The launch, held at Money 2020 Europe in Amsterdam, comes one year after Zumo and its partner Zero Labs, a renewable-energy-as-a-service company building programmable decarbonisation technologies, were awarded a grant by Innovate UK, the UK’s national innovation agency, to fund research into the decarbonisation of crypto, specifically finding practical ways in which wallets and platforms can scale the use of renewable energy.

Oxygen enables Zumo’s clients, including banks and asset managers, to provide ESG-aligned, future-proofed crypto offerings to their customers. The targeted solution combines the forecasting and calculation of crypto electricity consumption with standard industry data, and uses renewable energy procurement in the form of Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs) to ensure crypto or blockchain activities are transparently and verifiably powered by renewables. This helps Zumo’s clients reduce the electricity-based Scope 3 emissions associated with their crypto offerings and prove it.

The launch of Oxygen follows the successful completion of Zumo’s Zero Hero pilot project, a live trial to buy RECs to compensate for the electricity usage of Bitcoin bought via a direct-to-consumer crypto app, which is powered by Zumo’s infrastructure.

£1.5 million worth of Bitcoin was covered by Zero Hero REC purchases, with a total of 850 megawatt-hours (MWh) of electricity compensated via the programme - enough energy to drive an electric vehicle for over 2.6 million miles*. Zumo also bought 126.36 MWh for the purpose of decarbonising Ethereum’s historical emissions (and Zumo’s ETH holdings), participating in the Blocks.garden initiative.
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Nick Jones, Co-Founder and CEO, Zumo, said: “The associated carbon footprint can be a huge elephant in the room when it comes to rolling out a digital asset product. With Oxygen, the first solution of its type, we’re offering businesses practical ways to meet customer demand for digital assets whilst mitigating environmental challenges, and demonstrating positive, ESG-aligned action.”

“Oxygen empowers banks, asset managers, and other financial institutions to align their digital asset offering with their wider net zero strategy and make verifiable decarbonisation claims. We’re extremely proud of today’s launch, which follows a lot of hard work together with our friends at Zero Labs. I hope it sends a positive signal to the rest of the market about exactly what’s possible.”

Beltran Berrocal, Co-Founder and CEO, Zero Labs, added: “We’re excited to expand our work with Zumo, who is at the forefront of programmable decarbonisation, creating new green and smart services to provably decarbonise the crypto and financial industries, while also upholding maximum transparency and following industry best practices and sustainability reporting standards.”

“Oxygen’s launch is interesting because, firstly, it showcases the power of digital renewable energy, and secondly it corrects the historically bad reputation of crypto’s energy consumption by showing that buying crypto can actually become a source of new demand for renewable energy.”

The decarbonisation of crypto is one of the most pressing challenges facing the nascent digital assets sector. Zumo has taken a lead in the industry response, and has released a series of seminal reports that are shaping the direction of travel [available at zumo.tech/crypto-knowledge-hub]. Zumo has also won a number of awards for its work, including ‘Best Application of ESG’ at City AM’s 2022 ‘Crypto AM’ awards.

In October 2022, Zumo became a member of the World Economic Forum’s (WEF’s) Crypto Sustainability Coalition. Part of the wider Crypto Impact and Sustainability Accelerator, the Coalition explored how blockchain tools can be better leveraged to contribute to meaningful progress towards positive climate action. In April 2023, the WEF released a subsequent insight report, entitled ‘Guidelines for improving blockchain’s environmental, social and economic impact’ which featured Zumo’s Zero Hero project as an industry case study.