WePower is a green energy trading platform built using the power of crypto-tokens and the blockchain. I hope our readers don’t need to be told about the importance of new, green energy sources to the world at large. However, as the crypto folks know, it is all about the economic incentives. So how do you ensure that green energy projects are funded adequately, so that the research and development effort can take us into a new era of energy generation and usage that is clean, green, and can supply humanity with all our energy needs of the future (no, coal/oil/gas don’t count, since they are still finite – over hundreds of years, they are not reliable energy sources for humanity to survive and thrive).
The traditional approach in green energy has been through government subsidies. This top-down approach usually doesn’t work as well, since something so decentralized and research oriented will hardly be able to be understood by the powers that be. Besides, the bureaucrats are likely not the best people to make micro-level decisions about the industry. Instead, what we need is a bottoms-up approach to green energy that comes from the people and marketplace as opposed to top-level governments. Both these approaches can of course join forces and create powerful incentives for the industry as a whole to move towards green energy.
Financing Green Energy Projects Using WePower
WePower is a new platform that leverages the power of crypto-tokens and blockchain to solve the above problems. It is creating a platform where green energy projects can finance renewable energy projects using their token. This is a marketplace based approach, i.e. the incentives are not coming from a high-level government bureaucrat but instead from the grass-roots people. Such financing model is far more sustainable and not susceptible to abrupt policy changes.
The financing comes from every day regular energy consumers and investors. Again – we should emphasize the decentralized nature of this, since anyone can participate in the WePower network. This makes the models more sustainable and subject to market forces instead of political forces.
The trend towards green energy should also be obvious. Here’s its progress so far, and the pace is only accelerating:
As new projects come online, especially in countries where these energy sources are not yet fully developed, there is a huge scope for regular people to invest, contribute, and profit from this trend. The world is going to need more clear energy in the future – that’s undeniable. So how are we going to get there?
Understanding the Energy Tokens in WePower
WePower works by letting projects create their own financing tokens. However, these tokens are not produced and denominated in local currencies like the US Dollar. Instead, these tokens represent energy. More specifically, each token represents a share of the future energy to be produced by a green energy project.
This is a novel way of financing, which lets consumers and investors get what they’re looking for – green energy, while letting the capital intensive green energy projects keep any rewards for producing green energy cheaply and more efficiently, thus giving them an incentive to be as good as possible. Projects can also thus invest accordingly into research and development resources, which can help increase the yield and the project can thus promise a higher amount of energy output.
Blockchain and WPR Token
The WePower network connects directly with the energy grid and the energy wholesale markets. Since the project uses the blockchain, everything is transparently recorded for anyone to audit, and there’s no ‘funny business’ going on behind the scenes. This empowers the power generators and consumers to deal with each other directly instead of going through middle men.
The WPR token will accrue a portion of the energy generated by the network, that can then be either used directly by the WPR token holders, or sold on the WePower energy trading platform. Therefore, by helping fund this network, you can ensure a supply of clean energy for yourself. To be more specific, projects on the WePower network will donate 0.9% of their energy credits to the WPR token holders.
The WPR token is fairly unique amongst other crypto tokens, in that the unit of value accrual to the WPR token is literally energy – power that is donated by the energy producers on the WePower network, to help maintain, build, sustain, and grow the WePower network. If the token holder resides in an area that already has a WePower power producer, they can just use the energy accumulated to their WPR to power their own homes and businesses. However, if you are a WPR token holder and don’t live in one of these areas, that’s fine too. Since it is just clean energy, you can just use the WePower energy trading platform to sell this energy to someone else that can use this energy instead.
Also, the WPR tokens will use the Bancor Protocol to ensure that WPR tokens are liquid. You don’t need to wait for the WPR tokens to be listed on an exchange to trade them (although for high volume trades, we’ll still recommend buying/selling from exchanges). You get liquidity from the get go.
Interestingly, the WPR token holders don’t even need to wait for too long in order to start seeing some energy accumulate to their WPR tokens, since the WePower team already has partnerships with potential energy producers in the works. The WePower network is first launching in Estonia and then expanding to Spain, Italy, Germany, and Portugal.
WPR tokens will be sold in a token sale/ICO. You can check out their website here to learn more. If you plan to invest, make sure you’ve also read the whitepaper.