Powering a Decarbonized Future with Blockchain Energy - TOKEN2049 Singapore 2024

hello there uh my name is David Duckworth I am the CEO and founder of row and energy um before I start actually can I ask has anyone ever heard of us before it's always absolutely surprises me there are few look there is actually um so I'm going to tell you a little bit about what we do um and what we're currently doing at the moment and I'm going to run a little bit about our business model and um give you an idea what makes us different from other businesses and projects maybe within our space and maybe we're a little bit different from every other project is here so row energy is building a network of interconnected renewable energy assets um the network is underpinned by our custombuilt low powerered therefore very lowcar carbon blockchain um so the r energy blockchain runs on a new kind a consensus mechanism called proof of generation on top of that we run a new protocol called the sustainable mining protocol um currently we're only connected to solar um but with the new protocol we're able to expand that to other renewable energy sources and I'll go back into that in just a little while it's pretty quick um 219 transactions a second and the whole network runs on these little devices called smart miners now a smart Miner is a combination between a smart meter and a blockchain validation server in one essentially what it does is we install it in people's homes and it counts the energy being produced by the roof um it validates transactions on our Network and it mints nft carbon offset certificates in real time now I'll explain to you in just a moment why that's really important we've got a coin of course we have everybody um um but I kind of want to emphasize in this talk about how like I think everybody in this room is going to say hoay you know blockchain is amazing and it is a really really good bit of Technology um but it's not the only thing we do we don't consider ourselves a crypto company we don't consider ourselves a blockchain company we've got SQL databases we're not an SQL database company um but um it is a fundamental part of our infrastructure now I think when people talk about blockchain and I I've seen this through the years of being in the industry um blockchain is often see as like a hammer looking for a nail people are desperately trying to find things to hit blockchain with to make them um uh to give themselves a really good use case but I wanted to talk to you a little bit about how we're integrating this into normal people's lives and when I say normal people lives I'm talking about non- coiners Muggles maybe you could call them I don't know um but these are these are people of whom um wouldn't normally have anything to do with blockchain or crypto so um currently we have about 1100 nodes out in in in in the field um our demographic are mostly over 60 and these guys have a blockchain validation server in their home um we monitor that says 8 megawatts it's actually between 8 and N megawatts of solar at the moment um and we're set to expand that over the next 3 years there about 120,000 houses is we we've already done the deal to do that now I think um the other thing I touched on obviously was that we um we mint carbon offsets and that's in real time now what I wanted to emphasize here is where I'm saying that blockchain isn't the main part of our business actually what's more important is the quality of data we put into our blockchain so now if you fill your blockchain with rubbish all you're going to have is a blockchain full of rubbish rubbish that you can't bloody delete either right so um we spend quite a lot of our time developing processes and operational procedures of which emphasize and assure the quality of the data that goes in now in the world of carbon offsetting you need to make sure that you are traceable and immutable um and the quality of data is absolutely spot on now the smart Miner itself right so unlike some other products you might see on the market you can't just buy this off the shelf and install it yourself following industry um regulations and and standards you have to have a certified engineer install our device and we we we hold classrooms with Engineers being trained you can find those pictures on social media um and that means we can assure that every single smart Miner is in installed where they say it is um and also it's um installed in exactly the same way now previously you weren't able to track the U energy generated by renewable energy because they only had meter on the edge but you could be running anything behind that you could be firing up a diesel powered generator and then sending that in the grid and claiming it is green energy but with RAR in energy because of the processes that we have in place every engineer that goes there is trained he has an app that app it's um it takes a GPS snapshot where he is and also he um and there are photographs taken of the infrastructure which means with our carbon offsets you're able to drill all the way into the um asset that actually produced it the r the r Smart M is mid- certified which is to uh smart meter standards which means we can build from it if we we took that data um and that is something that's absolutely necessary within the uh within the industry as well other companies that are may be taking a data for inverters that we can tell you that inverter data is 15% out we know this because we track the energy coming out of that inverter and the inverter has a a 7% loss when it transfers between DC and AC and if you ask an in a company to Mid certify their Hardware not one of them will do it believe me I've tried um so the other thing I think to talk about quality of data um is carbon offsetting has got a pretty bad reputation um and R energy is now working with some pretty interesting people within the uh W within the Carbon Community within leading sustainability in big organizations and that is to develop the version two of the carbon offset certificate a carbon offset certificate that has trust built in it's IM mutable but because our smart Miner produces certificates in real time there's no air gap in the data which means it can't be tampered with and we know that we're filling our data with good stuff and not with rubbish right um here are some of the people I won't run through them I'm sure when you rewatch it back some of these guys but they come from all walks of life from um their academics as well as from Big um Industries we've got some people that are kind of like climate activ we've got people from think tanks in there carbon experts and we're getting them around a table in order for a two-day workshop and they're going to become an Institute that we're forming um but when they come out of that two-day workshop we're expecting to have a framework for a new kind of carbon offset now because we uh run our platform um using a blockchain we can add some regulatory requirements to the smart contract um it can be transferred only once once it's offset it's got a a a life span of 12 months before it self burs and that's to avoid things like double counting so if I took the certificate and offset my carbon I can't pass it to you and you offset your carbon and then you pass it to your mate over there and they and they offset their carbon um it means that without Beyond Reasonable Doubt these are really really high quality and and and absolute premium carbon oets we also found as well when we surveyed people in the UK that when you're off setting usually in the UK you're funding a a project on the other side of the world and for UK people we we found they are it's so far removed from their everyday life they question whether what they're paying for um is actually doing any good and so the UK government are making noises now that they want everybody um uh every carbon offset to be used in the UK to be homegrown and this means that we can um or we're going to already have that facility in place when this comes to law and the best thing about R energy is we can cookie cup that operation and we can move it from country to Country to Country at the moment we're proving the business model in the UK but this this will work pretty much anywhere that has an open policy for blockchain for carbon offsetting and and obviously cryptocurrency our customers so this is a good question right so why would people put the um the smart Miner into people's homes well we pay our customers an extra 10 p a kilowatt this is on top of any subsidies on top of any feeding and it doesn't matter if they feed it into the Grid or they use it in fact we actively encourage our customers to use their energy that extra 10 p a kilowatt accumulates for a 5 kilowatt package up to about 450 pound a year so that lowers their buyback period which in turn encourages the adoption of rooftop solar what's a buyback period so a buyback period is how solar is been sold traditionally throughout the world where you pay $5,000 or £5,000 and solar takes you this this long to make its money back for you and then its profit and that's six years seven years well at the moment with with batteries and expenses you're looking at 15 years when you add our product it brings it down to less than nine which is a much more psychological reason our wholesale distributer um has seen an increase in sales of 30% because of selling our products in in an industry that's 65% down this year compared to last year the roote to Market allows us because we've created our own certificate and we're able to transfer them and store them and move them really really easily across our chain lots of different routes to Market we're working with exchanges in order to decarbonize um the exchanges these exchanges that we're working with they're under pressure as well like any business to decarbonize and when you've got Bitcoin going at 10 kilowatts of hour per transaction it's a really really difficult one to go um I think probably before I talk about our scaling I'll talk about um our distribution Network so our distribution Network or solar installers it it was a much much better way for us to scale rapidly they have access to uh new customers and their existing customers as well um but the solar installer gets a product of which makes them very competitive in a very competitive market it gives them a unique selling point we're in a really good position like so we've got uh nine Distributors selling this now we've got a waiting list of another 120 but we get phone calls every day from solar installers w sell our product because they're losing sales because they can't sell it um so I told you we've done our deal for um 100,000 social houses in the UK the social impact for these guys where they're going to be receiving their energy as part of this deal for 20% below the market value with this partner as well they're also going to be getting a free internet connection which so in in one breath they're saving energy poverty and they're also connectivity property which doesn't sound like a thing but actually it's becoming a human right to get connected we have um every customer produces approximately six or 7,000 certificates for us every year um and each of those certificates are worth approximately about 20 cents every certificate sold feeds our tokenomics model every smart Miner that comes online this is a smart Miner by the way in case anyone's wondering why I'm holding it um so everyone that comes online um and every certificate sold all the transaction fee feeds our tokenomics model our to economics model is a deflationary model um it decreases the circulating Supply and adds adds buy pressure to the market and I won't speculate but I think everybody knows what that kind of goes to okay so I've got like about two minutes left and I just wanted to give you an end to endend how it goes so a customer buy solar and they go to a distributor who's got a unique selling point and he's able to offer him a system with a far lower payback period And Far higher returns than any of his competitors and they come put the device in um if the um in in the Solar industry you get a a seasonal they call it the solar coaster actually right so sometimes they're selling loads and sometimes they're selling none in the points of when they're not selling many they can go and retrofit our product and have another product go back to their existing base and so all of this stimulates the market um and um and because our certificates are worth so much money right and these are the cicat come out and they were able to go to Big Industry now and they are able to see the actual change and because you can see how much solar has been added to our Network because of our device we're able to quantify that to that country's actual Net Zero targets and that is now getting the attention of policy makers so finally you can get your phones out and you can scan this QR code um what we're doing is we're offering to offset everybody who here on this their carbon footprint from coming to token 2049 um after after this you'll be sent an email and we'll take some details about how far you traveled and how you did it um and then um when when we're when they're available for you we're offset your carbon now um I've got about 30 seconds left I think it's probably worth understanding that we have a team of 25 members of Staff now and every single one of them are superstars and it's I can't reiterate enough that the blockchain and the technology is the Baseline for everything we do but it's the quality of data which all of them are working on working out the quality of data they put into that blockchain because remember as I said at the beginning if you if you put rubbish onto your blockchain all you're going to end up with is a blockchain full of rubbish thank you