The Next Stage of Green Electricity Labeling : Using Zero-Knowledge Proofs for Blockchain-based Certificates of Origin and Use

Title data

Sedlmeir, Johannes ; Völter, Fabiane ; Strüker, Jens:
The Next Stage of Green Electricity Labeling : Using Zero-Knowledge Proofs for Blockchain-based Certificates of Origin and Use.
In: Energy Informatics Review. (2021) .
ISSN 2770-5331

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The labeling of green electricity is considered an important mechanism to differentiate its generation and consumption and, thus, to incentivize the expansion of renewable energy. However, today's systems for documenting and trading green energy certificates suffer from multiple challenges. These could be addressed by a digital solution that holistically collects and processes production and consumption data. Blockchain-based architectures have repeatedly been suggested for this purpose as they can provide transparency and can likely be accepted by a broad group of stakeholders. Yet, there are significant scalability and privacy issues of a blockchain-based approach for storing and processing fine-grained production and consumption data. In this paper, we propose and discuss a potential solution that levers cryptographic zero-knowledge proofs to balance the required level of transparency and privacy while at the same time providing a high degree of scalability.