Renewable energy certification

Renewable energy certification

Sector: Energy

Aplicación: Certification

Empresa: Iberdrola

Proving the renewable origin of energy is critical for long-term power purchase agreements (PPAs), which are linked to the growth of the corporate green energy procurement market.  

Iberdrola has launched a project that will help accelerate the decarbonisation process, harnessing blockchain technology to certify, in real time, the renewable nature of the energy supplied by the company and used by its customers. With this goal in mind, it ran a pilot experience with Euskaltel and the financial institutions Kutxabank and Cajasur, which were able to trace the origin of the energy supplied by Iberdrola all the way from generation asset to consumption point.   

The renewable energy was generated by the Oiz (Vizcaya) and Maranchón (Guadalajara, Castilla-La Mancha) wind farms and the San Esteban hydroelectric plant (Orense, Galicia). The clean energy from these assets was used at the offices of Euskaltel and Kutxabank in the Basque Country and Cajasur in Córdoba, as well as at the Iberdrola Tower in Bilbao and the Iberdrola Campus in Madrid.   

To carry out this initiative, Iberdrola turned to the Energy Web Foundation, a scalable, open-source blockchain platform designed for the regulatory, operational and market needs of the energy sector.  

It also developed a user-friendly web environment that allows customers to consult process-related data and identify the plants that produced and supplied the green energy they are using.   

As part of this project, Iberdrola reached a long-term power purchase agreement with Kutxabank for the supply of electricity from renewable assets. In this case, the energy supply will come from Iberdrola’s Nuñez de Balboa solar plant in Extremadura, the largest photovoltaic project in Europe.  

Why blockchain? 

Thanks to blockchain technology, the assets that supply energy to the consumption point can be allocated swiftly, and these energy sources can even be arranged according to a list of priorities. It also cuts out the need for brokers, since the smart contracts under which this works are self-executing when both parties comply with what they have signed, thus simplifying the process, reducing costs and bolstering privacy.  

This initiative speeds up and automates renewable energy certification processes, makes the certifications more traceable and brings greater transparency and security to transactions, which are added to (and cannot subsequently be removed from) the platform ledger, meaning that all parties can audit the results.  

How it works 

  1. The energy produced at source is certified by the meter-recorder in each generation unit, whether this be a wind turbine or an electric generator in a hydroelectric power plant.
  2. The energy data are acquired and input onto the blockchain platform in real time.
  3. Using smart contracts, the platform issues a certificate indicating the renewable origin of the energy.
  4. These certificates are redeemed on the platform as customers use the energy.
  5. Customers can track their consumption in real time on the website and identify the plants that produced the renewable energy they are using.