Co-Founder of Startup WeWork Launches Ambitious New Crypto Project, But It’s Strange

The co-founder and former CEO of the hit startup WeWork, Adam Neumann is back with a new project related to crypto and climate change. Adam Neumann has just launched his new company called Flowcarbon, with the big ambition of tackling climate change with blockchain.

Specifically, Adam Neumann wants to put CO2 credits (Carbon Credits) on the blockchain, making it easier to buy and sell CO2 credits and cross-border.

A CO2 credit is a license or certificate that allows its holder, for example a company, to emit CO2 or other greenhouse gases. Each credit limits emissions to one tonne of CO2. The ultimate goal of CO2 credits is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere.

Companies can trade these CO2 credits with each other. For example, an electric vehicle company like Tesla could sell its CO2 credits to a traditional car company.

On its website, Adam Neumann’s Flowcarbon says that the current CO2 credit trading system is built on the basis of an opaque market, low liquidity, accessibility and price transparency. All of those problems can be overcome with blockchain, a transparent and easily accessible system anywhere in the world.

Flowcarbon will create a new token, called Goddess Nature Token (GNT). Translated as nature goddess token, it sounds very attractive. Companies can use GNT to trade CO2 credits.

Flowcarbon has a grand mission to help tackle climate change. But in fact, this is just a purely economic and money-making project. Because buying and selling CO2 credits does nothing to reduce emissions. CO2 emissions do not change, it is just transferred from one company to another.

“I think they’re trying to solve something that’s not climate change,” said Robert Mendelsohn, an economics professor at Yale University. The things blockchain does well, is just transparency and nothing to lose. The CO2 credits by themselves don’t really help with emissions reductions.”

However, Flowcarbon will still be funded by $70 million from the crypto arm of venture capital firm a16z.

Reference: recode