Electricity powered by blockchain: A review with a European perspective

in Applied Energy (2022), 325

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 ... [more ▼]

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. [less ▲]

Chapter 8: Tokenization and Regulatory Compliance for Art and Collectible Markets: From Regulators' Demands for Transparency to Investors' Demands for Privacy

in Lacity, Mary; Treiblmaier, Horst (Eds.) Blockchains and the Token Economy: Studies in Theory and Practice (2022)

Art and collectibles markets tend to involve lower liquidity and higher fees than public equity markets. Distributed ledger technology can tokenize artworks and collectibles, so that claims to these ... [more ▼]

Art and collectibles markets tend to involve lower liquidity and higher fees than public equity markets. Distributed ledger technology can tokenize artworks and collectibles, so that claims to these assets can be exchanged digitally without intermediaries. Tokenization offers investors access to a global market plus a digitized paper trail, as well as new options for the fractional ownership of artworks, art-collateralized loans, and yield-bearing art assets. The main challenge for tokenization researchers and platform developers is to simultaneously satisfy regulators’ demands for transparency and auditability as well as art investors’ demands for privacy. New technological solutions are required that enable market participants to disclose the absolute minimum amount of information that is required by regulators. We explore new concepts from distributed ledger technology, cryptography, and digital identity management that can help address this challenge. [less ▲]

The DLPS: A New Framework for Benchmarking Blockchains

in Proceedings of the 54th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (2021)

Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLT) promise to revolutionize business ecosystems by permitting secure transactions without intermediaries. A widely recognized challenge that inhibits the uptake of DLT ... [more ▼]

Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLT) promise to revolutionize business ecosystems by permitting secure transactions without intermediaries. A widely recognized challenge that inhibits the uptake of DLT is scalability and performance. Hence, quantifying key metrics such as throughput and latency is crucial for designing DLT-based infrastructures, applications, and ecosystems. However, current benchmarking frameworks for blockchains do not cover the whole benchmarking process; impeding transparent comparisons of different DLT networks. In this paper, we present the Distributed Ledger Performance Scan (DLPS), an open-source framework for end-to-end performance characterizations of blockchains, addressing the need to transparently and automatically evaluate the performance of highly customizable configurations. We describe our new framework and argue that it significantly improves existing DLT benchmarking solutions. To demonstrate the capabilities of the DLPS, we also summarize the main results obtained from a series of experiments that we have conducted with it, giving a first comprehensive comparison of essential scalability properties of several commonly used enterprise blockchains. [less ▲]

Ein Blick auf aktuelle Entwicklungen bei Blockchains und deren Auswirkungen auf den Energieverbrauch

in Informatik-Spektrum (2020)

The enormous power consumption of Bitcoin has led to undifferentiated discussions in science and practice about the sustainability of blockchain and distributed ledger technology in general. However ... [more ▼]

The enormous power consumption of Bitcoin has led to undifferentiated discussions in science and practice about the sustainability of blockchain and distributed ledger technology in general. However, blockchain technology is far from homogeneous—not only with regard to its applications, which now go far beyond cryptocurrencies and have reached businesses and the public sector, but also with regard to its technical characteristics and, in particular, its power consumption. This paper summarizes the status quo of the power consumption of various implementations of blockchain technology, with special emphasis on the recent ‘‘Bitcoin Halving’’ and so-called ‘‘zk-rollups’’. We argue that although Bitcoin and other proof-of-work blockchains do indeed consume a lot of power, alternative blockchain solutions with significantly lower power consumption are already available today, and new promising concepts are being tested that could further reduce in particulary the power consumption of large blockchain networks in the near future. From this we conclude that although the criticism of Bitcoin’s power consumption is legitimate, it should not be used to derive an energy problem of blockchain technology in general. In many cases in which processes can be digitized or improved with the help of more energy-efficient blockchain variants, one can even expect net energy savings. [less ▲]

A Generic Data Model for Describing Flexibility in Power Markets

in Energies (2019), 12(10),

In this article, we present a new descriptive model for industrial flexibility with respect to power consumption. The advancing digitization in the energy sector opens up new possibilities for utilizing ... [more ▼]

In this article, we present a new descriptive model for industrial flexibility with respect to power consumption. The advancing digitization in the energy sector opens up new possibilities for utilizing and automatizing the marketing of flexibility potentials and therefore facilitates a more advanced energy management. This requires a standardized description and modeling of power-related flexibility. The data model in this work has been developed in close collaboration with several partners from different industries in the context of a major German research project. A suitable set of key figures allows for also describing complex production processes that exhibit interdependencies and storage-like properties. The data model can be applied to other areas as well, e.g., power plants, plug-in electric vehicles, or power-related flexibility of households. [less ▲]

Chancen und Herausforderungen von DLT (Blockchain) in Mobilität und Logistik

Book published by Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure (2019)

This basic report presents the economic potential e, the legal framework and the technical fundamentals of distributed ledger or blockchain technology necessary for understanding in order to exploit the ... [more ▼]

This basic report presents the economic potential e, the legal framework and the technical fundamentals of distributed ledger or blockchain technology necessary for understanding in order to exploit the opportunities and challenges of these technologies, especially in the mobility and logistics sector. clear. The basic report was prepared on behalf of the Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure (BMVI) by the blockchain laboratory of Fraunhofer FIT. [less ▲]

Industrie 4.0 als Befähiger für Energieflexibilität

in Energieflexibilität in der deutschen Industrie : Ergebnisse aus dem Kopernikus-Projekt - Synchronisierte und energieadaptive Produktionstechnik zur flexiblen Ausrichtung von Industrieprozessen auf eine fluktuierende Energieversorgung (SynErgie) (2019)

Energy from renewable resources is not always readily available. Depending on the season and the weather, the power made available by solar parks or wind turbines varies, for example. Due to the ... [more ▼]

Energy from renewable resources is not always readily available. Depending on the season and the weather, the power made available by solar parks or wind turbines varies, for example. Due to the continuous expansion of renewable energies, the volatility in the energy system will become more and more pronounced in the future. Preparing and adapting the industry to the changing supply structures is a major challenge for the next few decades. In the future, companies must be able to design their processes and operational organization in such a way that energy consumption can at least partially adapt flexibly to the volatile energy supply. In addition to developing technologies, Concepts and measures to make industrial processes more energetic, a second focus of future work is the development of a consistent IT infrastructure with which companies and energy providers can provide and exchange information from the production machine to the energy markets in the future. This leads to a paradigm shift in the operation of industrial processes - away from continuous and purely demand-driven energy consumption towards the adaptable, energy-flexible operation of industrial plants. This reference work presents the most important results of the research in the context of the Kopernikus project Synergy and clarifies trend-setting findings for further developments in the still young field of industrial energy flexibility. [less ▲]