Establishing a secure, transparent, and autonomous blockchain of custody for renewable energy credits and carbon credits

To facilitate the widespread adoption of clean energy, we must devise practical economic incentives to deploy clean energy assets while reducing barriers to access that clean energy. While renewable energy credits and carbon offset credits successfully push these goals forward, the associated accounting and management systems still suffer from numerous flaws that drive costs up and slow the monetization of clean energy assets. Blockchain technology has emerged as a promising solution that can provide a secure and transparent distributed ledger, while autonomously executing transactions upon fulfillment of pre-defined criteria ('smart contracts'). As a result, credits can be easily tracked from generation through ownership trades to ultimate redemption. This leaves a simple audit trail, significantly reducing the associated time and cost, and enables producers to monetize their credits immediately after generation. Clean Energy Blockchain Network (CEBN) has recently announced a partnership with the Silicon valley power, where we will apply blockchain technology to simplify their participation in the low carbon fuel standard (LCFS) program. This real-world deployment will demonstrate how blockchain technology can dramatically simplify extremely complex trading environments and enable the practical implementation of valuable programs such as LCFS that financially incentivize clean energy production and use. © 2018 IEEE.