Digital Technologies at work for the Energy Transition

A lot more remain to be done to regulate green certificates and establish a global price for carbon emissions and their potential offsets. One thing is clear that measurement leads to quality and blockchain technology can help track every unit of energy consumed associating it to its origin. This matters, so you can rest assured that buying carbon offset is real and companies can make quality claims about their commitments and reporting. I was fascinated to learn about developments in this area.

Google and Microsoft have both decided to hourly match their use to green electricity. They are using and have invested in a startup called FlexiDAO.

FlexiDAO uses Blockchain to track green electrons by the hour. Thanks to their platform, companies can quantify and confidently demonstrate their contribution to decarbonisation. Tracking those green certificates will allow us to price them properly. So renewable developers will know where and when it is valuable to add green electricity to the grid, boosting the incentives to invest in storage and transmission.

FlexiDAO’s software acts a bit like a digital notary in real time, ensuring that there is no double-counting, providing a direct link between each green electron produced and its carbon impact, right through to each watt actually consumed on the other end of the grid.

This is a big deal. We need all the help we can get to execute on the Net Zero roadmap and Digital Technologies have a big role to play.