As part of its initiative to minimize Solana's already-low environmental impact, the Solana Foundation is pleased to announce the Solana blockchain has achieved carbon neutrality for 2021.
The Solana Foundation will be funding a process called refrigerant destruction, which Green America lists as one of the highest-impact ways to reduce carbon emissions. The Foundation is supporting this process to offset the carbon footprint of the Solana network for the entirety of 2021.
“We’re dedicated to keeping the Solana ecosystem as environmentally friendly as possible,” says Dan Albert, Executive Director of the Solana Foundation. “Our carbon neutrality initiatives, paired with Solana’s high-performance, energy-efficient design, means the community can build a sustainable web3 future for many years to come.”
Solana, the world’s most performant blockchain, is already extremely energy efficient. The most recent analysis from the Solana Foundation estimates that a single Solana transaction uses only 1,939 Joules, which is less than the amount of energy required to complete two Google Searches. That is the equivalent of leaving an LED lightbulb on (36,000 J per hour) for a little more than 3 minutes, or running your refrigerator (810,000 J per hour) for about 11 seconds.
It is also notably much less energy than transactions on other common blockchains, such as an eth2 transaction (126,000 J), an ethereum transaction (777,600,000 J), or a bitcoin transaction (7,412,400,000 J).
The announcement comes alongside its partnership with Watershed, a company dedicated to helping companies cut carbon emissions. The Solana Foundation will be funding the permanent destruction of CFC and HFC refrigerants — greenhouse gasses 10,000 times as potent as CO2. The project creates jobs and has an immediate impact on averting greenhouse gas emissions.
The Solana Foundation will continue to act as a watchdog on the ecosystem’s environmental impact. It has pledged to keep the Solana network infrastructure carbon neutral through 2022 and beyond, and will continue to show transparency with regular reports on energy usage.
Learn more about Solana’s energy impact.
