Gevo, Blocksize Capital to track sustainability of renewable fuels using blockchain

Renewable fuels producer Gevo has teamed up with Germany-based blockchain company Blocksize Capital to track the sustainability of renewable products, including biofuels.

Blocksize provides distributed ledger technology (DTL), more commonly known as blockchain, a tool that allows tracking of data with a product and the transactions associated with the product.

Gevo and Blocksize have discovered that it is possible to attach the key metrics for sustainability to gallons of fuel, enabling a ‘sustainability’ assurance that has not yet been used. The data associated with certain key metrics for measuring sustainability are able to be digitised through blockchain and could lead to tokenisation of those attributes.

“For years, we have been tracking the sustainability of the farms, and their farming practices, that supply products to our facilities, and we need to continue to do so as we expand,” explained Patrick Gruber, CEO of Gevo. “We also track the amount and type of energy used in the production of our products. An end user who buys fuel should be able to simply access the data and know where those gallons originated and what the sustainability profile looks like.

“One of the key principles of sustainability is to ‘measure, then improve’.  DLT will enable us to sort out what truly is valuable in the end market, assigning the correct value to it, and then set up market mechanisms to share value upstream in the value chain. We want to create a system that rewards the value chain for improving its sustainability. Done right, we should be able to bring some of that value back to the farmer creating rewards for managing sustainability in agriculture.

“Obviously we’ll target our ethanol, isobutanol, isooctane, and jet fuel first, but this type of tokenisation system could be applied to protein and feed, as well as chemicals, and food production too. It isn’t lost on us that this type of blockchain technology has enormous potential beyond Gevo and its business system. A DLT-based system like the one we are developing with Blocksize is suitable for any type of business that needs to track sustainability attributes using agriculture or forestry to generate raw materials for the production of food, chemicals, feed, and fuels.”

“According to the Stanford Study ‘Blockchain for Social Impact 2019’, agriculture is one of the essential areas of impact with several use cases for DLT-based applications,” added Christoph Impekoven, founder and managing director of Blocksize Capital. “This is because DLT offers plenty of opportunities to track sustainability attributes across the value chain in a more efficient manner, since it has the potential to avoid any ‘playing of games’ related to the key metrics. Making the first step towards building an ecosystem based on DLT for these business systems, opens the door to tokenise the attributes and make them accessible to a broader audience. Very low carbon or net zero-emission renewable fuels are a good place to start the development of these types of software and tools.

“There is a new financial market developing, and Blocksize Capital, in coordination with micobo as the services provider for the tokenisation, is leading the industry in the construction of a liquid and transparent digital assets´ market with a broader investment base. Hence, the potential of the application beyond Gevo’s business system is enormous. We are beyond excited to be the trusted partner to lead the path and open new opportunities for these businesses, along with such a forward-thinking organisation as Gevo.”