Enabling End-To-End Digital Carbon Emission Tracing With Shielded NFTs

Title data

Babel, Matthias ; Gramlich, Vincent ; Körner, Marc-Fabian ; Sedlmeir, Johannes ; Strüker, Jens ; Zwede, Till:
Enabling End-To-End Digital Carbon Emission Tracing With Shielded NFTs.
2022
Event: 11th DACH+ Conference on Energy Informatics , 15.-16. Sept. 2022 , Freiburg im Breisgau.
(Conference item: Conference , Paper )
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/s42162-022-00199-3

Project information

Abstract in another language

In the course of the energy transition, there is a urgent need for decreasing
overall carbon emissions. Against this background, the purposeful and verifiable
tracing of emissions in the energy system is a crucial key element for promoting
the deep decarbonization towards a net zero emission economy with a
market-based approach. Such an effective tracing system requires end-to-end
information flows that link carbon sources and sinks while keeping end
consumers’ and businesses’ sensitive data confidential. In this paper, we illustrate
how non-fungible tokens (NFTs) with fractional ownership can help to enable
such a system, and how zero-knowledge proofs can address the related privacy
issues associated with the fine-granular recording of stakeholders’ emission data.
Thus, we contribute to designing a carbon emission tracing system that satisfies
verifiability, distinguishability, fractional ownership, and privacy requirements. We
implement a proof-of-concept for our approach and discuss its advantages
compared to alternative centralized or decentralized architectures that have been
proposed in the past. Based on a technical, data privacy, and economic analysis,
we conclude that our approach is a more suitable technical backbone for such a
system than previously suggested solutions while our approach is the first that
enables an end-to-end digital carbon emission tracing.