The WePower ICO
The WePower ICO
The Blockchain concept seems to be having all kinds of unintended consequences. And those consequences often directly reflect the nature of the Blockchain itself - decentralised and democratised organisation. In the case of Wepower, we may be adding decarbonised to that list.
Over the last few months I've seen the ability of the Blockchain to offer up new concepts such as Microconsulting (the Experty ICO), borderless and anonymous jury systems (jury.online) and transparent, unhackable mass polling applications (ClearPoll).
We are seeing examples of new business models with a progressive aspect to them. This is arising not because the people behind them are necessarily any more progressive-minded than entrepreneurs of previous generations, but because the Blockchain organisational model requires it. And people are going along with that organisational model because it offers up real improvements whilst remaining oblivious or indifferent to the progressive impact of that same new model.
Wepower seems to be the latest ICO that I have come across that falls into that list. It is a renewable energy ICO (ok, so renewable energy is already progressive - so that helps....) that is leveraging the Blockchain to bring a new economic model for energy production that has the potential for stimulating the growth of green energies.
Renewable-sourced energy has been taking a hit recently. The Trump administration's assault on the Paris climate accords combined with a drop in green energy investment as governments now tighten their belts in the age of European austerity have resulted in recent declines within the industry. According to the Wepower white-paper, new investment in green energy production fell by 23% last year alone.
There is, then, a problem. That seemed set to be an enduring problem at that. But then I came across the Wepower proposition. Whilst there is no guarantee that Wepower itself (or indeed any ICO) will be a success, what is evident in the white-paper is that there is a new model for organising energy production which may just have something to it.
Wepower Proposal
The whitepaper begins by noting that, for any small green energy producer, there are some high barriers to entry. Firstly, there is legislation and applying for the ability to issue Green Energy Certificates.
Green Energy Certificates is the catch-all name for any paper-based representation of energy as a commodity. In practice, green energy suppliers send their renewable-sourced energy to the national grid of the country in which they reside. The problem here, then, is that the end user has no way of making sure that, when he or she pays his or her bills, the payment benefits the green energy supplier as opposed to the traditional, non renewable-sourced energy supplier.
The way to get around this is for a green energy supplier (GES) to issue a Green Energy Certificate (GEC). This is a piece of paper sold by the GES out on the market. From a legal point of view, the purchaser can now produce a document which serves as proof-of-stake, to coin a phrase, in the green energy network. That purchaser is usually a business or similar outfit which purchases green energy because legally it is obliged to - in order to qualify for government subsidies, for example - or because purchasing the GEC is tax-deductible - because a government may want to encourage the growth of GES's.
GECs are not a bad idea at all. Where they fall down in practice is the statutory criteria that need to be satisfied in order to qualify as an energy supplier with the legal right to issue these certificates. The costs tend to be high and the administration something of a headache.
Wepower are proposing, then, a model whereby they themselves set up their own formal arrangements with governments for the issuance of green energy certificates. For a green energy supplier, becoming part of the certification ecosystem now simply boils down to entering into partnership with Wepower through a simplified application process as opposed to managing an administrative nightmare all by themselves.
Wepower / Supplier Smart Contract-Managed Partnerships
The new partnership between Wepower and the supplier will now be managed by pre-defined smart contracts. The supplier will be able to sell their energy to the market (local, regional or national - depending on how their own infrastructure is rigged up to the surrounding grid).
In return, the supplier agrees to hand over 0.9% of their energy to the Wepower token economy. So how exactly does that token economy work?
It goes something like this: the aggregate energy production of all of Wepower's energy suppliers (or, to be more specific, the aggregate of those 0.9% of total energy handed over to Wepower) is now distributed as a kind of dividend to holders of the Wepower token - in other words, value is given to the token as that token now grants the right for its owner to either consume energy or put it up for sale for someone else to consume.
Wepower will act, then, as a kind of virtual energy grid. Over the long-run, it also appears that they may evolve into becoming a de-facto one if they experience the kind of mass adoption that they are setting out to achieve. The business model they are proposing also adds another feature that could help stimulate green energy production.
Currently, a GES can only issue a GEC if it produces something over and above a given volume of energy supply - the government doesn't want to be weighed down with a deluge of admin if any Tom, Dick or Harry can apply to be an issuer. The result is that some small, genuine green energy suppliers cannot qualify for GEC. The Wepower platform, on the other hand, proposes the ability for small producers to combine into a larger unit which does qualify for GEC. These aggregations currently don't occur because energy suppliers are limited by physical limitations. The virtualisation of the energy economy by Wepower is able to ignore these physical limitations and allow any number of entities that fall under the same contract type with Wepower to join together to qualify for GEC issuance within their jurisdiction.
Adding these Blockchain-inspired advantages to the fact that now anyone can participate in green energy investment (by simply purchasing a WPR token), green energy investment becomes open to the masses as opposed to institutional investors who currently dominate the green energy start-up scene.
The Blockchain's unintended consequences, then, once more appears more likely to be positive than negative, reflecting its own flat, non-hierarchical nature. If Wepower can successfully execute on their project proposal, the model has the potential to expand to an international context as opposed to a simply European one - as the Wepower start-up will be in its enfant stages at least.
One to watch.