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The labeling of electricity is considered an important mechanism to differentiate renewable power generation and, thus, to incentivize the expansion of green energy. However, today's systems for documenting and trading green energy certificates suffer from multiple challenges. These could be addressed by a digital solution that holistically collects and processes production and consumption data. Blockchain-based architectures have repeatedly been suggested for this purpose since they can provide transparency and can likely be accepted by a broad group of stakeholders. Yet, there are significant scalability and privacy issues of a blockchain-based approach for storing and processing fine-grained production and consumption data. In this paper, we propose and discuss a potential solution that levers succinct cryptographic zero-knowledge proofs to balance the required level of transparency and privacy while at the same time providing a high degree of scalability.

Blockchain is no longer just a hype technology, and effective blockchain applications exist in many industries. Yet, few blockchain projects have been successful in Europe’s energy systems. To identify the reasons for this slow progress, we reviewed the recent energy literature regarding the use of blockchain, analyzed industry reports, and interviewed experts who have conducted blockchain projects in Europe’s energy systems. Our analysis reveals eight common use cases, their expected benefits, and the challenges encountered. We find that the expected benefits are often little more than generic hopes, largely outweighed by technological, organizational, and regulatory challenges. The identified challenges are significant and numerous, especially for peer-to-peer trading and microgrid use cases. The fact that few projects have yet provided robust evidence for profitable use suggests there is still a rocky road ahead. Moreover, many use cases appear to require more than just blockchain technology to succeed. In particular, privacy and scalability requirements often call for systems in which blockchains only take a backseat. This realization may be essential for the future use of blockchain technology in energy systems - in Europe and beyond.

Global initiatives on climate protection and national sustainability policies are accelerating the replacement of fossil fuels with renewable energy sources. Many electricity suppliers are engaged in efforts to monetize this transition with ‘green’ services and products, such as Green Electricity Tariffs. These promise customers that their supply includes a specific share of green electricity, yet since electricity suppliers often fail to deliver on those promises, many customers have lost trust in their suppliers. Further information asymmetries may not only exacerbate this loss of trust, but also spark distrust and lead to an overall feeling of ambivalence. Eventually, ambivalent customers may feel inclined to switch suppliers. To prevent this domino effect, electricity suppliers must eliminate ambivalence by increasing customer trust and reducing customer distrust. Here, we discuss how these challenges can be met with a customer loyalty program built on blockchain technology. We developed the program following a Design Science Research approach that facilitated refinement in four iteration and evaluation cycles. Our results indicate that the developed customer loyalty program restores trust, reduces distrust, and resolves customer ambivalence by providing four features: improved customer agency, sufficient and verifiable information, appropriate levels of usability, and unobstructed data access.

Mit digitalen CO2-Herkunfts- und Verwendungsnachweisen auf Basis dezentraler und souveräner Identitäten können Primär- und Emissionsdaten in Echtzeit direkt beim Unternehmen verifizierbar erfasst werden. Dieser technische Ansatz ermöglicht die exakte Zuordnung von CO2-Emissionen zu CO2-Budgets und verhindert Doppelzählungen von CO2-Emissionen. Zudem ermöglichen diese eine differenzierte Kennzeichnung von Produkten.

1. Digitalization is an emerging trend revamping the energy landscape and enabling progress toward continuous energy efficiency improvements. It is argued that digitalization, from its various dimensions, shall be considered as part of policy development to ensure overall net benefit to the system and its participants.72. In its Work Plan for 2020-2021, the Group of Experts on Energy Efficiency (the Group of Experts) was therefore mandated to “explore the role of digitalization and increased use of big data and geo-spatial data in provision of energy services”.83. This discussion paper is prepared with respect to this activity. It examines the role of digitalization and how it can help improve the efficiency of the overall energy system, and aims to provide a clear, concise and balanced view to policymakers and other stakeholders. It presents some sectoral opportunities along with privacy and security risks and touches upon such aspects as data ownership, hosting, and management issues that have significant potential to optimize the overall energy infrastructure. The paper also briefly highlights the potential impact that digitalization of energy system may have on the economy and society, especially in terms of jobs and skills and why reskilling and upskilling will be critical for a sustainable energy future.4. The aim of this paper is to call on inclusion of a discussion on exploring the benefits and obstacles of digitalizing the energy system in the scope of future deliberations of the Committee on Sustainable Energy, as well as to propose considering establishment of a dedicated Task Force under the auspices of the Group of Experts, to lead the related activities.

Energy markets are facing challenges regarding a changing energy generation and consumption structure, as well as the coordination of an increasing number of assets, devices and stakeholders. We address these challenges by introducing a blockchain-based smart contract ecosystem as our contribution to extant research. Apart from blockchain-specific benefits (e.g. data integrity and smart contract execution), the ecosystem fosters energy-blockchain research through the creation of digital assets. Doing so, we address research gaps identified by previous authors. From our work, we can derive economic implications regarding the foundation of local energy markets, the incentivization of grid-stabilizing behavior and the settlement of collective action problems.

This research paper investigates consumer-specific costs on power spot markets. We use real-world smart meter data and market prices to analyze an energy procurement strategy based on the newsvendor model. The outcome displays a segmentation into an ordinal array of different costs-per-customer, which allow for a sensitivity analysis to examine appropriate measures and policy implications. We find the most relevant customer class to be the costliest one percent. These prime targets' share of total costs is 1.5 times as high as the respective share of total consumption. Reallocating the targets into incentive based contracts may allow for a significant reduction of utilities' costs while remaining on a relatively steady service provision level.