Zumo turns on Oxygen as an answer to crypto’s ESG questions
Digital assets platform Zumo has launched a new product aimed at answering the growing calls to decarbonise crypto.
The move comes a year down the line since Edinburgh-based Zumo and its partner Zero Labs – a renewable-energy-as-a-service company – were awarded a grant by Innovate UK to fund research into the decarbonisation of digital assets.
Announced at Money20/20 Europe, Oxygen enables Zumo’s clients – including banks and asset managers – to provide ‘environmental, social and governance’ (ESG)-aligned, future-proofed digital asset offerings to their customers.
The targeted solution combines the forecasting and calculation of crypto electricity consumption with standard industry data, and uses renewable energy procurement in the form of renewable energy certificates (RECs) to ensure crypto or blockchain activities are transparently and verifiably powered by renewables.
The launch follows the successful completion of Zumo’s Zero Hero pilot project – a live trial to buy RECs to compensate for the electricity usage of Bitcoin bought via a direct-to-consumer crypto app.
£1.5 million worth of Bitcoin was covered by Zero Hero REC purchases, with a total of 850 megawatt-hours (MWh) of electricity compensated via the programme – enough energy to drive an electric vehicle for more than 2.6 million miles. Zumo also bought 126.36 MWh for the purpose of decarbonising Ethereum’s historical emissions (and Zumo’s ETH holdings), participating in the Blocks.garden initiative.
“The associated carbon footprint can be a huge elephant in the room when it comes to rolling out a digital asset product,” said Nick Jones, Zumo’s co-founder and CEO.
“With Oxygen, the first solution of its type, we’re offering businesses practical ways to meet customer demand for digital assets whilst mitigating environmental challenges, and demonstrating positive, ESG-aligned action.
“Oxygen empowers banks, asset managers, and other financial institutions to align their digital asset offering with their wider net zero strategy and make verifiable decarbonisation claims. We’re extremely proud of today’s launch, which follows a lot of hard work together with our friends at Zero Labs. I hope it sends a positive signal to the rest of the market about exactly what’s possible.”
Beltran Berrocal, co-founder and CEO of Zero Labs, added: “We’re excited to expand our work with Zumo, which is at the forefront of programmable decarbonisation, creating new green and smart services to provably decarbonise the crypto and financial industries, while also upholding maximum transparency and following industry best practices and sustainability reporting standards.”
“Oxygen’s launch is interesting because, firstly, it showcases the power of digital renewable energy, and secondly it corrects the historically bad reputation of crypto’s energy consumption by showing that buying crypto can actually become a source of new demand for renewable energy.”