SINGAPORE - It is now easier for small producers of solar energy in Singapore to sell "green credits" to buyers keen to offset their carbon footprint.
To link up these buyers and sellers, SP Group has launched a digital marketplace powered by blockchain technology, thus ensuring safe, transparent and fast transactions.
The power utilities firm believes that this is the world's first blockchain-powered marketplace in renewable energy certificates (REC), a tradable document used to offset the use of non-clean energy.
The initiative was announced on Monday (Oct 29) at the Asean Energy Business Forum at Marina Bay Sands.
For now, only small firms can access the marketplace, but it will open to households by the middle of next year.
SP Group chief digital officer Samuel Tan said: "We are thinking of products that will help our consumers choose sustainability."
He added: "Through blockchain technology, we enable companies to trade in renewable energy certificates conveniently, seamlessly and securely, helping them achieve greener business operations and meet their sustainability targets."
Currently, RECs are bought and sold in Singapore through a manually intensive process, where it is hard for small-scale buyers like consumers to find sellers and where prices need to be negotiated between both sides.
The blockchain marketplace will automate the selling and verification process, and make it easier to connect buyers and sellers.
Any clean energy producer in the world that produces 1 megawatt-hour (MWh) of electricity can be issued one REC. This REC not only serves as proof that the electricity is sustainable, but is also a document that can be sold.
The goal of these certificates is to encourage the production of green energy.
As a four-room Housing Board flat uses only about 12 kilowatt-hour (kwh) of electricity a day, SP Group's blockchain marketplace will allow the trading of RECs in 0.001 units. This will open up the the buying and selling of RECs, nowadays mostly done by large companies, to much smaller players like households.
The online marketplace will also allow interested sellers and buyers to find each other quickly. Local companies that have signed up include property giant City Developments Limited (CDL) and bank DBS.
A CDL spokesman said: "Participating in SP's blockchain-powered trading of RECs will help CDL to step up efforts to reduce carbon emissions more conveniently, seamlessly and securely."
The developer said it aims to be powered completely by renewable energy by 2050, and that buying RECs would be one of the strategies it uses towards this goal.
One seller of these certificates here is chemical logistics company Katoen Natie Singapore, which will soon launch Singapore's largest single unit rooftop solar facility.
A spokesman said: "Katoen Natie will be embarking on a second phase of expansion for our solar energy plant here in Singapore. With the expansion, we are expecting excess capacity that can be traded on the REC platform."
The marketplace is accessible here: www.spgroup.com.sg/rec
