and absolute zero by 2050.
The standard approach to the integration of new energy assets won’t cut it, especially as a new wave of energy innovations is arriving. But a new protocol promises to bring the advances in DeFi and mutual credit to change the way we finance, integrate, and proliferate clean energy.
