Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings (TEPCO) has invested in energy blockchain firm, Electron.
UK-based Electron is building switching and flexibility platforms using blockchain technology and believes it can make the energy system more efficient by removing middlemen from transactions.
Last year the firm landed almost £640,000 in government funding to scale its flexibility platform and has since been building out both its products and teams. Next month the company is holding a hackathon for energy blockchain solutions.
Shin-ichiro Kengaku, managing executive officer and chief of Global Innovation & Investments at TEPCO, said the firm was “excited to work with Electron to explore and obtain additional know-how on blockchain that has the potential to significantly impact the energy market. We believe it is very important to continuously seek new opportunities and create new value for society”.
Electron CEO Paul Ellis said the firm was delighted to partner “with an energy industry leader for innovation in Japan.”
Ellis added that “the next phase of the energy transformation will see millions of new assets joining energy networks at both the transmission and distribution levels”.
“There is a huge need to create a robust shared infrastructure that can identify and record the properties of these assets – this can be underpinned by appropriate blockchain technologies.”
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