With Oxygen, banks and asset managers can view the electricity consumption of their crypto asset offerings. Oxygen also uses Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs) to verify that crypto and blockchain activities are offset by renewable sources, helping asset managers to reduce the overall emissions associated with their offerings — and also prove it. 

The launch of Oxygen comes around a year after Zumo and its partner Zero Labs — a renewable-energy-as-a-service company — received a grant from the UK’s national innovation agency, Innovate UK. The funding was awarded with the intention of finding practical ways crypto platforms could scale the use of renewable energy. 

“Oxygen’s launch is interesting because, firstly, it showcases the power of digital renewable energy, and secondly it corrects the historically bad reputation of crypto’s energy consumption by showing that buying crypto can actually become a source of new demand for renewable energy,” said Beltran Berrocal, Co-Founder and CEO at Zero Labs.

In the midst of a global energy crisis, crypto is an easy target to reel back on. According to data from the Bitcoin energy consumption index used by Power Compare, it takes 781 kilowatt hours (KWh) of electricity per Bitcoin transaction. In comparison, the average UK household uses less than ten KWh per day.

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Zumo recently piloted a project which used RECs to compensate for Bitcoin electricity usage bought via a crypto app using Zumo’s infrastructure. In the Zero Hero pilot project, £1.5 million, and 850,000 KWh worth of Bitcoin was covered. 

“The associated carbon footprint can be a huge elephant in the room when it comes to rolling out a digital asset product,” said Nick Jones, Co-Founder and CEO of Zumo. “Oxygen empowers banks, asset managers, and other financial institutions to align their digital asset offering with their wider net zero strategy and make verifiable decarbonisation claims.”