SDEWES 2017 Abstract: Power Struggles on the Blockchain: Energy Democracy at last?

Blockchain, a distributed ledger technology based on peer-to-peer information
networks, cryptography and game theory, holds the promise of disrupting existing intermediaries across different industries, because trust in a centralized
middleman is replaced by the blockchain itself.

Perceived as a "digitized cooperative"" this has far-reaching
consequences for the sharing economy in general and for the energy sector more
specifically. Decentralization in terms of generation capacity has taken place throughout the
past decades, while the exchange of electricity has largely been left unchanged
and hence, centralized. With the radical reductions of the levelized cost of
renewable energy over the past decades and the recent policy changes away from
feed-in tariffs in several countries, the demand for trading electricity locally
is increasing. Applying blockchain technology to this seems promising, because
the automated nature of applications built on blockchains (based on the notion
of "smart contracts") hold the promise of radically reducing
transaction costs and hence increase prosumer integration and market
participation in the transition to 100 % renewable energy systems.

Since almost no academic literature exists on blockchain applications in the
energy sector from a social science perspective, this paper draws up some
central questions: How can blockchain technology facilitate decentralized
electricity markets and rebalance the power structure between prosumers and
incumbents?