Crowdfunding campaign via Indiegogo for Gaja — an emissions trading marketplace built on and alongside Decentr and Holochain
The campaign, containing all of the below material, with revisions, is here:
https://www.indiegogo.com/project/preview/f104f344
Transcript of the video:
Introduction
Greetings and love to all of you. My name is James Ray. I am pleased to share my idea for building a global emissions trading marketplace, which is called Gaja, and open up fund raising to the general public.
Let me first talk about the name Gaja. Gaja has a couple of meanings. The first is that Gaja is a Sanskrit word for elephant. Climate change is “the elephant in the room”; it is one of the most important crises of our time. As an elephant can symbolize abundance, growth, prosperity, wisdom, so too can Gaja wisely avert dangerous climate climate change, restore the world to a safe climate, and greatly increase economic growth that is sustainable.
Backing technologies
Gaja is intended not only to be a global carbon marketplace, but also to be a fully distributed application, utilizing three very innovative technologies: Holochain, a distributed app framework; Decentr, which offers the ability to reduce the cost of transactions by making data valuable as a currency, and who are also running a crowd funding campaign which ends in a couple of days on the 16th May; and Holo, a distributed or crowd web-hosting platform. The learning from building a marketplace will also assist in the development of other dapp marketplaces, such as for goods, real estate, ride-sharing, renewable energy, and much more.
Motivation
In the spirit of building fully distributed applications (known as dapps), I want to open up fundraising to the general public first. Dapps can enable a wave of greater innovation through grassroots stigmergic collaboration. Decentr economics and the Holochain dapp framework are a powerful combination, that in my opinion, are unmatched in their potentiality for building usable, scalable and secure dapps. A global marketplace for emissions trading and climate accounting is critical for transitioning to a safe climate, and a prosperous, equitable world.
As an application of Decentr, Gaja will help to transition away from the woes of capitalism, including exploitation, extraction, artificial scarcity, inequality, rising debt, and boom and bust cycles. By being built on Decentr, Gaja can also help to transition towards a fairer society that uses data as currency, giving data-as-currency an intrinsic value, like gold.
According to the Environmental Defense Fund, “cap-and-trade is the most environmentally and economically sensible approach to controlling greenhouse gas emissions, the primary cause of global warming, because it sets a limit on emissions, and the trading encourages participants to innovate in order to emit less.”
We are now at a point, where for new-build energy generation, solar and wind are cheaper than fossil fuels in areas that count for two thirds of the world’s population, and 85 per cent of the globe’s electricity generation. Also, batteries have halved in costs over the last two years, which means that batteries are now the cheapest new-build technology for peaking purposes in gas-importing regions, like Europe, China, and Japan. These facts are according to a recent Renew Economy article; there’s a link in the transcript. [1] Costs of renewable energy continue to fall, while over the long-term, costs of fossil fuels are projected to increase, as their finite resources decline. Having a global emissions trading market will further incentivize innovation, such as with clean energy technologies and emissions removing technologies.
The global carbon budget to limit warming to 1.5 degrees is projected to run out in only 8 years. The Paris climate agreement urged efforts to limit the increase in warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, while reaffirming a commitment to limit warming to 2 degrees Celcius. It established a common framework that commits all parties to put forward their best efforts and strengthen them over time. [2]
However, a major problem is that there is currently no global emissions trading marketplace. Emissions trading does exist in different countries and states, such as the European Union; South Korea; the Western Climate Initiative consisting of California, Quebec, and Nova Scotia; [3] New Zealand; trading and offset mechanisms through the Kyoto Protocol; Tokyo; programs for specific pollutants in the United States such as sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides; northeast US states with the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI, prounounced “Reggie”); a voluntary scheme between U.S. corporations via the Chicago Climate Exchange; India; and a planned national trading scheme for China. [4, 5] Note however, that the offset scheme with the Clean Development Mechanism of the Kyoto Protocol has been difficult to prove. A 2020 study found that the European Union Emissions Trading System successfully reduced CO2 emissions even though the prices for carbon were set at low prices. If a global carbon trading marketplace existed, that allowed for grassroots participation, this would help to enable a transition as soon as possible back to a safe climate, while enabling global economic growth.
In order for Gaja to be a global carbon marketplace, it will need to interoperate with other marketplaces. I intend Gaja to be proprietary initially, and then possibly transition to open-source if it proves to be more valuable for a business model, while Decentr may actually be able to achieve this.
The global carbon marketplace can be used to incentivize reducing emissions from all kinds of emissions sources (such as power plants, cement factories, internal combustion engine vehicles, and planes), and at all scales of participation, including individuals, businesses, local governments, cities, states, and nations. It can be used to incentivize increased investment in clean energy technologies; as well as ground transport, aviation, and shipping. To add to that, it can be used to incentivize actually removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere, for example through reafforestation, enhanced weathering, and direct air capture. All of these things will help to avert dangerous, human-induced runaway climate change. They will help to restore the world’s greenhouse gas emissions and the climate back to pre-industrial levels. And they will help to usher in a new age of prosperity, peace, and harmony across the whole world.
The data from emissions, as well as data from clean alternatives to emissions producing activities, and data from emissions removing activities — all of this data can affect the payable data value — a personal exchange rate of individuals and other entities. The more activities produce a positive impact, the more the shared data (via Decentr) from these activities can reduce the cost of economic activities from those participating entities. For example, for the emissions intensity of technologies, in units of energy (kWh) per tonne of carbon-dioxide equivalent greenhouse gases, this emissions intensity can inversely affect payable data value. Conversely, the more entities cause negative impacts, such as through greenhouse gas emitting activities, then the more this can decrease their payable data value and increase the cost of transactions. Payable data value fluctuates according to a process of community consensus. By incentivizing positive value creation and disincentivizing detrimental activities, Decentr apps like Gaja can enable long-term, all-round progress for society.
I plan to build Gaja alongside Decentr as it itself is developed, along with Holochain. Regarding my experience, I have been involved with Ethereum and Holochain, assisting with software development with Rust, for about two years. I also have experience in the renewable energy industry, including as a Technical Support Engineer at Sungrow, as a Project Manager at ShineHub, and as a Sales Consultant for Vista Power Technologies. I studied renewable energy engineering at UNSW.
In order for the development of this idea to be sustainably funded, I am seeking to do an initial funding round. Once the app goes live, investors will receive an increase in their payable data value, in proportion to the amount that they give and the higher risk that is applicable for any early-stage investment. If you can afford to invest, say 1% of your net worth, your generous support is much appreciated!
[1] https://reneweconomy.com.au/solar-wind-and-batt...
[2] http://www.c2es.org/content/cop-21-paris/
[3] https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/news/california-quebec-r...