Chile’s Minister of Energy, Susana Jiménez, announced that starting from April 5th the National Energy Commission (CNE) will begin to use blockchain technology. The aim is to increase the security, transparency, and confidence in the available public information.
The Minister stresses the risks of centralized information, being ‘easy to manipulate or hack by third parties’. Distributing on and validation by the Ethereum network and nodes will protect data from modification.
In 2018 the International Energy Agency, which boasts 30 country members, recommended in a Chile report that ‘high-quality energy data should be pursued to support policy making, monitoring of achievements and market transparency.’
The CNE will select data from the information and statistics platform “Energía Abierta”. This data will then be hashed and recorded on Ethereum’s blockchain. The public will then be able to have access to real-time and unmodified energy information.
The first stage will include price, costs, compliance and pollution data. Crucially, blockchain will be able to increase the trust of buyers, sellers, and other stakeholders. The Minister also commented: ‘public information is an important part of making investment decisions, designing public policies or creating new tools for the service of society, which is why many of our users use this information to decide technical aspects.’
After this initial stage, the CNE will document the results, the problems, and lessons, aiming to improve the project. Further, the organization will explore other applications of Ethereum’s blockchain like contract signing, backing up records, traceability, emissions and other uses. The CNE wants to attract other public and private organizations to participate in the project.
