Ripple Accelerates Climate Change with $100M Carbon Markets Investment

Fazzaco learned that Ripple, the leader in enterprise blockchain and crypto solutions, has committed to invest $100 million to carbon markets, targeting globally agreed climate goals to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Brad Garlinghouse, CEO of Ripple, commented the investment: "Our $100 million commitment is a direct response to the global call to action for companies to help address climate change by deploying resources, including innovative technology, strategic capital and talent. While reducing emissions and transitioning to a low-carbon future are paramount, carbon markets are also an important tool for meeting climate goals. Blockchain and crypto can play a catalytic role in allowing carbon markets to reach their full potential, bringing more liquidity and traceability to a fragmented, complex market." 

According to the company, the funding will accelerate carbon removal activity and help modernize carbon markets through investments in innovative carbon removal companies and climate-focused fintechs. 

Meanwhile, "Ripple will also build a portfolio of additive, long-term, nature and science-based carbon credits, some of which will be used to meet its own commitment to achieve net zero by 2030 or sooner," the company added.

In addition, Ripple noted that the funding will continue to support new functionality and developer tools that enable carbon credit tokenization as core non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on the XRP Ledger (XRPL). 

Before the new investment, Ripple has made efforts for global carbon neutrality. In 2020, the firm announced its plan to go carbon neutral by 2030 and is expected to reach that goal by 2028. Also, it has worked with independent NGO partners like the Energy Web Foundation and the XRP Ledger Foundation, the latter became the first major blockchain to go carbon neutral with the help of Ripple, in 2020. Moreover, Ripple partnered with field leading carbon removal companies and carbon market makers, including CarbonCure Technologies, Xange.com and Invert. 

In March, Ripple has reportedly committed 1 Billion XRP to accelerate development and new use cases on the XRP Ledger (XRPL). Most recently, the firm partnered with FINCI, the Lithuanian online international money transfer provider, to deliver B2B payments via RippleNet's On-Demand Liquidity (ODL), which leverages XRP for crypto-enabled cross border payments.