3370 IEEE SYSTEMS JOURNAL, VOL. 15, NO.

3, SEPTEMBER 2021

A Survey of Blockchain Applications

in the Energy Sector
Jiabin Bao, Debiao He , Min Luo , and Kim-Kwang Raymond Choo , Senior Member, IEEE

Abstract—As our fossil fuel reserves are rapidly depleting, there

has been an increased focus to explore the utility of renewable
energy (e.g., solar energy and wind energy) in replacing fossil fuel.
One resulting trend is the energy market gradually shifting toward
a distributed market, where renewable energy can be traded, partly
evidenced by the number of blockchain-based solutions designed
for the (distributed) energy sector. The interest in blockchain
is also due to blockchain’s underpinning characteristics such as
anonymity, decentralized, and transparency. Therefore, in this
article, we perform a comprehensive review of how blockchain
technology has been, and can be, deployed in energy applications,
ranging from energy management to peer-to-peer trading to elec-
tric vehicle-related applications to carbon emissions trading, and
others. We also study the existing architectures and solutions, and
existing and emerging security and privacy challenges, as well as
Fig. 1. Distributed trading platform.
exploring other potential applications of blockchain in the energy
sector.
Index Terms—Blockchain, distributed, energy area, privacy
from energy use grew by 2.0%, which is reportedly the fastest
protection. expansion for many years. The demand for natural gas has also
reportedly increased by 5.3%, one of its strongest growth rates
for over three decades. Coal demand (1.4%) also increased for
I. INTRODUCTION the second consecutive year, following three years of decline.
NERGY is a natural resource that has been driving our Growth in renewable energy (14.5%) decreased slightly but it is
E economy for the past few decades. Increasingly, as our
society becomes more digitalized and sophisticated, so does our
still the world’s fastest-growing energy source.
Fossil fuels (nonrenewable energy) are limited, and it has
reliance on energy. For example, according to the “BP Statistical been estimated that they will run out in the early 22nd century
Review of World Energy” [1], it was estimated that global at the current rate of consumption [2]. This shortage and the
primary energy demand grew by 2.9% in 2018, which is the known environmental issues associated with carbon emissions,
fastest growth, since 2010. At the same time, carbon emissions have contributed to an increased focus in explore alternative
sources of energy, most notable renewable energy sources such
Manuscript received February 16, 2020; revised May 21, 2020; accepted May as solar and wind energy. For example, householder owners
24, 2020. Date of publication July 2, 2020; date of current version August can install solar photovoltaic power generation system in their
26, 2021. This work was supported in part by the National Natural Science
Foundation of China under Grants 61972294 and 61932016 and in part by own houses for self-use, and the surplus electricity can be up-
the Guangxi Key Laboratory of Trusted Software under Grant kx202001. The loaded to the grid for financial rebates (i.e., consumers becoming
work of Kim-Kwang Raymond Choo was supported by the Cloud Technology prosumers—see also Fig. 1). One challenge associated with
Endowed Professorship and National Science Foundation CREST under Grant
HRD-1736209. (Corresponding author: Debiao He.) such a trend is the management of the large, dynamic number
Jiabin Bao is with the Key Laboratory of Aerospace Information Security of prosumers. Conventional grid generally uses a centralized
and Trusted Computing of Ministry of Education, School of Cyber Science management system, which does not scale well or is not suit-
and Engineering, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430072, China, and also with the
Guangxi Key Laboratory of Trusted Software, Guilin University of Electronic able for managing the large number of prosumers. The cost of
Technology, Guilin 541004, China (e-mail: [email protected]). management and maintenance will also be prohibitively high in
Debiao He is with the Key Laboratory of Aerospace Information Security a conventional centralized management mode, in addition to the
and Trusted Computing of Ministry of Education, School of Cyber Science
and Engineering, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430072, China, and also with the need to deal with challenges due to different (or lack of common)
Guangxi Key Laboratory of Trusted Software, Guilin University of Electronic standards, and lack of mutual trust among participants. This
Technology, Guilin 541004, China (e-mail: [email protected]). necessitates the design of an efficient, safe, fair, and sustainable
Min Luo is with the Key Laboratory of Aerospace Information Security and
Trusted Computing of Ministry of Education, School of Cyber Science and Engi- smart grid system.
neering, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430072, China (e-mail: [email protected]). In addition, the increasing use of electric cars will compound
Kim-Kwang Raymond Choo is with the Department of Information Systems the challenge of future smart grid system designs. Electric vehi-
and Cyber Security, University of Texas at San Antonio, San Antonio, TX 78249
USA (e-mail: [email protected]). cles (EVs) are growing rapidly, with global sales of more than
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/JSYST.2020.2998791 5.1 million EVs in 2018. It is estimated that global sales of EVs
1937-9234 © 2020 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
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BAO et al.: SURVEY OF BLOCKCHAIN APPLICATIONS IN THE ENERGY SECTOR 3371

The rest of this article is organized as follows. First, Section II

introduces the blockchain technology and the energy Internet.
Section III reviews how blockchain is applied in the energy
sector, such as in management, P2P trading, EVs, and carbon
emissions trading. In Section IV, we summarize and discuss
the applications of blockchain technology in the energy sector,
and identify a number of research opportunities. Finally, we
conclude this article in the last section.

II. RELATED WORK

Fig. 2. Applications of blockchain.
A. Blockchain Technologies
1) Overview of Blockchain Technologies: Blockchain is a
will reach 23 million and inventories will exceed 130 million decentralized electronic database (decentralized ledger) that
by 2030 [3]. Existing challenges include inadequate supporting maintains an ever-growing list of records made up of blocks.
infrastructure (e.g., mobile and quick charging), as it is costly Each block typically contains transaction data, a timestamp, and
to uniformly deploy basic charging facilities. Thus, this also a hash pointer to link to the previous block. A chain is formed
reinforces the importance of developing decentralized mobile by linking blocks with each block containing the hash value of
charging. Hence, we also need to consider management, pricing, the previous block. The use of hash values ensures that changing
and privacy protection issues associated with the decentralized the contents of a block requires changing all subsequent blocks,
mobile charging infrastructure. which is expensive to do, so it has tamper-proof capabilities.
The carbon emission trading system and green certificate The process of block addition goes like this: the node that has
trading system are market mechanisms used to promote global the right to package transactions puts the packaged transactions
greenhouse gas emission reduction. Carbon trading enables trad- (block) on the existing blockchain and broadcasts it to the
ing institutions that cannot reduce their emissions to compensate whole network. After the other nodes receive the block, they
by buying credits from others that meet their targets. Green validate it, and if the block passes validation, all nodes will
certificates, on the other hand, provide green energy certificates synchronize this block. Each packaged transaction is called a
to companies that use renewable energy sources to generate block, and the blocks are added to each other, extending the
electricity, giving them subsidies to sell green energy. In the pro- blockchain. The decentralized ledger is verified and maintained
motion of carbon emission trading system and green certificate by all participating nodes according to a consensus mechanism,
trading system, users need to consider the safety, transparency without the need for a trusted central control. Multiple nodes
and credit data registration of participants in the trading process. hold a complete copy of the entire database [18], [19].
The preceding discussions emphasize the importance 2) Consensus Mechanism: Problems can arise when apply-
of decentralization, one trait commonly associated with ing blockchain to specific scenarios. For example, the double
blockchain [4]. In recent years, the utility of blockchain has spending and the Byzantine problem [20]. The double spend
explored in many applications, such as data management [5], problem means the same amount of money is used twice in two
[6], healthcare [7], [8], supply chain [9], Internet of Things different transactions. Traditional currency is the entity, so we
(IoT) [10], [11], software-defined networking [12], cybersecu- do not have the problem of doubling spending when we use
rity [13], [14], etc. (see Fig. 2). traditional currency. There will also be a trust center to avoid
Another popular application of blockchain is in the energy this problem in the widely used online trading methods. Since
area [15], [16], partly due to its underpinning characteristics such the blockchain currency is not an entity and there is no trusted
as anonymity, decentralization, transparency, and reliability. As third party, we need another approach to solve this problem.
mentioned above, as the energy sector becomes distributed, there Blockchain solves this problem by verifying transactions with
are many issues that need to be addressed, such as distributed many distributed nodes. In distributed systems, the Byzantine
storage, control, management, trading, etc. These problems can- generals problem is a problem that must be solved. In a dis-
not be solved by traditional energy systems, while the features tributed system, information is transmitted between nodes in a
of blockchain can provide solutions. The practical utility is P2P manner. However, if some nodes are maliciously attacked
also evidenced by the interest from major technology organiza- in the process of information transmission, the information
tions, such as Siemens (investments in blockchain development), transmitted may be tampered with. Uncompromised nodes need
and IBM (setting up a dedicated blockchain lab to develop to distinguish between the correct information and the tampered
blockchain applications for various areas, including a carbon information, and all normal nodes need to get consistent results,
tracking platform in China’s emissions-trading system and a so corresponding consensus algorithm needs to be designed.
project with the European power system operator, Tennet, to The core objective of the consensus algorithm is to solve the
balance supply and demand for high-voltage grids) [17]. Byzantine generals problem [21], [22].
In this article, we provide a survey on recent applications of Blockchain ensures the global ledger maintained by all legal
blockchain in the energy sector. nodes are consistent by the consensus mechanism. There are

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3372 IEEE SYSTEMS JOURNAL, VOL. 15, NO. 3, SEPTEMBER 2021

some different consensus mechanisms such as proof of work, energy, such as solar energy, wind energy, etc. However, there are
proof of stake, delegated proof of stake, etc. [23], [24]. still many problems to be solved in the management of renew-
3) Smart Contracts: The use of smart contracts is a key able energy. Because the acquisition and use of these energy
reason why blockchain is widely used. A smart contract is resources are usually distributed rather than concentrated, the
essentially an executable piece of code that executes automati- efficiency of management and trading is often low, and unfair
cally when the initial conditions are met, eliminating the need trading is easy to occur. Huang et al. [25] put forward the
for a trusted third party to monitor the transaction, making it concept of energy Internet. The energy Internet is a new type of
irreversible, secure, and decentralized. power grid structure. Based on energy storage technology and
The smart contracts contain all the information about the the Internet, it is used to manage the generation of renewable
transaction and only perform the resulting action when the energy and optimize the energy supply system.
requirements are met. The biggest difference with the traditional At present, there are many problems in the energy system,
paper contract is that the intelligent contract is produced by the such as the cost and security problems caused by centralized
computer and executed automatically. It stipulates the trigger management. Moreover, as many scenarios in the energy sec-
conditions and the operations to be performed in advance. Any tor are moving toward a distributed structure, the traditional
participant will be forced to perform relevant operations under centralized management model is clearly no longer applicable.
the condition that the conditions meet, so there will be no evasion The advent of blockchain technology provides solutions to these
or denial. problems.
Smart contracts can be used for trading and any exchange With the development of blockchain technology, the energy
between two or more parties. The contract code contains the Internet has developed rapidly. A truly efficient energy Internet
conditions required to automatically execute the contract.When is possible. With the application of blockchain technology in
the smart contract is written, it is uploaded to the blockchain the management, trading, tracking, and other links in the energy
network, and nodes can invoke it when needed. To write smart area, the management efficiency of the new distributed energy
contracts, we must use the smart contract language, for example, network has been greatly improved.
solidity.
4) Characteristics of Blockchain Technologies: Blockchain III. APPLICATIONS OF BLOCKCHAIN IN THE ENERGY SECTOR
technologies have the following characteristics.
In this section, we review how blockchain is applied in the
a) Decentralized: Blockchain stores data based on a decen-
energy sector, such as in management, P2P trading, EVs, and
tralized structure and maintains the database jointly by all par-
carbon emissions trading. And we analyze the privacy problems
ticipating nodes, without the need for centralized management
in some systems or structures.
by a central management agency. And the damage of one node
will not affect the normal operation of the whole system.
b) Anonymity: The nodes in the blockchain can be anonymous A. Decentralized Storage and Control in Power Grid
when exchanging data with each other, so the privacy of each As mentioned in Section I, the energy market is gradually
node can be protected to some extents. shifting to a distributed market. For example, the solar pho-
c) Untrustworthy: Untrustworthy here means that the nodes tovoltaic industry has been more and more widely covered.
in the blockchain do not need to trust each other, but only need to However, with the emergence of a large number of prosumers,
trust the system of blockchain and its trading mechanism. Under how to manage them has become a problem we must face. For
the consensus mechanism of blockchain, each participating node example, with the increasing of participants in the energy mar-
can become a supervisor, so there is no need to worry about the ket, it is difficult to store the massive data of them. Storing large
occurrence of fraud. amounts of data in a central management organization will bring
d) Reliability of data storage: Due to the decentralized storage many problems. With the increasing number of participants, the
structure of blockchain, each node can have a complete copy data volume will be larger and larger, and the corresponding
of the whole database, so an attacker cannot control the whole storage cost will be higher and higher. If all data are stored
database by controlling or attacking a certain node. in one organization, it will be difficult for other participants to
e) Smart contracts: The emergence of smart contracts brings access the previous data and the transparency will be difficult to
the blockchain industry into a new era. A smart contract is ensure. In addition, all data are at risk of being leaked or lost if
actually a program that can be executed by a computer. It central organizations are attacked or compromised. On the other
uses computer language instead of legal language to record hand, the voltage control is very important in the decentralized
the terms of a contract. When conditions are met, the contract power grid, because it will affect the operation stability of the
is completed automatically by the computer. Compared with grid. But it seems that it’s difficult for the traditional centralized
traditional contract signing, smart contract can reduce the cost management method to deal with these problems.
of contract signing, supervision, and execution. The work in [26] designs a hybrid blockchain system for data
storage in the energy Internet. This system is characterized by
the use of a mixture of public blockchain and private blockchain,
B. Energy Internet
combining the advantages of both, to achieve an intelligent,
Due to the shortage of fossil energy and the environmental efficient and secure energy Internet management mechanism.
problems caused by it, people have started to develop renewable It can meet the requirements of safe and efficient data storage.

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BAO et al.: SURVEY OF BLOCKCHAIN APPLICATIONS IN THE ENERGY SECTOR 3373

TABLE I and integrity of the data and prevent malicious tampering. The
HYBRID BLOCKCHAIN
system is designed to protect consumer data. In this system,
blockchain is used to record consumer data, which can ensure
that users’ electricity data is integrity and confidentiality and
can prevent the electricity data been tampered with by external
attackers without permission. At the same time, consumers have
the complete authority to control their own data. Smart meters
provide users with a detailed record of how much electricity
they use and which appliances consume the most. In this sys-
tem, smart contracts are used to automatically detect operations
Even the number of participants in the energy Internet is very performed in the grid system and identify potential malicious
large, it can storage and management their data well. use of power or malicious use or tampering with power data.
The main feature of the system is the adoption of a hybrid Liang et al. [30] proposed a distributed data protection frame-
blockchain storage structure. It combines the private blockchain work based on blockchain to enhance the ability of modern
and the public blockchain. The private blockchain is mainly power system to resist external network attacks. The framework
responsible for verifying the accuracy of relevant transactions, can improve the security of data in power system and prevent
while the public blockchain is responsible for ensuring the data from being maliciously tampered with or used. This frame-
integrity of data. The hybrid blockchain combines the efficiency work makes use of the distributed security features of blockchain
of private blockchain and the security of public blockchain (see technology, and uses the smart electricity meter as the node in the
Table I). blockchain to record and store the power data with the distributed
Another application of blockchain in decentralized manage- ledger, so as to ensure the consistency and integrity of the data.
ment is to help control the decentralized grid. When the res- The blockchain technology and smart contract are also used
idential low-voltage grid (for example, the solar photovoltaic for monitoring the power consumption of users. The imbalance
power generation facility) has excess power, it needs to upload of power supply and demand may threaten the security of
the excess power to the main grid. If it is not controlled well, power supply, lead to the overload of power components, and
it will lead to unstable voltage on the grid, such as a sharp eventually lead to power failure or service interruption. One way
increase of voltage. An effective way to solve this problem is to solve these problems is demand side management. The power
to control the output power reasonably. In [27], a proportional demand side management based on blockchain can be used in the
and equitable control scheme based on blockchain and smart power supply and demand regulation of smart grid. The method
contract is proposed. If some prosumers are installed on the is to respond to peak load by encouraging users to reasonably
same distribution feeder, they will sign a smart contract to distribute their power demand to match power demand with sup-
decide which participants will act as voltage regulators during ply. Pop et al. [31] designed a smart meter to detect the real power
the control period. The decision is based on their available credit consumption of users, and then a smart contract to evaluate the
status and economic strategies. power consumption of users according to the agreed rules, and to
Compared with this control scheme, the traditional central- give incentives or punishments according to whether users abide
ized management architectures usually force all participants by the agreement. Blockchain records the data as a distributed
to participate in voltage control and always limit their output ledger. But the electricity consumption records of consumers in
power. It is obviously that it is not fairness or efficient. The blockchain is public, so one can discover other consumers’ daily
blockchain-based solution can not only achieve the control goal activity patterns. This is a privacy problem.
of the centralized architecture, but also avoid the problem—the To manage the decentralized energy system better, people
cost and complexity of control increase with the increase of usually use blockchain to store the huge amount of data, protect
participants. However, the authors point out that because the consumers’ data or make decisions by consensus mechanism
scheme is based on the private blockchain, there are two potential and smart contract (see Table II). The blockchain technologies
limitations—mining cost and communication cost. make the management of decentralized energy system simpler
Mannaro et al. [28] proposed a Crypto-trading project. This and fairer, and reduce the management cost. Most of all, even if
project mainly considers using blockchain and smart contract the number of participants continues to grow, the decentralized
to construct smart grid. The smart grid can make electric adjust management mechanism can cope well. But the privacy prob-
the relationship between supply and demand so as to promote lems we discussed above also should be pay more attention (see
the creation of a distributed energy market. In the distributed Table III).
energy market, end-users (prosumers) can manage their own
energy supply and the sale of surplus energy. In this project,
blockchain has two main functions. One is to act as a distributed B. P2P Energy Trading in Smart Grid
ledger to record all the data in the process of energy trading; the Traditional energy transactions are usually managed through
other is as a control system to drive intelligent meters. a centralized organization. The energy market will become
Based on the sovereign blockchain, Gao et al. [29] implement more and more complex as large numbers of prosumers gain
a smart grid management system. The system is mainly used to access. And the trading between prosumers and consumers will
protect the data of consumers, which can ensure the transparency become more complex, too. Take electricity trading for example.

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3374 IEEE SYSTEMS JOURNAL, VOL. 15, NO. 3, SEPTEMBER 2021

TABLE II
BLOCKCHAIN TECHNOLOGY APPLIED IN DECENTRALIZED STORAGE AND CONTROL

TABLE III
PRIVACY PROBLEMS IN DECENTRALIZED STORAGE AND CONTROL SYSTEMS

Nowadays, electricity is usually a monopoly industry in most Some P2P energy trading markets based on blockchain mainly
countries. All consumers have to buy electricity through the use blockchain to realized market auction mechanism. The work
electric power company. And the price of electricity is uniform, in [36] proposed a decentralized market platform for consumers
consumers cannot independently choose the most economi- and prosumers in local energy markets based on the private
cal energy purchasing plan. Blockchain technologies provide blockchain. A central intermediary is never need to manage local
a new opportunity for the decentralized market. Blockchain energy transactions. This article focuses on the local transac-
technologies can help build a transparent and credible market tion system for residential photovoltaic power generation and
for electricity trading. Consumers and prosumers can participate implements a 100-user proof-of-concept model on Ethereum.
in electricity trading in a distribute manner. The system uses the market auction mechanism to regulate
The emergence of a new decentralized energy trading system supply and demand. In its proposed market platform, the market
based on blockchain will change the role of traditional power auction mechanism is realized through the deployment of smart
companies in the energy market, there will be no need for contracts in the blockchain, and the payment is also completed
them to invest high cost to deploy infrastructure management in the blockchain. The demand and production capacity of each
facilities for the large number of prosumers. Consumers and agent (user) are automatically measured and predicted by smart
prosumers will have more choices of energy purchasing schemes meters and broadcast to each agent. Based on this information,
in a truly low-cost energy trading environment. The application excess demand or excess supply is calculated and sent to the
of blockchain technologies will solve the problems which will corresponding blockchain account of the agent, but detailed
appears in the trading process in the distribute energy market private data is still kept locally to protect users’ privacy to a
and bring some other advantages. For example, it can improve certain extent. When designed this decentralized market plat-
the transparency of the trading process, enhance the smooth op- form, the authors had paid some attention to the privacy issues
eration of the power grid in the process of point-to-point energy of participates. As they mentioned in the article, the detailed
trading, optimize demand response, bill and other transaction private data are kept locally and would not be broadcast to the
process, and provide privacy and security protection [32]–[35]. blockchain. Only the demand and production capacity of each

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BAO et al.: SURVEY OF BLOCKCHAIN APPLICATIONS IN THE ENERGY SECTOR 3375

participate will be measured and broadcast to other users. But in is generated and added to a block, which will be broadcast to all
some cases this data may also lead to disclosure of participants’ participants.
privacy. For example, the malicious people may infer a user’s The trading platform is able to compare and adjust the
electricity usage habits based on these data. current market prices of electric energy according to the
Hahn et al. [37] proposed a decentralized energy auction trading situation. And it will provide an algorithm to help
system based on blockchain. Based on this distributed auction consumers/prosumers determine which energy is the most
system, buyers and sellers can complete online auctions and cost-effective and high-quality energy choice, enabling con-
realize reliable, safe and transparent power exchange. There are sumers/prosumers to trade more effectively than before. The
two main categories of identity in the system, seller and bidder, ultimate goal of the authors is to propose an electronic energy
as well as two technologies, smart meters, and smart contracts. trading platform that allows high-quality and low-cost energy
When a seller has excess available power and wants to sell it, trading between consumers and prosumers at anytime and any-
he can launch a new auction and publish his available power where.
in the blockchain. Bidders in need of electricity can bid after In [40], a distributed trading platform based on blockchain
receiving the new auction. The auction and payment processes technology is constructed and distributed pricing and P2P trad-
are automated by smart contracts. Smart meters detect and report ing are realized. The work first proposes a decentralized power
the flow of electricity during the transaction, verifying that the market trading framework based on blockchain and then de-
transaction is completed. All data from vendors, bidder, and velops a pricing mechanism to promote the balance of sup-
smart meters will be stored on the blockchain. Privacy problems ply and demand between consumers. At the same time, this
are not mentioned in this article. But if the auction data from article also compares the traditional power trading methods
sellers, bidders and smart meters stored on the blockchain is with blockchain-based power trading methods. By contrast, the
not encrypted, some private information may be compromised. significant advantages of blockchain-based power trading are the
And if the final price of each auction can be retrieved in the transparency and security of trading information. In the power
blockchain, the subsequent auctions may be affected. trading mode based on blockchain, all transaction information
The work in [38] mainly deals with security problems in dis- is recorded and maintained by all participating nodes, and all
tributed energy transactions in smart grid by using some privacy transaction records can be viewed by each node, so the transac-
protection technologies. Instead of completing a transaction tion is transparent and traceable. In addition, the data are stored
through an auction mechanism, this article implements a private in the blockchain and blockchain is synchronized by all the
distributed energy trading system based on tokens. Through this participating nodes, so it is more secure. In the traditional way
system, consumers can negotiate electricity prices anonymously of electricity trading, trading information is stored in the central
without revealing their identities, and their privacy information management agency, and only the central management agency
is well protected during the transaction. The trading system uses can view the users’ transaction information. However, once the
blockchain technology, multiple signatures, and anonymous central management agency is subjected to malicious attacks, it
encrypted information flow to provide privacy protection. There may cause the disclosure of users’ privacy information and lead
is no trusted third party in this trading system so that the price to its malicious use, resulting in serious consequences.
can be negotiated by participates themselves. But they are Cheng et al. [40] mainly focus on the security and trans-
anonymous at all times, and the data are encrypted to protect parency of transaction information. All nodes record and can
their privacy. This article analyzes a series of security and privacy view all transaction information. This can ensure the trans-
requirements to be achieved by the blockchain-based trading parency of transactions and avoid the single point of failure,
system in detail, and gives corresponding countermeasures but may expose the users’ private information contained in the
in the system proposed in this article. This article can be transaction.
used for reference to the design of blockchain-based trading With the development of battery energy storage technology,
system. the cost of solar photovoltaic power generation will be lower
Some other blockchain-based trading platforms adjust energy and lower, so more and more people are willing to install photo-
prices according to energy storage, trading and current energy voltaic power generation system and become a prosumer. Solar
prices, rather than through market auction mechanism. power will gradually occupy a larger market due to its advantages
Park et al. [39] proposed a P2P energy trading platform in environmental protection and price. More local electricity
based on blockchain, which realized efficient electricity trading markets will emerge for their own use or for sale. Some of
between users. This article proposed using blockchain to store them may access to the main grid. The rapid development of
and verify energy labels. Energy labels will identity where distributed generations brings new challenges for the energy
energy is generated and consumed. The trading process includes trading market. Therefore, it is necessary to do some research
the following steps. First, IoT devices will automatically detect on the relevant management scheme and market mechanism
whether consumers or prosumers have the need to buy or sell and propose some new trading schemes for the distributed
energy, and generate a buy/sell label. Then, the label will be sent energy market based on the advantages of blockchain. But in
to all participants in the trading platform. When a participant the blockchain-based decentralized energy trading systems that
wishes to trade with the consumer/prosumer who issued the we discussed above (see Table IV), many of them have not
label, the label is confirmed and the two parties complete the paid enough attention to the privacy protection of participants.
trading process. Finally, the transaction record of the two parties Most designers mainly focus on the transparency of transactions,

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3376 IEEE SYSTEMS JOURNAL, VOL. 15, NO. 3, SEPTEMBER 2021

TABLE IV
BLOCKCHAIN TECHNOLOGY APPLIED IN P2P TRADING

TABLE V
PRIVACY PROBLEMS IN P2P TRADING SYSTEM

which is sometimes opposite to the privacy protection (see EVs managed by a single department. Therefore, people are
Table V). looking for distributed EV charging management methods, most
of which are based on the blockchain technology. However, the
adopting of distributed charging method also requires considera-
C. Electric Vehicles
tion of pricing methods and the privacy protection in the process
The invention of cars makes people’s daily travel more con- of power transaction. The leakage of some private information
venient, but also brings a series of problems. Cars not only such as the driving path of EVs and their preference for charging
accelerate the consumption of fossil energy, but also emit a station will bring a lot of troubles to the owners.
large number of greenhouse gas, which will cause environmental Electric cars can be replenished in a variety of ways, such
problems. European Parliament committed to cut its emissions as direct battery exchanges with charging stations, without the
of greenhouse gas to 40% below 1990 levels by 2030 and need to stop for a long time for recharging. However, using
80%–95% by 2050 [41], [42]. The transport sector is typically this method may cause the fairness problem in the transaction.
the fastest consumer of fossil energy and the biggest emitter Different battery brands and wear levels will affect the fairness
of greenhouse gases, so many European countries are push- of the transaction. With a traditional centralized management
ing hard to let EVs replace internal-combustion vehicles. The system, this information will be stored on a central server, mak-
large-scale use of EVs has not only greatly reduced greenhouse ing it difficult to ensure fair trading. Therefore, Hua et al. [43]
gas emissions, but also reduced the fuel cost of drivers. And it proposed a battery exchange mechanism based on decentralized
also promotes the development of renewable energy technology. blockchain system. In this mechanism, the battery information
According to [3], global sales of EVs will reach 23 million and are stored in the blockchain, and smart contracts will automati-
inventories will exceed 130 million by 2030. cally complete the payment process, including price difference
The surge in the number of EVs has also brought a series of compensation. The fairness problems in the transaction process
problems, such as the construction of charging infrastructure, the can be solve in this way.
choice of charging mode, and the safety issues in the charging Another way for EVs to recharge is using infrastructure
transaction process. If the centralized management is adopted, such as charging piles. Besides pricing method, charging sta-
the construction of charging infrastructure will cost a lot of tion selection and transaction method, information security
money. It is also unrealistic to have such a large number of of EVs should also be considered in the design of such

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BAO et al.: SURVEY OF BLOCKCHAIN APPLICATIONS IN THE ENERGY SECTOR 3377

schemes. In the process of using charging facilities, some privacy EVs, the power supply of the grid or mobile charging vehicles, as
information, such as vehicle information, location information, well as location, waiting time, travel speed, and other factors. Us-
and habitual travel route may be acquired and used for improper ing this framework can ensure the security of power transactions,
purposes [44], which brings troubles to owners. and due to the consensus mechanism used by the consortium
Kim et al. [45] proposes a lightweight mobile charging system blockchain—the consensus algorithm is performed by some
based on blockchain technology. In particular, the system uses preselected nodes instead of all nodes, it saves a lot of time.
(simple payment verification) SPV technology. The node only In the field of EVs, blockchain technology is mainly used
needs to download the blockchain header to verify whether the for the selection of charging piles, charging pricing, etc. (see
transaction exists, so as to reduce the storage space and the Table VI) The use of blockchain technology and smart contracts
burden of the terminal. In addition, a technique to reduce block can help EVs to choose the most suitable charging place after
data size is proposed to solve the problem of blockchain data comprehensive consideration of the distance, cost, and other
size accumulation. In this system architecture, mobile chargers factors. At the same time, in bidding, choosing charging pile, and
are organized as groups, with a parent node for each group. In charging process, many applications also consider the protection
each group, only the parent node keeps a complete blockchain, of user data privacy, to prevent the malicious acquisition of users’
and the other nodes are SPV nodes, thus reducing the burden on private information and preferences. But there are also many
these nodes. people ignore this problem (see Table VII).
In [46], a reliable, automatic and privacy-protected EV charg-
ing platform based on blockchain technology is proposed. EVs
release the request for charging demand and then charging D. Carbon Emission Trading and Green Certificate
stations issue their own quotations. Electric cars can choose the In 1997, more than 100 countries signed the Kyoto Protocol
appropriate charging stations according to the pricing and the due to global warming. The Kyoto Protocol stipulated the duty of
distance of charging stations. Trading on blockchain improves developed countries to reduce carbon emissions and put forward
the reliability and transparency of the trading process. Mean- three flexible emission reduction mechanisms. Carbon emission
while, the geographical location information of EVs will not be trading is one of them. In 2010, carbon emissions accounted for
leaked, thus protecting their privacy. 75% of global greenhouse gas emissions, and from 2015 to 2040,
The transaction process includes the following four phases: this proportion will continue to grow at an annual rate of 0.6%,
exploration phase, bidding phase, evaluation phase, and charg- most of which comes from the burning of fossil fuels [49], [50].
ing phase. Through these four phases, EVs can complete the Global energy-related carbon emissions are expected to increase
selection of the most suitable charging station and the charging by 16% from 2015 to 2040 [50].
process, and their privacy information will not be leaked. First, Carbon emission trading is a market mechanism to reduce
because each user is anonymous in the blockchain, no identity global carbon emissions and promote global greenhouse gas
information is disclosed. Second, the geographical location in emission reduction. Reducing the impact of climate change
the demand message released by the user is a regional range. is the core objective of carbon emission trading. Government
An appropriate range size can not only not disclose the location departments set carbon emission quotas for companies. Due
information, but also facilitate the arrival of EVs to the target to various factors, different companies have different ability to
area. Moreover, most of the transaction process does not need control carbon emissions. Some companies cannot keep their
to be performed in the blockchain, and other users cannot know carbon emissions within limits, while others may have plenty to
which charging station the user has chosen and the transaction spare. For those companies that do not meet the rated emission
has been completed at what price. reduction targets, they can purchase carbon emission permits
Huang et al. [47] also focus on the security of transactions from other companies that can exceed the targets under the
between charging piles and EVs during charging. They pro- carbon emission trading mechanism.
pose a security model to improve the security of transactions At present, there are many problems in the carbon emission
between EVs and charging piles. This model mainly makes use trading market, such as the allocation of carbon emission al-
of lightning network and intelligent contract. The model mainly lowances, the detection of real emissions, the setting of trading
includes four stages: registration, scheduling, authentication rules and prices, and the regulation. Specifically, due to the large
and billing, and can be integrated with the existing scheduling number of companies, it would be a huge amount of work for the
mechanism to improve the security of it. government to certify the carbon emission quota of each power
Different from other work, paper [48] takes many different EV producer. In addition, government departments need to track the
charging scenarios into account, including G2V, V2V, MCV2V, emission quotas handed over by all companies to ensure their
etc. G2V refers to that EVs charge from the grid, V2V refers authenticity. The frequent trading of carbon emission permits
to that EVs charge from other EVs with spare power, and the makes the tracing process extremely complicated. Therefore,
MCV2V is the product of a new type of EVs called gridable records of carbon emission quotas should be traceable and
electric vehicles. This type of EVs has bidirectional chargers, cannot be tampered with. Blockchain technology can provide
which is similar to a car’s mobile charging station. Based some solutions.
on the consortium blockchain, the authors propose a double- Khaqqi et al. [51] proposes an emission trading system based
objective optimization model charging scheduling algorithm. on blockchain technology, which takes credit trading system as
This scheduling algorithm considers the charging demand of trading mechanism. In this trading framework, smart devices

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3378 IEEE SYSTEMS JOURNAL, VOL. 15, NO. 3, SEPTEMBER 2021

TABLE VI
BLOCKCHAIN TECHNOLOGY APPLIED IN EVS

TABLE VII
PRIVACY PROBLEMS IN EV MANAGE SYSTEMS

are used to monitor emission transactions, while blockchain mode. In the decentralized energy system, many problems will
technology is used to report, verify, and record emission trans- be encountered, such as the storage of consumer data, the
actions, ensuring their transparency and unforgeability. Based guarantee of data security, and the fairness and transparency in
on the bitcoin system, the work in [52] proposed an architecture the transaction process. In the previous sections, we discussed
model of a distributed carbon emission trading system. It mainly the application of blockchain technology in distributed man-
aims to solve the problem of anonymous trading among carbon agement, P2P trading, EVs, carbon emission trading, and green
emission trading subjects. This architecture model pays attention certificate trading.
to the issues of privacy protection and transaction security in the In the distributed management, blockchain technology is
process of emission credits trading. The role of blockchain in mainly used to manage the storage of users’ data, improve the
this model is to register and record emission credits. security and privacy of the data. It also used to control the
Green certificate is an electronic certificate issued by the gov- decentralized grid. In P2P trading, blockchain help to price, reg-
ernment agency to those companies who use renewable energy ulate supply and demand, and ensure transparency, security and
to generate electricity. These companies can sell their green consumers’ privacy in the transaction process. When blockchain
certificates. In order to solve the security problem of energy asset is applied to EVs area, it is mainly used for the selection of
trading in industrial systems, Imbault et al. [53] designed a sys- charging piles and charging pricing. The price is sometimes set
tem based on blockchain to manage environmental certificates through bidding, sometimes controlled by smart contracts that
and emission permits. The application of blockchain technology automatically adjust to market conditions. In carbon emission
in industrial operating system makes the transaction of energy trading and green certificate trading, blockchain technology is
assets have good traceability. Castellanos et al. [54] designed mainly used for the traceability and privacy protection in the
and simulated a GoOs trading platform based on ethereum and trading process.
smart contracts. By trading GoOs, prosumers and consumers Blockchain has such a wide application in the energy area,
can subsidize renewable energy producers and encourage the precisely because it meets the requirements of distributed energy
development of renewable energy. GoOs is also a kind of green system with the following characteristics.
certificate. 1) Decentralized: This feature of blockchain conforms to
the requirements of distributed energy system in user
IV. DISCUSSION decentralized management and data distributed storage,
In the energy area, both the management and trading of energy which can reduce the management cost and improve the
are gradually changing from centralized mode to distributed security of user data storage.

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BAO et al.: SURVEY OF BLOCKCHAIN APPLICATIONS IN THE ENERGY SECTOR 3379

2) Anonymity: This feature can help protect consumers’ pri- What’s more, if there are too many users in a blockchain-based
vacy when they are participated in the distributed energy system, it may produce a relatively large amount of data. The
trading. sheer volume of data will certainly raise the bar for users. How
3) Transparency: Data on the blockchain are synchronized to to improve the performance of blockchain in data storage or the
all nodes, so each node can query all transaction records, application of low storage framework has also become the focus
ensuring the transparency of transactions. This will reduce of this article.
fraud in distributed energy transactions and improve the Finally, in the process of applying blockchain technology to
transparency of energy trading. the energy area, we will encounter some other problems such as
4) Democracy: The use of consensus algorithms makes trans- government intervention and legal supervision, which also need
action decisions in blockchain more democratic. Under the our attention.
consensus mechanism of blockchain, each participating In addition to exploring some solutions to the above prob-
node can become a supervisor, so there is no need to worry lems, there are other scenarios, where blockchain applications
about the occurrence of fraud. This approach also makes in the energy sector are also worth exploring. In addition to
energy management more democratic and efficient. the energy management and transaction involved in this article,
5) Security: Due to the decentralized storage structure of in terms of energy supply, the future energy supply will tend
blockchain, each node can have a complete copy of the to be a combination of distributed and centralized. Real-time
whole database, it is difficult to have a single point of fail- information update based on the blockchain technology will
ure. So, an attacker cannot control the whole database by help realize the information sharing between the two modes
controlling or attacking a certain node. Thus, the network and reduce the waste of the energy supply system. In the field of
security is enhanced. And when it applied to decentralized energy transportation, there are generally many roles involved
energy systems, the security of consumers’ data will also in the process of energy transportation, and there are games
be enhanced. and competitions among them. The blockchain technology can
Due to the combination of many characteristics of blockchain realize the trust and transaction transparency among multiple
with the demand of distributed energy market, its application in roles, promote healthy competition and improve transportation
the energy field will become more and more extensive, and rele- efficiency.
vant technologies will become more and more mature. However,
there are also some problems or challenges we have to solve V. CONCLUSION
when we apply it to the energy area.
We surveyed the existing and potential applications of
First of all, we must pay enough attention to the privacy
blockchain in the energy sector, such as those in the distributed
protection issue when we design a management or trading
renewable energy market (e.g., distributed energy market man-
platform based on blockchain. In most platforms, blockchain
agement, P2P energy trading, EV charging scheme, carbon
is used to record important data to ensure the transparency
emission trading, and green certificate management). Through
and tamper-proof, but the protection of users’ privacy is of-
the reviews of these existing applications, we identified how
ten ignored. In some grid management plat, users’ electricity
the characters of blockchain (e.g., decentralized, anonymity,
consumption records are recorded in the blockchain, which
transparency, and tamper-proof) can be utilized in the design of
may lead to the leakage of their daily electricity consumption
the next generation of distributed energy solutions. Meanwhile,
habits. In the distributed point-to-point trading platform, users’
we discussed the privacy protection of users in some of these
detailed demands and quotes are broadcast to the blockchain,
schemes. In addition, we also identified a number of existing
which will also lead to their privacy disclosure. In the EV
and emerging challenges, which will hopefully inform future
charging management platform, the specific location and driving
research efforts.
route of the EV and other sensitive information may also be
used for malicious purposes. These problems are caused by the
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BAO et al.: SURVEY OF BLOCKCHAIN APPLICATIONS IN THE ENERGY SECTOR 3381

[53] F. Imbault, M. Swiatek, R. De Beaufort, and R. Plana, “The green Min Luo received the Ph.D. degree in computer
blockchain: Managing decentralized energy production and consumption,” applications technology from Wuhan University,
in Proc. IEEE Int. Conf. Environ. Elect. Eng. IEEE Ind. Commercial Power Wuhan, China in 2003.
Syst. Eur. (EEEIC/I&CPS Eur.), 2017, pp. 1–5. He is currently an Associate Professor with the Key
[54] J. A. F. Castellanos, D. Coll-Mayor, and J. A. Notholt, “Cryptocurrency Laboratory of Aerospace Information Security and
as guarantees of origin: Simulating a green certificate market with the Trusted Computing, Ministry of Education, School
ethereum blockchain,” in Proc. IEEE Int. Conf. Smart Energy Grid Eng., of Cyber Science and Engineering, Wuhan Univer-
2017, pp. 367–372. sity. His main research interests include information
[55] Q. Feng, D. He, Z. Liu, D. Wang, and K.-K. R. Choo, “Multi-party signing security, trusted software, data mining.
protocol for the identity-based signature scheme in IEEE P1363 standard,”
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friendly mutual authentication and key agreement scheme for wireless
sensor networks using chaotic maps,” Future Gener. Comput. Syst., vol. 63, Kim-Kwang Raymond Choo (Senior Member,
pp. 56–75, 2016. IEEE) received the Ph.D. degree in information secu-
[58] S. Kumari, X. Li, F. Wu, A. K. Das, K.-K. R. Choo, and J. Shen, “Design rity from the Queensland University of Technology,
of a provably secure biometrics-based multi-cloud-server authentication Brisbane, QLD, Australia, in 2006
scheme,” Future Gener. Comput. Syst., vol. 68, pp. 320–330, 2017. Dr. Choo currently holds the Cloud Technology
[59] S. Kumari, S. A. Chaudhry, F. Wu, X. Li, M. S. Farash, and M. K. Endowed Professorship with The University of Texas
Khan, “An improved smart card based authentication scheme for session at San Antonio (UTSA), San Antonio, TX, USA.
initiation protocol,” Peer-to-Peer Netw. Appl., vol. 10, no. 1, pp. 92–105, In 2015, he and his team won the Digital Forensics
2017. Research Challenge organized by Germany’s Uni-
versity of Erlangen-Nuremberg. He is the recipient
of the 2019 IEEE Technical Committee on Scalable
Jiabin Bao received the bachelor’s degree in infor-
Computing Award for Excellence in Scalable Computing (Middle Career Re-
mation security from Xidian University, Xi’an, China, searcher), 2018 UTSA College of Business Col. Jean Piccione and Lt. Col.
in 2019. He is currently working toward the master’s
Philip Piccione Endowed Research Award for Tenured Faculty, British Computer
degree with the School of Cyber Science and Engi-
Society’s 2019 Wilkes Award Runner-up, 2019 EURASIP Journal on Wire-
neering, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China.
less Communications and Networking Best Paper Award, Korea Information
His research interests include blockchain, cryptog- Processing Society’s JIPS Survey Paper Award (Gold) 2019, IEEE Blockchain
raphy, and information security.
2019 Outstanding Paper Award, Inscrypt 2019 Best Student Paper Award, IEEE
TrustCom 2018 Best Paper Award, ESORICS 2015 Best Research Paper Award,
2014 Highly Commended Award by the Australia New Zealand Policing Advi-
sory Agency, Fulbright Scholarship in 2009, 2008 Australia Day Achievement
Medallion, and British Computer Society’s Wilkes Award in 2008. He is also a
Debiao He received the Ph.D. degree in applied Fellow of the Australian Computer Society, and Co-Chair of IEEE Multimedia
mathematics from the School of Mathematics and Communications Technical Committee’s Digital Rights Management for Mul-
Statistics, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China, in 2009. timedia Interest Group.
He is currently a Professor with the School of
Cyber Science and Engineering, Wuhan University.
His main research interests include cryptography and
information security, in particular, cryptographic pro-
tocols. He has authored or coauthored more than 100
research papers in refereed international journals and
conferences, such as IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON DE-
PENDABLE AND SECURE COMPUTING, IEEE TRANS-
ACTIONS ON INFORMATION FORENSICS AND SECURITY, and Usenix Security
Symposium.
Dr. He is the recipient of the 2018 IEEE Sysems Journal Best Paper Award and
the 2019 IET Information Security Best Paper Award. His work has been cited
more than 7000 times at Google Scholar. He is on the editorial board of several
international journals, such as Journal of Information Security and Applications,
Frontiers of Computer Science, and Human-centric Computing & Information
Sciences.

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