Energy Web has received a Good Energies Foundation grant to commercialise the EW Zero blockchain renewables procurement marketplace.

EW Zero was launched in September as a digital, open source global market hub for renewable energy buyers to source and purchase the renewable energy that meets their financial and sustainability requirements.

EW Zero was developed with the digital payment provider Ripple as a tool to decarbonise the XRP Ledger public blockchain payment network, which was developed by Ripple as a more efficient alternative to Bitcoin.

The Good Energies grant should enable Energy Web to bring EW Zero to market over the next year by commercialising the software and releasing tools that enable suppliers to post renewables for sale on EW Zero and buyers to find and procure them.

Such search and procure functionality is ubiquitous online in the travel industry for airline and hotel bookings. However, while platforms such as Piclo in UK have pioneered renewable ‘matching’ on a local scale, there is no digital global solution available to buy or sell renewables directly online.

“Even in today’s day and age with major renewable energy commitments popping up left and right, it remains surprisingly difficult for small to medium enterprises and governments to purchase renewables,” says Jesse Morris, chief commercial officer of Energy Web.

“The Good Energies grant is a testament to the promise of open source technologies to help solve market challenges. This funding makes it possible for EW Zero to connect local renewables marketplaces together in a single digital hub and make it easier for renewable energy buyers to achieve their specific goals for renewables procurement.”

Renewable energy markets and underlying energy attribute certificate markets are fragmented. There are more than thirty tracking systems in Europe and more than ten in the US as well as the overarching International Renewable Energy Certificates (I-RECs) system.

There are also emerging standards to support new projects in off-grid contexts and conflict zones that EW plans for EW Zero to support. One example is the recently announced Peace-REC standard, which was launched with a transaction with Microsoft in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

EW Zero is aimed to overcome the costs and complexities of many of these schemes by streamlining the energy attribute certificate lifecycle via an integrated, transparent platform, a statement says.

Initially, EW Zero is focused on renewable electricity procurement using energy attribute certificates. Over time, EW Zero’s development is planned to evolve to support bundled electricity products such as power purchase agreements and transactions of other forms of renewables including green hydrogen.

The Good Energies Foundation is a Swiss-based private foundation established in 2007 as an integral part of private equity company Good Energies Inc. specialised in investing in the renewable energy and energy efficiency industries.