Summary written by Megan Schulze, SWE-RMS
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At our inaugural Women in Sustainability Night on 1/16/18 in Boulder, Claire Henly from Rocky Mountain Institute shared her work with the RMI and the Energy Web Foundation on blockchain technology for energy applications. Even as I work in the energy sector, this topic had me scratching my head a little to understand to concept of blockchain technology and its application in the future. Claire was kind enough to provide us with some resources for an Introduction to Blockchain.

Claire started her presentation with some raise your hand questions:

• Raise your hand if you’ve heard of Bitcoin: Everyone
• Raise your hand if you’ve heard of Blockchain: 2-3 hands raise (admittedly mostly from other RMI team members).

Bitcoin is the most widely heard of application of blockchain technology which in a very simplified description, is a way to complete many transactions across a number of computers in a trusted platform (i.e. in the case of Bitcoin, eliminating the middle man of a financial transaction like a bank). These transactions are compiled in blocks, and entered into a chain for completion (wow, that’s why it’s called a blockchain). The biggest draw to this technology is that a blockchain is very transparent and “uses cryptography and digital signatures… and has mechanisms to make it hard to change historical records, or at least make it easy to detect when someone is trying to do so (Lewis, 2015). My interpretation is that blockchain is a transparent informational platform and method of data storage which does not have any centralized power of control and creates active trust between users. Great! But why is this useful in the Energy Industry?

Claire’s team at RMI and the Energy Web Foundation believe “blockchain technology has the potential to redesign the rules of the game on how energy is distributed and transacted” (Henly & Miller, 2017). Specifically, they have prioritized the following four application domains in the energy sector:

1. Utility Billing: Any blockchain application where utilities and third parties use cryptographic identities to manage metering, customer settlement, advanced rate implementation, or customer switching
2. Certificates of origin: Any blockchain application where renewable energy generators and certificate buyers interact directly and use smart contracts to streamline the overall process through the automation of certificate issuance, tracking, and retirement
3. Demand response: Any blockchain application where demand response aggregators (i.e., utilities and third parties) use secure smart contracts to conduct aggregation, real-time measurement and verification (M&V), settlement, and trading for energy efficiency and demand response programs
4. Transactive energy: Any blockchain application where devices automatically respond to local conditions on the distribution grid in real time, engaging in two-way price negotiation based on a combination of user preferences and grid needs (Henly & Miller, 2017).

Check out more resources on Blockchain here.

Stay tuned for a blog post about our other speaker from Women in Sustainability night Angela Fisher, founder of Aspire Sustainability.

Lewis, A. 2015. A gentle introduction to blockchain technology. Bits on blocks. https://bitsonblocks.net/2015/09/09/a-gentle-introduction-to-blockchain-technology/
Henly, C. & Miller, D. 2017. Blockchain is reimagining the rules of the game in the energy sector. Rocky Mountain Institute. https://www.rmi.org/news/blockchain-reimagining-rules-game-energy-sector/