Comments on: How can we make the Energiewende digital and sustainable? https://energytransition.org/2019/04/energiewende-digital-and-sustainable/ The Global Energiewende Mon, 27 May 2019 13:16:54 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.1.1 By: James Wimberley https://energytransition.org/2019/04/energiewende-digital-and-sustainable/#comment-12911 Wed, 01 May 2019 21:58:50 +0000 https://energytransition.org/?p=19573#comment-12911 “Digital technologies are often so energy intensive that they eat up the amount of power they are trying to save. ” Not often, please. This is a problem specific to blockchain, an insane libertarian pseudo-solution to an imaginary problem of systematic mistrust. In practice, consumers everywhere trust their monopoly electricity distributor not to rig the meter. They would not mind at all if the same regulated intermediaries ran a two-way market for distributed electricity using frugal record-keeping (basically three copies, with the seller, the buyer and the clearing-house) and a central counterparty.

The multi-trillion dollar interbank foreign exchange market clears through a single clearing-house in New York. It’s never SFIK been hacked. It’s not a problem-free market : but Herstatt risk, speculation, forgery and simple mistakes would not be solved by blockchain.

]]>