Circular Finance

Description

Michel Bauwens:

What if transition projects could pay for itself, and dramatically reduce spending on negative externalities. For example, the Community Land Trust movement in France, Terre des Liens, which takes land outside the market to provide low rents for organic farmers, told me that their system of organic production dramatically reduces water purification costs for public authorities, as well as dramaticall improving health outcomes. In this way, part of the savings could be invested in transition projects, creating a virtuous cycle.

A similar concept is Transition Trade, proposed by Chris Cook.

Example

See the solutions proposed by Regen Network

Transition Trade for renewable energy projects

Chris Cook:

"The greater prize – where the UK has barely scratched the surface – is to reduce energy consumption through the use of what is called the 'Fifth Fuel' (ie intellectual value), embedded in smart technology and solutions. In fact, an example of the necessary reality-based energy policy may be identified - back to the future- in 1778, when James Watt supplied the use of his new steam engine to Cornish tin mines to pump out water in return for a third of the coal saved: Pumping as a Service. Such savings of energy as a service are made at the retail price and this often gives rise to a compelling conventional economic case.

So in a nutshell, I believe one of the great reality-based trades of the 21st Century will be the exchange of smart/intellectual value (the Fifth Fuel which the UK possesses in abundance) for the value of fossil fuels and other finite resources saved – the Transition Trade." (https://www.thealternative.org.uk/dailyalternative/2017/3/7/the-policy-makes-the-party)

A Proposal for a Carbon Sequestration-Based Cryptocurrency

by Gustav Peebles and Ben Luzzatto:

"Simultaneously, advances in the practices, technologies, and verification of bio-sequestration have made mining carbon from the skies affordable and accessible to individual citizens around the world. Methods such as biochar production, afforestation, and regenerative agriculture all leverage nature’s own ability to store carbon safely and securely in the ground through practices that can be implemented on a vast scale by millions of people. If these practices were to be more widely adopted, we would not need to rely exclusively on high-tech and expensive (and in many cases potentially dangerous) tactics such as point-source geo-engineering.[2] With a carbon-backed currency that relies on multiple modes of bio-sequestration to build and sustain its reserve assets, enthusiastic “miners” could exchange their verified sequestration at local banks for chits (and even as down payments on loans) that could then be used on the open market to purchase regular goods and services.

The cryptocurrency market already has at least one carbon-backed currency. Like most cryptocurrencies, it seeks to tokenize carbon in order to unite an already extant global field of carbon buyers and sellers. Instead of following crypto’s tokenization model, however, we take inspiration from the less radical history of what is known as “fractional reserve banking.”

While typical cryptocurrencies are often seen as undermining banks (particularly central banks), this digital currency project acknowledges that banks are the engines of demand-side growth for the asset that underwrites their currency-issuance. For example, this proposed digital currency could be pegged to an index of “global habitability” or “pre-industrial atmospheric CO2 levels.” This would then inform – and even potentially circumscribe – total net issuance by banks rather than allowing issuance to be limited by the common practice of releasing a specific and inviolable total number of tokens. By catalyzing a new and potentially explosive demand for solidified carbon, such currency-issuing banks could then spark an army of individuals who seek to “mine” carbon out of the sky – just as 19th century banks incentivized countless miners to seek their fortunes in the hills of California, Australia, and South Africa.

Implementing such a currency would, of course, entail transcending an array of legitimately complicated hurdles." (http://www.publicseminar.org/2019/09/more-precious-than-gold/)