Blockchain and Renewable Energy (Blockchain for Good)

BCRE 2021


Sustainable Energy



Blockchain technology has gained widespread attention due to its ability to minimize the number of trusted parties and to spread trust over multiple entities. In the domain of renewable energies, blockchain offers great potential due to the heterogeneous and trust-less environment. Especially in the field of renewable energy production, transmission, and distribution, a large number of parties are required to interact and exchange information in a trustless environment. This involves not only established stakeholders, such as energy providers and transmission system operators but also households, electric vehicles, and local energy communities. This also directly affects the end-user who is involved to a greater extent, e.g., by operating electric vehicles, having photovoltaic power plants, or storage capacity via batteries. Blockchain technology along with smart contracts and other cryptographic primitives for privacy and security provide high potential for addressing the use cases in this domain and for overcoming some of the current and upcoming challenges in renewable energy.
We seek high-quality original contributions addressing blockchain-based solutions for challenges in renewable energy. We welcome theoretical contributions as well as publications addressing system design, and implementation. The list of themes includes, but is not limited to:
• Blockchain for electric vehicle charging and electric vehicle ecosystems
• Blockchain for local energy communities
• Blockchain for smart buildings and digital metering
• Distributed energy resources and blockchain
• Technical and regulatory aspects of energy trading and blockchain
• Blockchain and decentralized storage/batteries
• Blockchain/smart contracts and the use for energy trading
• Privacy and Security for customers in blockchain-based applications
• Contributions that cover cross-cutting issues, including cybersecurity and privacy protection, interoperability, modeling of renewable energy systems
The increased use of renewable energy resources changes the traditional market structures as well as the established information and communication infrastructure. When adopting the widespread use of renewable energies, many additional stakeholders are involved in energy production, transmission, and distribution. This includes not only energy providers and transmission system operators but also charging station operators, end-users, and many more. Such a heterogeneous environment poses new challenges in terms of communication integrity, resilience, and privacy. Blockchain technology has been shown in other domains to have the potential for solving some of these challenges, albeit posing new questions in terms of privacy, communication overhead, and scalability. Recent advantages in the field have already shown promising approaches that need, however, still be tailored to the specific properties and challenges of the energy domain.