Efforce: The next bite of the apple
If you’re a crypto sceptic, Efforce is an exciting project with clear, revenue-generating value that is accessible to anyone. Steve Wozniak’s new energy efficiency company is more 2021 than anything in the market… crypto, tech, environmentally conscious… it’s just missing a buy now pay later feature…
When Steve Wozniak founded Apple Computer Company with Steve Jobs and Ronald Wayne in 1976, the thought of a cryptocurrency-based energy efficiency platform would not even have registered as a blip in his mind. Fast-forward 45 years and the now 70-year old is spearheading a revolution in the energy market, leveraging blockchain technology to launch Efforce: the world’s first decentralised funding platform for energy efficiency projects.
Energy efficiency refers to the ability of a physical system to use less energy, whilst producing the same output. An energy efficiency project could be as simple as the relamping of an airport terminal. In 2018, Dubai International Airport underwent this exact improvement, replacing 15,000 conventional lamps with energy efficient LED bulbs. The project has resulted in annual energy savings of 7,000MWh (worth USD $1.36 million), which equates to 495 metric tonnes of CO2 emissions (a 63% reduction in annual consumption).
The energy efficiency market currently represents an annual expenditure of USD $250 billion and is growing at an annual rate of 10%. Global investment is predicted to grow by a further USD $584 billion between now and 2025. With more than 68% of the world’s energy systems not covered by an efficiency standard, there is enormous potential for growth.
Enter Efforce. Only launched in December 2020, Efforce is a crowdfunding platform where retail investors can invest in efficiency projects around the world and trade the energy savings in a P2P marketplace. In simple terms, if you have a spare $500, you can invest in an energy efficiency project published on the Efforce platform and receive a share of the profits, derived from the resultant energy savings, in the form of Efforce’s cryptocurrency, WOZX. WOZX, the tokenised energy savings named after Wozniak, can be traded for fiat currency, held as a longer-term investment, or used to offset your own energy bills. The crypto funding model provides companies wanting to implement energy efficiency improvements with access to the necessary capital, enabling retail investors an environmentally conscious pathway to potentially significant returns.
As is the case with all cryptocurrencies, the key value derives from the underlying blockchain technology. In Efforce’s case, Ethereum’s blockchain is used to certify the resultant energy savings of a project in a transparent format. Smart meters are used to feed live data onto the append-only log, enabling a transparent and tamper-proof record of the exact consumption and savings data for all participants to view. Programmable smart contracts are employed on the blockchain to automatically redistribute the resultant savings to token holders based on this data. The blockchain replaces a number of third-parties, traditionally involved in efficiency projects, with sophisticated computational logic. Its disintermediating effect is estimated to condense a 4–5 month process to a few days, and reduce the cost of the project by 10x on average. This a wonderfully simple case study to exhibit blockchain’s democratising value, its security, transparency, and potential for widespread application.
Other promising crypto projects in the energy space include those of Power Ledger and WePower. However, both of these companies operate in the production-side of the energy market, seeking to democratise access to renewable energy sources through a decentralised platform. Efforce is the world’s first crypto project focused on energy efficiency and provides an intuitive pathway to participation.
