In Brief:
- Two green energy currencies will be released by Mercado Bitcoin and Comerc.
- First is expected to debut in 2022 and will be linked to solar energy.
- The three “Ds” of Comerc’s renewable energy plan were stated by a Comerc executive.
Mercado Bitcoin, a Brazilian cryptocurrency exchange, announced to Reuters News on Thursday morning that it has inked an agreement to produce renewable energy tokens with Comerc, one of Brazil’s largest retail energy providers. Two types of tokens are being implemented by Mercado Bitcoin and Comerc.
The first is expected to debut in 2022 and will be linked to a solar energy payback programme. Comerc customers can currently receive a cashback of up to 15% to 20% of their electricity bills if they want to switch to solar energy. The second token will be tied to certificates that verify renewable energy consumption.
Matheus Nogueira, CEO of Nori, a company that distributes energy for Comerc, said in a statement to Reuters: “The token can be treated like any other currency, but it has an additional benefit, it is a token that represents a renewable generation.”
In the meantime, a Comerc executive working on the project described the three “Ds” of the company’s renewable energy strategy as follows: “First, decarbonization, encouraging clean energy; the second is decentralization, our plants are based on distributed generation…, and finally, digitalization.”
With over three million consumers, Mercado Bitcoin claims to be the largest cryptocurrency in Latin America.
According to CoinGecko, the exchange now lists 11 coins and has a 24-hour trading volume of $19.4 million. Softbank, a Japanese multinational business, invested $200 million in Mercado Bitcoin earlier this year. Since January, the exchange has processed approximately $5 billion in cryptocurrency exchanges in USD.
This wasn’t the first time where energy was linked to the digital tokens, earlier in June, Elon Musk stated that Tesla would resume bitcoin transactions if mining could be done with cleaner energy.
