SolarCoin

SolarCoin is a digital currency distributed to incentivize 97,500 TWh of Solar energy over 40 years. SolarCoin is backed by a 3rd party verified facility representing 1 MWh of generated solar electricity- wiki.solarcoin.org

The brainchild of Nick Gogerty, principal at Thoughtful Capital Group and self-proclaimed "deep finance geek", solarcoin is designed to reward people for producing energy via photovoltaic solar panels.

Coins would be awarded based on a Proof of Work, but instead of computational, the proof would be mostly physical - an organization or company would be given a SolarCoin for every 1Mw/hour of energy that they produced using their photovoltaic solar arrays - coindesk.com

There is a 98.1bn coin cap, and 97.5bn of them have been created from scratch. They are held by an organization called the Open Currency Association, which will grant them to generators over time. 105m coins will be mined, to kickstart the network. The remaining 500m will be in a 'genesis pool account', intended for environment groups, early volunteers and advisors.

How will people get these coins? You can mine them (yes, that chews up energy, but the team has chosen Scrypt for the proof of work, so at least it won't encourage a race for computing power). You can buy them on the open market - Gogerty anticipates a price in the $20-$30 window over the next 3-5 years if all goes to plan - or you can get them as a reward for your solar power generation.

The latter option is the coin's real purpose, Gogerty says; the mining part is simply there because the coin needs a network.

The solarcoin site says that every megawatt-hour of electricity generated through a solar PV panel avoids more than 1,500 lbs of carbon dioxide (CO2), along with over five lbs of sulfur dioxide (SO2), and almost two lbs of nitrogen oxide (NOx). We assume they're talking about coal plant pollution here.

Many electronic and manual methods of verification will evolve for different countries and regimes. All claims for SolarCoin will require meter derived proof from a verified generation source and owner. The SolarCoin community will vet all verification methodologies. These methods will rapidly adapt efficiencies seeking maximum ease of use while preventing fraudulent claims. Most electric meters have online APIs and web reporting. These can be integrated with SolarCoin verification methods. Inverter manufacturers, meter companies and large systems integrators are invited to partner with SolarCoin to integrate customer web based reading methodologies with the SolarCoin granting community.

Most SolarCoins are held reserve in publicly visible non-circulating accounts by the SolarCoin Foundation, an open community project. Over 99% of these coins will be distributed to renewable power generators and renewable energy related projects over the coming years.