IBM to tokenise renewable energy credits

IBM is developing a blockchain-based solution to tokenise energy certificates using the Hyperledger Fabric DLT framework and its Tokens SDK.

The new solution named enerT is positioned as aimed to revolutionise the existing high cost and cumbersome nature of energy certificate trading and an intelligent solution with regards to full disclosure certification of energy.

For example, in addition to the amount of energy generated by mixed sources, tokens created in the network could also store other useful characteristics such as CO2 emissions in the energy supply chain.

A tokenised energy marketplace would offer a wide range of trusted certificates in terms of energy types and origin, a blog post states. Such a network would allow suppliers and consumers to trade energy certificates efficiently and inexpensively.

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“A tokenised certification unit would be like what the container did for the shipping industry.”

That said, IBM is by no means the first to look to the blockchain for energy certificate tracking and trading. Power Ledger and LO3 are others that developed solutions and Energy Web’s Origin for different types of energy attribute certificates is one of the organisation’s core offerings.

Time will tell how these various solutions stack up against each other.

IBM promotes enerT as being developed as an energy-friendly solution on a private and permissioned-based technology to eliminate energy consumption by its network operations. Hyperledger Fabric is an open-source offering with its consensus protocol based on the RAFT leader-follower approach to reduce the transactional complexity.

There is nevertheless set to be a growing demand for solutions for renewable energy certification as organisations align their business strategies to net-zero demands and to meet Environmental Sustainability Goal reporting requirements.

The potential of blockchain in this use case lies in characteristics including trust, transparency and scalability. It also has potential for the fractional market, which would open trading to more small scale participants.