Internet of Energy Network
Description
Rosalind Marino:
"Renewable energy is the future. If our civilization has a future, we will have to shift to more sustainable methods for meeting our energy needs. That much is clear. It’s also clear that fossil fuel companies are resistant to this change, and that large solar and wind farms can only be one part of the solution. Small scale local energy production will be a large portion of the global market. Minigrids and Microgrids are emerging as solutions that are more efficient and resilient as they don’t need the massive infrastructure of energy distribution on top of the infrastructure of production. Energy is generated, stored, traded, and used locally.
The pathway to fully clean, tradable energy is not immediate. On the way to full access to clean energy, organizations including large corporations are taking seriously the responsibility to offset their production of carbon emissions. A factory produces a lot of carbon, both from the energy it uses and the industrial processes themselves. They can get their electricity from renewable sources, but depending on where a particular factory is and when they are operating, they might not have access to renewables. Renewable energy generation is subject to location, geography, and access to resources like wind, enough sunshine, and the ability to store electricity.
What if you could invest in the environment, in efforts for climate justice, in carbon markets, and systemic change? What if you could invest in a future that you and your children want to live in? But, just because they are incapable of directly using renewable energy doesn’t mean that they cannot support the use of renewables generally. Environmental Attribute Credits (EACs), including carbon credits and Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs), help create incentives to invest, support, and use renewable energy.
Currently, large renewable energy farms can sell carbon credits or RECs (depending on the system used), helping corporations offset their carbon emissions. But these are economies of scale. The accounting needed to get government issuance of these carbon credits only works at large scales (a single electrical meter is a lot easier to measure and monitor than many distributed meters). IOEN is providing a way for small scale energy producers who serve their local communities to aggregate their energy production and access global renewable certificate markets.
In order to ensure auditability and to account for distributed energy production by a collection of small holders, data is needed to track energy production. IOEN’s current work with partners in Asia is helping companies and home owners provide two types of data. First, photos of their solar arrays, preferably at the time of installation. Secondly, ongoing readings from their meter, showing the energy that they feed back to their local grid. IOEN’s partners then add satellite data which is used to confirm the installation of solar panels at the sites claimed. All of this data becomes available to regulators who can cross reference each source, ensuring that the meter readings match the expected generation range for the panels.
Aggregating the data of many individual producers allows IOEN to meet the scale requirements to work with government regulators, procuring and then selling the certificates to corporations. As each individual energy producer’s contributions to this larger pool is tracked, they are able to then be compensated directly in relation to the amount of energy they produced.
Key to IOEN’s value in the market is the ability for clients to store the data (meter data, photographs etc.) in private networks hosted on Holochain which provides auditors with assurance that the certificates minted are validated and true. This creates transparency and integrity in the certificate. IOEN’s blockchain solutions that sit on top of that data then allow secondary markets to emerge, along with fractionalised investment opportunities in these renewable assets, creating liquidity. Because transactions are all tracked on the blockchain, and linked to secure data in Holochain, different organizations involved in the assets all can be paid seamlessly and transparently through fractionalised payments. Already small businesses, communities, and large corporations are seeing the value in this approach for a number of energy-related environmental assets."