Plantations all around the world that help produce more oxygen are capable of claiming carbon credits.
Example: A bamboo plantation releases upto 30% more oxygen than other plants. You sow it once, just needs sunlight and water, basic wasteland to grow. Ofcourse it grows faster when given drip irrigation, manure/fertilizers, etc. It keeps giving produce for the next 60 years without the interference. Since China, India, vietnam already have already have a large forest cover of bamboo as well as agricultural plantations, they're in good position to connect mining operations to agriculture
Maybe A Startup that can: - verify/track these types of plantations using advance monitoring setups.
- Give the farmers a Minimum Support Price for their cultivations and carbon credits.
- Become a platform between various stakeholders like crypto miners, farmers, organizations supporting the farmers, government, etc
- Sell those carbon credits on already exisiting markets or create their own exchange.
- Create crypto token in some form tied to these carbon credits if you want the hype
- Incentivize miners and farmers to join the platform to balance supply and demand.
- Sell this as a CSR opportunity
- Consumer demand for currency can be increased when consumer owns the plantation costs themselves(Maybe Owning the produce of the farm) While farmers have lands, they necessarily don't have the capital to cultivate. So people who have capital can get engaged with them in a contract farming approach.
- Get everyone some crypto token
This gives the virtual world a chance to actually get connected to physical assets and people in a way that everyone stays invested.
the demonization of Bitcoin's proof-of-work is much less useful than campaigning for a carbon tax
To answer the original question, I see no way that one could create a "proof-of-decarbonization" consensus system for a cryptosystem. Or at least such a system would be harder to implement than a carbon tax.
You'd need to fuse it with the hardware doing that carbon capturing. Otherwise (and even then) it could be spoofed.
Blockchain + The Real World = Problems
Blockchain + token on said blockchain = Successs