Energy Usage Tracking and Carbon Credit (CO2) Calculation

Track energy and carbon usage on an immutable ledger with better frequency and automation using IoT devices and STRATO's RESTful APIs. Use smart contracts to automate CO2 impact calculations and tokenize the savings for use in a Carbon Credits Marketplace.

Industry Categories

All STRATO Use Cases
Asset Tracking
Editor's Choice
Energy

Key STRATO Features

Interoperability

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Context & Challenges

Expanding environmental legislation and new ecological preferences from end users are driving many sectors to reduce their carbon footprint. Oil & Gas businesses alongside their manufacturing and technology partners are increasingly committed to carbon neutral/negative initiatives.

Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Emissions for Buildings

GHG legislation exists at all levels of regulation from international to hyper-local. NYC’s Greater Greener Buildings Act, for example requires buildings to be carbon neutral as soon as 2025.

Most building GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions are created from heat and cooling activities that use antiquated systems, making it impossible to:

Measure & report (annual) the carbon impact of a building
Perform proper cost-benefit analysis of building upgrades
Automate services & monetize carbon credits

By 2029, most NYC building owners will pay fines of $268 per ton of carbon emission in excess of their cap.

Similar fines, caps and costs are now also being implemented in other cities, regions and nations.

While retrofit activity decreases both costs and carbon emissions in the long-run, the upfront cost and effort of these activities can be unclear or intimidating.

Real Estate Managers

No clear path to reduce carbon emissions - compounded by the need to maintain building availability for tenants and stay profitable.

Energy Providers

Unclear costs to digitize energy reporting driven by a lack of standards and interoperability with other energy sources

Service Providers

Uncertainty about what level of attention to give emissions reduction and how to adapt their current business model

Regulators

Lack of frequent, reliable energy data and feedback from community that limits benchmarking and slowing down effective legislation

CO2 Tracking

CO2 emission tracking and carbon credit programs exist as financial incentives to "lean in" on an ecological direction.

To qualify for carbon credits, however, businesses need a very clear, secure and reliable record of carbon credits that traces back to the carbon credit creation.

The Good News

We can tell this is a a crucial challenge to address because lots of work has already started to address it:

Data Capture Frequency - Energy providers like ConEd are already installing smart meters in building and providing precise energy consumption on a monthly, daily or even hourly basis.
Emissions Benchmarking - Both the public and private sectors are already using this new data source to build frameworks and tools to store building emissions data - check out the EPA's Energy Star Portfolio Manager Tool and the Energy Scorecard Tool by Bright Power Inc. as a few examples.
New Data Sources - New IoT devices and control centers are providing more diverse and frequent information that can be aggregated and analyzed.
Existing Initiatives & Incentives (FIT Programs) - Carbon credit marketplaces and other incentive structures (e.g. tax relief)

Instead of ignoring these initiatives and starting anew, this STRATO solution leverages these initiatives to enhance the solution.

Solution Benefits

Residual energy cost reductions of 20+% with industry-leading 92-96% efficiency
Standardized, simplified compliance reporting
Eligibility for incentive & regional FIT programs
Preventative building maintenance and energy tracking alerts using smart contracts
Carbon credit (token) trading and other contractors with CO2 reduction technology

The STRATO energy tracking solution - whether as part of our current project (see below) or an independent initiative - takes advantage of STRATO's enterprise grade features

RESTful APIs for direct connection of IoT devices to the blockchain network
Identity Management, OAuth and SSO capabilities for simplified IoT authorization and user login
Privacy via private chains to keep any competitive/operations data private
Enterprise Data Modeling for integration of existing and future C02 credit calculation models

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GreenWatt Co-generator Network

Combined heat & power (CHP) manufacturer GreenWatt is using BlockApps STRATO to build a blockchain-backed energy tracking system.

Launched in February 2020, GreenWatt, BlockApps and partner Optimum are underway with development of the project's first phase.

The ultimate goal of the solution is to build an ecosystem for real-estate managers, energy manufacturers and regulators to:

Precisely track the energy usage of their building systems
Calculate the cost savings of building improvements such as those provided by GreenWatt's innovative co-generator units, with 40+ being installed across the Bronx, NY
Calculate the ecological savings of building improvements and behavioral changes
Convert ecological savings into a tokenized asset (i.e. carbon credit) which can be both exchanged between building mangers AND prove regulatory compliance
Use tokenized asset as an incentive and investment vehicle for creation of new or improved energy management products and services

Phase One

Despite recent economic shocks, phase one of the project is currently under development with deployment targeted for the end of 2020.

Create the base network where data from the internet-connected (IoT) co-gen units are securely uploaded to a blockchain ledger
Automatically estimate the CO2 reduction generated by each co-gen unit using smart contracts

Phase Two & Beyond

Onboard additional CO2 technologies (e.g. efficient LED lightbulbs) to join the network
Create the marketplace component and custom functionality specific to CO2 technologies