Energinet introduces blockchain-based green energy certificate platform

Swiss blockchain provider Concordium has announced its solution as part of Danish transmission system operator (TSO) Energinet’s energy certificate project Energy Origin (EnergiOprindelse).

The project, which is set to launch in beta test form, is focussed on providing large electricity users as well as traders and other market players with energy certificates as guarantees of origin for renewable energy consumption and CO2 footprint monitoring on an hourly basis.

For Energinet, being able to prove that energy comes from renewables is key for their exploitation and with the hourly base in line with market settlement, new opportunities should be opened up for consumers to become ‘green’ while also laying the foundation for power-to-x sector coupling.

Currently most green warranty certificates for electricity are calculated via a match between consumption and production averaged over a year, with no certainty of matches between renewable production and consumption.

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A Concordium statement points out that the central element of the solution is energy certificates linking the production of energy with its consumption, for which a registration method developed.

Lone Fønss Schrøder, CEO of Concordium, says that the company’s blockchain is suitable for creating transparency and the verification of green energy.

“Energinet and the many consuming companies can now document their green energy consumption in their environmental reports and CO2 calculations and thus ensure against ‘greenwashing’.”

With the requirement that the certificates can be issued at short intervals, the solution is designed to handle a large number of transactions, grouping them in so-called Merkle trees, which enables documenting the correctness of these with a limited number of registrations on the blockchain. This makes the solution cheap to operate.

While the solution allows for public verification of energy certificates, detailed usage and production information is treated confidentially in the certificates, with consumers and producers having control over this data themselves.

Energinet launched the EnergiOprindelse project in late 2020 and has been prototyping it over the past year with interested companies.

The TSO envisages rolling out the solution gradually over the next years and initially for companies in Denmark. The intention also is to integrate other forms of energy beyond electricity.

Energinet in addition to its Energy Origin project is collaborating with the EnergyTag initiative, which is focussed on defining and building a market for hourly energy certificates as tradeable instruments.

The TSO also is participating in Energy Track and Trace, which was initiated together with the Elia Group and Elering for tracking and tracing across borders and forms a step to the EU Guarantees of Origin scheme.