Blockchain in Energy
Bernd Teufel, Anton Sentić · 2022
The ongoing energy transition, while both necessitated and accelerated by a myriad of micro-, meso-, and macrolevel technological, societal, and economic factors, still exhibits significant uncertainty about desired future configurations of the socio-technical energy system. Blockchain and associated technologies have been discussed as one of the potential solutions, particularly within the context of digitalization and decentralization of energy systems, but implementation has been limited up to the present day. This chapter discusses the advantages and drawbacks of utilizing blockchain energy technologies, taking both a techno-centric and transition perspective. In the former, technological aspects are discussed together with potential implementation and operational challenges. Potential fields of application of blockchain technology within the energy sector are presented, as well as first, partly promising, real-life applications. The second part draws on the niche and regime concepts central to the multilevel perspective framework to explore system-derived implementation barriers. The authors are drawing both on a review of existing literature and on knowledge from several research projects on blockchain energy and decentralized systems, aiming to provide a comprehensive account discussing the suitability of blockchain as a core element and/or supporting factor of energy transitions, with a particular focus on decentralization and digitalization processes.