Decentralized Governance and Energy Carbon Footprint: Opportunity for Re-Empowering People?

Abstract

Given the emergence of shared databases and distributed ledger technologies such as blockchain, this paper presents a short discussion about how the electric power sector can benefit from the inclusion of such systems and contribute to pushing efforts toward achieving the United Nations Goals for the Sustainable Development. With increasing attention to community-backed energy projects focused on the procurement of green energy, the development of a transparent and reliable medium for the record and publication of carbon emissions of different generators, utilities, and aggregators can promote a technological update of the current local electricity market platforms and enable the participation of different agent archetypes. Given this, this paper provides an overview of blockchain applications and decentralized governance models, as well as their potential for the transition to renewable energies. The authors then propose a framework that connects these concepts to the negotiation infrastructures of present energy markets in a form that may empower electricity customers and have benefits that transcend the local economy, environment, and democracy.