Consumer demand for carbon footprint information on the products they purchase is increasing. But in sectors such as the automotive industry, supply chains are often long, complex, and opaque, which makes tracing and calculating carbon footprints of complex products across the entire supply chain very challenging due to the lack of standardized and reliable data.
We are excited to announce that a cutting-edge solution to this challenge, CarbonBlock, has won the Plug and Play Global Innovation Award from Europe’s largest innovation platform STARTUP AUTOBAHN. Out of hundreds of talented startups from across Europe, Berlin-based innovation hub CircularTree (Member of iPoint Group) came out on top for its innovative work on CarbonBlock, the blockchain-powered data platform project, with high-performance automotive manufacturer Porsche, multinational chemical company BASF, and automotive supplier Motherson. Representing a simple automotive supply chain, the three companies embarked on a pilot project with CircularTree to measure and manage carbon footprints of an automotive part – a Porsche Taycan bumper – using smart contracts.
“Typically, 80% of the product carbon footprint comes through the supply chain and companies need an efficient solution to measure and manage the carbon footprint of their supply chain,” states Gunther Walden, CEO and co-founder of CircularTree. “And the CarbonBlock solution offers convincing benefits: it provides a scalable and secure solution which enables the transparent display of CO2 data along the supply chain while guaranteeing data privacy and maintaining a competitive advantage,” Walden continues.
“We are honored to have won this award for our pursuit of innovative and effective sustainability solutions and are thrilled to have such renowned industry partners in our pilot project. This reinforces CircularTree’s mission and we are very excited about what we can achieve with larger industrial ecosystems in the future.” Martina Prox, Sustainability Strategist at the ifu Institute for Environmental IT Hamburg (Member of iPoint Group), who facilitated the consensus process to find agreement on the Carbon Footprint data documentation and sharing of CarbonBlock, adds: “The collaborative spirit of all members of the project consortium is one big success factor – collaboration is key to tackling future sustainability challenges.”
Joerg Walden, strategic advisor and co-founder at CircularTree as well as CEO and founder of iPoint-systems, emphasizes: “Driven by the vision of how today’s solutions can contribute to securing a sustainable world for future generations, I strongly believe that Blockchain can play a decisive role in improving companies’ social and environmental impact. I am very excited about this award for CarbonBlock look forward to future projects and solutions aimed at making the world a safer, more sustainable place with the help of Blockchain technology.”
Learn more about CircularTree here.
Learn more about the STARTUP AUTOBAHN here.