Steve Wozniak’s Efforce Shows Promise as Two Energy Savings Projects Take Off

While Bitcoin gets a lot of stick for its high energy usage, not every project in the crypto industry is causing problems for the environment. On the contrary, there are many projects that are actively helping to improve it, with one of the most promising to emerge being Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak’s Efforce.

Efforce’s mission is to help companies and other organizations reduce their carbon footprint through the use of its non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Efforce’s NFTs are unique in that they represent future energy savings which users can choose to benefit from.

Efforce can be thought of as a tokenized energy savings trading platform that provides resources for companies to improve the energy efficiency of their industrial processes or office buildings.

Using the platform, companies can mint NFTs and then sell them to contributors that want to invest in their energy-saving projects, rewarding them with a percentage of whatever long-term savings they achieve.

The project is betting on the rapidly growing interest in energy efficiency. Companies today are increasingly aware of the damage to the environment caused by their business activities and many are determined to minimize that impact.

However, energy saving projects often require substantial investment, and not every company can afford to implement them. Efforce is therefore providing a novel platform for them to get their energy reduction efforts up and running.

A Novel Use Case for NFTs

NFTs are a critical element of Efforce’s platform as they represent ownership of a portion of a company’s future energy savings. With them, companies can tokenize their future energy savings and sell them to investors.

In this way, they have a simple way to obtain the funding they require to go ahead and implement their carbon reduction projects.

In this way, Efforce’s model is similar to that of Energy Service Companies, which invest in energy efficiency projects to benefit from the long-term economic returns they provide. The difference is that because the energy savings are tokenized, they can be freely traded on NFT marketplaces, enabling anyone to participate.

Efforce aspires to provide a solution to the funding gap that has prevented many com[panies from implementing energy savings projects thus far. In addition, its platform also helps to further sustainability by bringing like-minded people together.

Getting Energy Savings Off The Ground

Earlier this month, Efforce followed through on its plans with the public sale of its first two “Energy Efficient NFT” collections in support of two different projects.

The first is a combined cooling, heating and power plant project from an unnamed company that is planning to self-produce 1.4 gigawatt hours of electricity per year, while the second is an Energy Efficiency Project (EEP) involving another undisclosed firm.

It aims to provide 60% of its energy to a sewage treatment facility while delivering heat to a sludge drying plant. Altogether, it will eliminate up to 80% of the total weight of disposable sludge.

Efforce launched its public sale with 2,500 Genesis NFTs for each project. To contribute, users are required to lockup Efforce’s native WOZX tokens in a smart contract for the duration of the project, and receive Genesis NFTs in return.

These locked tokens will then generate reward from the savings derived from each project that are payable to the NFT holder.

Efforce’s Genesis NFTs therefore offer unique utility as they serve as a kind of “proof of contribution” to the projects they’re associated with. They carry other benefits besides earning rewards - for instance, Genesis NFT holders will also get first dibs on the NFTs of new projects via a private sale.

The impact of each project will be measured using Megawatts of Energy Saved, or mWOZ, with each unit translating to the equivalent of 1 USDC, or $1 dollar. Once the projects start delivering savings, the mWOZ will be credited to NFT holders as rewards.

Efforce said its first project is targeting savings of 735,000 mWOZ, with NFTs sold at a floor price of 210 USDC. The second project aims to achieve energy savings of 665,000 mWOZ, and the tokens were priced at 190 USDC each.

Wozniak said Efforce is helping companies to overcome a key pain point that prevents many companies from reducing their energy footprints.

“By taking steps to back efficiency projects, Efforce encourages more projects to apply for financing, overcoming a key pain point for companies seeking to transform their energy footprint,” he explained.

The project is not only an extremely promising and novel use case for NFTs, but also highlights how blockchain technology as a whole can contribute towards positive environmental change.

Efforce has created a uniquely appealing way for anyone to get involved in carbon removal that simply wouldn’t be possible without the application of NFTs.