Shell’s Dirty Past On Climate Haunts Its Partnership With Gitcoin
Gitcoin said on Monday that it would be partnering with multinational oil and gas company Shell Global Solutions International BV to support climate solutions projects in grants programmes, a collaboration which has elicited mixed reactions over the latter’s dirty climate record.
The year-long partnership will enable the development of open source software for climate solutions, Gitcoin stated and added that blockchain’s potential to solve coordination issues is needed in the energy industry to provide ways to incentivize the adoption of renewable energy sources, transparency and verifiability for carbon markets.
Shell will donate to Gitcoin’s matching fund for the next Climate Solutions rounds and a hackathon in Q4 of this year that will focus on blockchain related energy use cases.
“We’re excited to announce this collaboration with Shell as another key example of the real -life (sic) potential to scale transparent funding allocation via blockchain technology for real-world (sic) solutions,” said Azeem Khan, head of impact at Gitcoin.
Gitcoin uses Quadratic Funding mechanism to distribute matching funds to projects based on the support the projects get from the community. Early this year, the grants programme got support from the United Nations Childrens Fund (UNICEF) to support projects that provide solutions in education, health and food production.
“Working with Gitcoin is a great way to discover and support cutting edge projects from all around the world and to leverage innovative funding mechanisms to harness the wisdom of the crowd,” said Vikram Seth, blockchain and web3 manager.
While the partnership was welcomed by some as a boost for effort to protect the environment, for others it is an effort by Shell to green wash. The distrust of the move by Shell may not be unconnected to the accusation that the company’s operations in some parts of the world destroy the environment as well as allegations of spending millions of dollars on anti-climate lobbying, polluting the Niger Delta in Nigeria and lying about the clean up of oil spills.
Most oil companies are not trusted by many people. A report revealed that Exxon was aware of climate change as early as 1977 before it became a public issue but did not prevent it from promoting climate disinformation.
“The comments beneath this post clearly highlight Gitcoin’s misguided decision. Greenwashing has real consequences; don’t let it seep into your networks,” wrote Burak Arikan on X.
“Hot take, but I'm a fan of this. People in the comments are angry because Shell is a company and therefore “the enemy”. As of today, we unfortunately need fossil fuels. Working to move those who provide them to sustainable paths is a good thing. Ignoring them is not,” Vizsla wrote.
