It’s safe to say that cleantech is going to involve blockchain and similar distributed ledger approaches. And it’s also safe to say that each of the technologies and approaches represented here have better and worse uses. If someone tells you that the answer is only one of these, then you can be pretty sure that they are enthusiasts, not architects.
All of the hysteria about cryptocurrency energy use is going to go away in the next few months. The bubble will pop for stale assets like bitcoin, places like China will clamp down on wasting electricity on competitive mining, and everybody else will move to variants of proof-of-stake or perhaps IOTA, which seems to dodge the bullet in a different way.
To avoid regulatory and tax burdens, many ICOs choose their country as carefully as they choose their blockchain base. Given that cryptocurrencies are inherently without country and every regulatory experience is new, this is more reasonable than with IPOs, where both currency and IPO experience in a specific country matter more.
From buying and selling electricity to raising capital for new ventures to securing the grid and valuing decarbonization directly, innumerable innovators from tiny startups to the largest technology firms and governments in the world are exploring how blockchain technologies can transform.
As these 3 articles show, blockchain-enabled smart contracts aren’t a home run in the utilities sector. There are many cases where the advantages are strongly one-sided. But that doesn’t mean that they have no value or that value won’t emerge.
9 factors will help us determine where smart contracts based on blockchain will shine. There are many cases where the advantages are strongly one-sided. But that doesn’t mean that they have no value or that value won’t emerge.
Blockchain-enabled smart contracts aren’t a home run in the utilities sector. There are many cases where the advantages are strongly one-sided. But that doesn’t mean that they have no value or that value won’t emerge.
Bitcoin is very interesting for cleantech for two reasons. One is obvious: the primary currency sucks a lot of electricity, and more electricity demand is good for investment in renewable generation. Of course, a lot of the electricity still comes from carbon-rich fossil fuels too. The second is the underlying technology, blockchain, which has a number of interesting uses emerging in the cleantech space.
Bitcoin fans will have to try harder if they’re serious about a renewable energy solution for the cryptocurrency power problem.
The Sun Exchange offers the ability to buy in to solar projects at probably the smallest possible level, by purchasing individual solar cells in small projects, after which the owners can reap their share of the revenue generated by the sale of electricity from those cells.
