Between decentralization and reintermediation: Blockchain platforms and the governance of ‘commons-led’ and ‘business-led’ energy transitions

Abstract

Digitalization will play a vital role in the achievement of successful transitions towards more flexible, reliable and sustainable energy systems. The progressive availability of data from meters and sensors deployed across end-users and energy supply-chains constitute a first step towards this direction. Leveraging on such cross-sectorial trend, business developers find in decentralized ledger technologies (DLTs) – such as the blockchain – opportunities for value creation across a broad range of participants in energy systems. Peer-to-peer energy trading platforms interconnect legacy and novel participants leveraging renewable and storage capacity (small and utility-scale) with grid operators and within local microgrids or markets. In this way, near real time (bi-directional) exchanges can be secured and validated via tokenization and smart contracting. The proposed configurations enable governance arrangements between legacy and novel participants at the platform and sectorial level. This paper focuses on investigating the decentralized governance characteristics proposed by peer-to-peer energy trading platforms and briefly discusses their implications on legacy systems from a broad ‘relational’ (i.e. actor network, sociotechnical transitions) and ‘normative’ (i.e. energy justice) set of theories. The paper draws upon prior surveys and publicly available whitepapers from business initiatives (start-ups). For the purposes of this study, whitepapers constitute official written texts and potential sources of information for the study of emergent ways of governance and collective action leveraging this technology. Results from ground theory method (qualitative) leveraging an inductive content analysis approach, built four (4) main categories that explain: (1) the digital features of these platforms, (2) the participants and incentives involved (3) the purposes and benefits of the solutions and, (4) the governance dynamics arising from trading tokenized energy via smart contracting. Results reveal complex multi-level socio-technical interrelations at different layers and points towards opportunities for private and community-based solutions, end-user empowerment, democratic energy systems and polycentric governance while considering fractal planning in policy design.