Are you planning a journey to China? Buy a mask first.

China has achieved spectacular progress over the past 30 years which is unprecedented in the world. However, such rapid progress has inevitably led to serious environmental issues, one of which is smog.

Chen Kaige, a Chinese film director won Palme d’Or in 1993, once said that:

“ Smog is choking my creativity.”

And now as smog from China starts drifting to countries like Japan, China’s smog problem has turned into a global concern. Foreign media dub China a country of grey sky. But that’s not the truth. The sky is sometimes grey in China.

Blockchain, the backbone technology of bitcoin, is said to have the potential to change the world. Can it do any good to air pollution?

IBM announced a partnership with Energy-Blockchain Labs on March 20 to develop the world’s first blockchain-based green asset management platform.

The platform is powered by the open source Hyperledger Fabric, aiming to decrease emissions in China and enable enterprises to be energy efficient.

“As an important signatory of the Paris Agreement, China must assume its responsibility for global climate governance and continue to fulfil its pre-2020 climate change action targets and build a standard nationwide carbon market,” said Li Junfeng, Director of China’s National Climate Change Strategy Research and International Cooperation Center (NCSC).

“We must work to limit high energy consumption and high emission industries, encourage clean energy development and further promote energy saving and emission reduction. These tasks are not only necessary for China’s own sustainable development, but for the welfare of the entire human family.”

“Blockchain technology is expected to become an important means for effective control of carbon emissions, which is of great significance to China, the world’s largest source of carbon emissions,” said Cao Yin, Chief Strategy Officer of Energy-Blockchain Labs.

The two companies completed a proof of concept in late 2016 and a beta version of the carbon asset management platform on blockchain will be released in May. Energy-Blockchain Labs and IBM intend to commercially offer this platform later this year, keeping pace with China’s unified national carbon market opening.

Cao added:

“It is estimated that the platform will significantly shorten the carbon assets development cycle and reduce the cost of carbon assets development by 20 to 30 percent, enabling cost-effective development of a large number of carbon assets.” 

If blockchain can actually reverse China’s carbon emissions, is there anything it cannot do?