There are many ways to generate electricity. The traditional approaches like burning coal and oil are still widely spread and it has been proven to be quite problematic for the environment.
Most of the electricity generation methods generate waste which impacts the environment like the release of carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxide when burning natural gas to generate electricity. As the population expanded and energy consumption increased there was a need to think of different ways to generate electricity and that would not be as damaging as the traditional methods.
Especially if you try to look into the developing countries you will realize that they suffer the most; because for those countries to thrive they need development project and the development projects require a considerable energy to ensure its success.
The problem does not end here; when disasters happen, be it natural or handmade those issues escalate. Taking, for example, Maria the hurricane that has hit Puerto Rico. The electricity outages still happen even after the hurricane due to the damage the hurricane caused to the power plants. The power grid restoration or repair cost around $200 million.
image obtained from [3]
4NEW the idea that is set to solve the electricity problem in an environmentally friendly approach. 4NEW decided to use waste to generate electricity. Through the process of burning waste in a clean and highly managed plant, electricity would be generated hence minimizing waste and generating electricity at the same. This innovative idea has been around and is quite successful where it is implemented. Unfortunately, it is not widely implemented; I think mostly because of lack of knowledge and the know how.
4NEW has acquired two plants in the UK and is currently generating electricity. What is great about the idea is that they get the waste for free. Which makes the model a profitable one. You might wonder what is that going to do with you; I mean the plants are physical and they will be selling the generated electricity to the UK's national grid; where do you fall into all of this? Surprisingly you can. You can actually own electricity generated from their plants and sell it to whomever you like (their supported consumers). They achieved that through the blockchain and their token KWATT. The KWATT token is actually pegged to the actual electricity KWATT. This way you can own electricity anywhere.
Now recall earlier I said, Puerto Rico? the hurricane was devastating and has caused damage to the national energy throughout the island. that is not all that the hurricane did to Puerto Rico. The debris was massive too; according to npr.org[1] the waste generated made for more than 40 football fields. The national landfill became full they had to ought other locations like soccer fields.
4NEW has actually started official talks in Puerto Rico to see into this problem; which makes them a great candidate solving two problems they are really good at; generating electricity and getting rid of waste.
The big question now is what would you do with the KWATT tokens?
4NEW provides various options for the holders to choose from; You can either sell it to the grid they are providing energy to. like, in this case, one plant is selling to the national UK grid; you can sell your tokens as energy to the UK national grid; If they happen to start operations in Puerto Rico you will most likely be able to sell there as well. So with this option, you have the freedom to sell to any consumer in the network. Now you also have another option; 4NEW decided to start a mining farm backed by the other plant they acquired. The plant would generate the electricity to the mining farm and guess what? well, I think you have already guessed that you can sell your KWATTs to the mining farm.
Mining was opted for as an option because of the high energy it consumes. 1 Bitcoin transaction for example consumed as much as 30 US households/day. That is a massive electricity consumption.
That is why we see the price spike in bitcoin. The mining farm set by 4NEW will be using the waste energy obtained from on the currently owned plants. They have ordered mining rigs in shipping containers that are meant to be delivered in June 2018. The containers can hold up to 432 Antminers. However, their mining efforts will be focused on ASIC S9 Antiminers and GTX 1060 GPU. The latter would be used for most crypto mining like Ethereum [2].
The plants currently can generate 10 Megawatts per hour which can support 360 Billion Giga Hashes/hour.
The ICO has raised over $42.1 Mil which is their soft cap. Their hard cap is $75 Mil. They already own two plants in the UK with an output capacity of 10 megawatts per hour (combined). The total token supply is 300 million KWATTs based on the annual projected output of the plants. All unsold tokens would be burnt and plants output would be matched to the circulating token supply. As I mentioned earlier there are talks to also start plants in Puerto Rico. They have around 36610 registered users through the platform. The KWATT token holders who bought the token between January and March 2018 will be entitled to a 25% upon KYC completion.
Resources:
Whitepaper: https://4new.io/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/4New_WhitePaper_English.pdf
Website: https://4new.io/
References:
[1] npr (2017), After Maria, Puerto Rico Struggles Under The Weight Of Its Own Garbage, https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/12/14/570927809/after-maria-puerto-rico-struggles-under-the-weight-of-its-own-garbage
[2] 4New whitepaper, https://4new.io/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/4New_WhitePaper_English.pdf