Highlights from Bitrue x Energy Web “Ask Me Anything” Session on Twitter Spaces

28 June, 2023 — In this article, we will delve into a past Ask Me Anything (AMA) session with Energy Web, where the CEO of Energy Web, Jesse Morris, answered various questions about the organization, its goals, partnerships, solutions, tokenomics, and roadmap.

Introducing Energy Web, an organization focused on accelerating the global economy’s decarbonization through open-source software and digital solutions. Led by CEO Jesse, Energy Web aims to address two key challenges: revolutionizing the electric grid by leveraging distributed assets like rooftop solar systems, batteries, and electric vehicles for more efficient and sustainable grid balancing and bringing transparency and trust to emerging green product supply chains such as sustainable aviation fuel and carbon offsets.

Without further ado, let us dive into the main gist of the conversation below.

Q1. Please take a moment to introduce yourself to our audience.

Definitely. So hi everybody, thank you so much for coming. My name is Jesse. I’m the CEO of Energy Web. We are a global organization that works on open-source software for the energy transition that we’ll talk more about. But briefly, I’m an energy and climate guy and a tech guy. Second, I’ve been working on electrification, renewable energy, and energy efficiency for my entire career. And then, back in 2017, I was lucky enough to be introduced to a lot of different digital technologies, including blockchain and decentralized technology, and saw that those technologies could really create a lot of value for some of these big energy companies that I’d been working with for my whole career, and made the decision to get energy web off the ground and see what we could do.

That’s a little bit about me, and I’ve been lucky over the past few years to learn more about the technology side of that equation because my background is in energy.

Q2. Can you please give us a brief introduction and overview on what Energy Web is about and your goals?

Energy Web is focused on one thing: accelerating the decarbonization of the global economy. To put it another way, we help some of the world’s biggest energy companies build digital solutions that decarbonize different sectors of the economy. For example, with Shell, one of our partners, we’ve worked with them to help them create a digital solution to make it really easy to track and trace something called sustainable aviation fuel. Sustainable aviation fuel is the fuel that goes into planes that have far less carbon in it than normal fuel. They use technology to help different airlines trust where that fuel comes from.

On the other side, in terms of just this whole topic of accelerating decarbonization, we help really large electric utilities form digital relationships with assets like electric vehicles because if you can tell an electric vehicle at very precise time intervals when to charge and when not to charge, you can actually use things like electric vehicles to balance the grid instead of a big fossil fuel-powered plant. In summary, and we’ll talk more about both those solutions I just described, we help provide digital solutions to perform some of these functions that big energy companies cannot perform right now because they don’t have the tools to do that. So that’s kind of our DNA. We just work with these really large energy companies to give them tools that will help them decarbonize faster.

Q3. Can you explain a little bit about the team behind the projects, and are there prominent Energy Web partners that support the project?

Definitely. On the team side, we’re a diverse mix of people from 18 different time zones because we’re doing work in many different countries around the world, and we’re kind of a mix. Half of us are energy sector experts who really understand the energy transition and climate and how to talk that language to some of these enterprise partners. The other side of the team is just technology and engineering experts that have expertise in certainly decentralized technology, we’re talking about blockchain or decentralized identifiers and self-sovereign identity. But then also Web2 experience. A lot of the components of these solutions do include cloud solutions, databases, and traditional identity and access management solutions. So really, the team is a mashup of energy experts and then also technology experts.

Regarding partnerships in our DNA, we would be nowhere if we didn’t have enterprises using this software. So, yes, Shell is a great example. Some other big brands that folks might be familiar with, we work very closely with Volkswagen on everything having to do with electric vehicles and green electric vehicle charging and things like that. We work with some of the world’s biggest electric utilities. I’m based in California, and the California ISO is the biggest utility in California. They’re one of our partners.

If you check out our website or any of our socials, you can really see great highlights of all the different projects and solutions we rolled out with these companies all around the world. If we spin over to Singapore, Singapore Power Group has been one of our longtime customers. PTT in Thailand is another major oil and gas and energy player. So again, the list kind of goes on, but definitely check out our website. Generally speaking, we work with some of the world’s largest energy companies on all of these different topics.

Q4. What problems are Energy Web trying to solve? And what has the project done to achieve it?

There are really two discrete challenges that we’re relentlessly focused on solving. The first one is about the grid. It’s about electricity. I mentioned it briefly, but here’s a simple way to think about it. Right now, the way we balance the electric grid is to have humans sometimes sitting in front of computers, basically turning up and down large centralized power plants. And most of those power plants are powered by natural gas or coal. Sometimes you have big hydroelectric facilities, things like dams. But generally speaking, the way we balance the grid is everybody comes home or goes to their business, they turn the lights on, they turn pumps on, they turn motors on, and in response to that, grid operators have to crank up or down these large centralized power stations.

The really interesting thing is that we have some new assets coming online that are far more efficient and cheap and lower carbon at performing those same functions. The problem is they’re distributed. These assets include rooftop solar systems, batteries, the inverters connected to those batteries, electric vehicles, and electric vehicle charging stations.

And the opportunity is, if we can network together all of those different millions and eventually tens and hundreds of millions of assets and have them be used to balance the grid, that’s a far more efficient solution than having these large centralized power plants performing that same function. And that’s what we do. So that’s the first problem we’re focused on trying to solve. We allow electric utilities to digitally interact with all those different assets to perform that function.

The second one is a little bit simpler to explain, and it’s really about all these emerging green product supply chains. Whether we’re talking about sustainable aviation fuel that I described, whether we’re talking about carbon offsets, or whether we’ve even done some work on green bitcoin, these are new emerging product classes and are pretty complicated. What we do is we use Web3 technologies to make it really easy to trace and trust those complex green product supply chains. That’s the second challenge that we’re focused on solving is just bringing dramatic levels of transparency and trust to these new green product supply chains.

Q5. What are the energy web solutions and products?

We’ve got some flashier names for those products that we’ve put out there. For the electric utility side, we call our solution a Data Exchange Solution and a Digital Spine Solution. These are similar words to describe the same thing. So our primary solutions here are around data exchange and something we call a digital spine for the grid. We just put out a full open-source toolkit on that, and that’s really focused on that grid problem.

And then on the other side for these green products, a very simple solution is called Green Proofs, enabling market participants to create proofs about these green products.

Q6. Now let’s talk about the token $EWT. What are the utilities and what do the tokenomics look like? Are there any prominent use cases in the future that the community should know about?

Definitely. As a starting point, the Energy Web chain is a blockchain that most of these applications are using. On the Energy Web chain, an Ethereum clone with a different consensus mechanism, some fees need to be paid to use that blockchain, just like on Ethereum, gas fees and other transaction fees to use that blockchain, which is the Energy Web chain.

However, what’s currently being rolled out is the ability for anyone in the world to purchase Energy Web tokens, stake them, and use those tokens to support something called Worker Node Networks. I’ll spend a moment on this because it’s really important for understanding the fundamental token economic design of the Energy Web. For the solutions that we just talked about, whether it’s the Digital Spine piece or the Green Proof piece, we’re creating an environment where these different networks of nodes can perform useful work for these energy companies.

I’ll take a specific example for some Green Proof use cases. Energy market participants need to know that electricity comes from a certain place. For example, if you’re a big corporate purchasing renewables, you want proof that those renewables come from specific wind, solar or hydro facilities. And what these worker node networks enable is, instead of that corporate looking at a proprietary database and trusting some third party to say don’t worry, your renewables are coming from this specific wind or solar facility, what these worker node networks do is perform matching between that corporate’s electricity consumption and these different wind and solar facilities.

Basically, you’ve got a decentralized network of nodes all running a similar piece of computational work, in this case, matching energy consumption with generation from renewable energy facilities. And those nodes publish that work, and you can trust it because many different nodes perform that work. If you want to run one of those nodes, you’ve got to buy Energy Web tokens and stake them to be trusted, and then rewards are paid out to those node operators via Energy Web tokens. That’s the fundamental concept of these worker node networks that we’re deploying now that’s in partnership with. We just announced some work with Polkadot.

But, if I step back and just talk about EWT, there are really two ways to think about it. Today, Energy Web tokens pay these transaction fees on the Energy Web chain for anybody working in the Energy Web ecosystem. And what’s coming and will be deployed this year is this worker node concept, which means that individuals can take these tokens and stake them against these individual nodes. Those nodes are performing useful work for these different energy companies, and that’s tied to the solutions I described.

Q7. I recently saw a partnership announcement between Energy Web and Polkadot. Can you tell us more about the partnership and what you are trying to achieve?

Yeah, it ties directly to what I described in these worker nodes. And by the way, there’s some really simple documentation explaining this worker node concept. We’ll make sure we put it out on our Twitter and put it back out there for the community to see. Still, in summary, this concept of having these different individual networks of nodes that are performing work for energy companies, we can’t do that right now with the legacy Energy Web chain. What we’re trying to do with Polkadot is we’re going to go after a parachain slot on the Polkadot blockchain. And what that parachain slot will do is enable all of these different worker node networks to be launched very easily.

That whole setup with Polkadot is going to use the same token. So we’re not creating a second token or anything. Everything we’re doing here with Polkadot and going after this parachain on the Polkadot blockchain is based around the Energy Web token. And the way to think about it is we’ll have the Energy Web chain continuing to run, and our enterprise partners will still use it, and that’s where these tokens will be tracked. But then, on this new blockchain called Energy Web X, that’s where all of this action on the worker nodes is going to take place, and we’re staking against these worker node networks will take place. So we’re really excited to bring this new blockchain to market. And maybe the simplest way to think about it for this audience is two blockchains, one token.

Q8. We’ve also seen an exciting announcement about Green Proofs for Bitcoin, one of your solutions. Can you tell us more about that?

So Energy Web sits at this funny nexus between the energy transition sustainability and crypto. And obviously, the flashing red signal about those two things that a lot of press and conversation surrounds is the Bitcoin blockchain’s energy consumption and carbon footprint. Bitcoin uses proof of work consensus. It uses a ton of electricity. And because our electricity system is not running fully on renewables, Bitcoin has a big carbon footprint. So over the years, we had several conversations with both sides, Bitcoin miners and then on the other side institutional investors who are interested in taking positions in Bitcoin but are nervous about the carbon footprint. And so we ended up launching this initiative called Green Proofs for Bitcoin. And what it does is we’ve developed a standard that Bitcoin miners can apply to.

That standard says where are your mining rigs located, how much renewable electricity they use, and how much Bitcoin you are expected to produce or have produced over time. And based on that information, they apply and get a certification. It says that they have gotten this certification and that more information about that certification can be found on our website. On the other side, we’re creating an environment where financial organizations can construct financial derivatives of those certifications. So you might see some financial organizations that want to construct investment products that make it possible for institutional investors to come in and only get exposure to Bitcoin that was produced by miners that have gotten that certification. So that’s what we’re trying to do with Green Proofs for Bitcoin. Everything I just described is also built on the Energy Web stack. It uses the Energy Web token. That’s just a little about the initiative, and there’s much more information online. We’ve certified five initial miners, and everyone keeps an eye out on this space in the next couple of quarters as we’re deep in conversation with several financial organizations about how they can use it.

Q9. We’re curious to hear more about Energy Web Chain’s roadmap for 2023. Can you share any updates on the project’s advancement and the team’s resolution to accomplish its goals? And what milestones can we expect to see achieved?

I’d think about our roadmap in two different tracks. There’s a Web3 component, and then there’s an enterprise component to our roadmap. So on the web three component, our primary focus here is Energy Web X. So bringing to life this new blockchain, the Energy Web X blockchain, makes it possible for individuals to stake energy web tokens against these different worker node networks via what we’re calling the Energy Web marketplace. Those are the two primary deliverables we’re focused on. On the Web3 side of the equation is getting that blockchain up and running and making it possible for this entire worker node network concept to fly. We fully expect to get both of those things up and running before the end of the year. And we’re moving on to the specifics of the Energy Web chain parachain slot and crowd loan. That’s the primary focus on the Web3 side.

On the enterprise side, our primary focus is launching some of these additional Green Proof registries, which we expect to do before the end of the year. And in addition to that, we’re actually building a full as-a-service (aaS) tool for enterprises. So we’re creating an environment where energy companies no longer have to work with Energy Web. We’re creating an environment where an energy company can log into a website, construct one of these applications that I’ve described on this call, launch it, and pay for that solution to be run in the wild, including payment for all these awards for these worker node networks, et cetera. So on the enterprise side, we’re making an Energy Web as a service product that will be out there in the wild so that these companies can more quickly launch these solutions instead of us or other partners in the energy web ecosystem having to hold their hands along the way. So, there is a lot to do this year, but those are the primary things we’re focused on.

Community Questions

Q. How does Energy Web’s blockchain technology enable a more efficient and transparent energy market, and what are some potential challenges or limitations to its implementation?

That’s a great question. Let me start with this. Our tech stack is, and I’d encourage you, there are a lot of crypto folks on this line. So our tech stack is more than just blockchain. And in fact, if you see projects, companies, or businesses out there saying that their individual blockchain can solve all of somebody’s problems, I’d encourage you to be very skeptical. Because what we have learned and worked with these enterprises for many years is that certain Web3 technologies can create significant value for enterprises, but you have to pair them with other technologies. So our technology stack, which does include blockchain in these different web three architectures, enables a more efficient and transparent energy market by bringing radical transparency and verifiability to this sector. And just think about the examples I’ve described.

Most of these green product supply chains are incredibly opaque in many cases. You have a business that has a single proprietary database that tracks a bunch of different accounts and who owns what commodity in those different accounts. So all of the trust is contained in that central entity. Our solutions are focused on what is the saying that’s out there? “Less trust, more truth”? So basically, it brings radical transparency to where all these different commodities sit, who owns them, who is transacted in them, and the history of those different commodities. So our whole technology stack is focused on injecting transparency regarding challenges. The biggest challenge from our side is that change is very hard, long-term, and slow for many enterprises when you’re working on large-scale information technology projects. So the biggest challenge here is that a lot of these systems, these IT systems, work today. Even though they have their challenges, these enterprises do have working information technology solutions that are out there — convincing them that moving to a new technology stack can unlock different values for them. It’s a compelling value proposition, but it just takes time. These enterprises move slowly. So, our biggest challenge and limitation is working with these enterprises and moving at their pace of change.

Q. Can you comment on why proof-of-authority is more attractive to the enterprise sector as a lean energy consumer? Certainly, it is a greener option than proof-of-work, which makes sense in your context and agenda.

Great question. When we started Energy Web, remember this was back in 2017, there weren’t many examples of alternative governance mechanisms. And since the beginning of our journey, these energy enterprises wanted to launch these applications onto a blockchain. They were nervous about this concept of governance mechanism whereby you have millions of different stakers or miners that are effectively collectively in control of the network because some of these applications would be performing some pretty mission-critical functions in supporting these different supply chains and energy systems. So the thinking was, well, let’s still have a very decentralized governance set up, but let’s actually have these energy market participants be the validators of the blockchain and let anybody use the network.

So the thinking was, with that kind of governance, it can be more nimble in case different things take place, in case there are different issues out there, and just have the entire technology governed by that sector, the energy sector, instead of a blockchain that was trying to do kind of pan sector use cases, etc. So that was beyond the energy consumption point, which is great. That was the thinking was let’s just have it focused on a specific sector was the thinking of the community.

Q. Artificial intelligence has now become a trend in the Web3 space. Do you have any plans to integrate AI into your product in the near future?

Yeah, everybody’s certainly talking about AI right now. I wish I had bought some Nvidia stock a little while ago. Yes, great question. So I’m extremely bullish on what artificial intelligence can do for the energy transition. And we’ve been looking at it in two different ways from the energy web side. One is, on the user side, how can we use some of these new tools to make it easier for enterprises to construct energy web solutions? You’ve seen how powerful these different chatbots can be to help developers work more quickly. What if we could create an environment whereby organizations can do things like text-to-solution?

So if you have an energy expert who isn’t an IT person and wants to spin up one of these energy web solutions, can we create an environment where they can use these AI tools to use a simple text interface and spin up a solution? So that’s one way. It’s a bit more boring to talk about, but a very useful way that we could use AI in our ecosystem. The other way is more transformative. If we look at the grid applications that we’re bringing to market in different places, again, we call them our data exchange or digital spine solution. You could think of those as platforms for data exchange because all of these different companies are exchanging data about electric vehicles, the grid, and what weather patterns are coming in the next few days. On top of that, data exchange, or digital spine, there is an immense amount of sophisticated calculations and optimizations that need to take place to tell millions of different batteries what they should be doing at different times of the day. That’s where AI can come in. So if artificial intelligence can produce the most optimized dispatch algorithms to tell all of these different assets what they need to do to balance the grid, that is a massive area for innovation. And we want to ensure that this digital spine and data exchange solution is as interoperable and friendly as possible with different AI innovations coming online.

Very quickly, several of our partners in some of these different markets where we have a data exchange live are already using artificial intelligence to produce optimized kind of dispatch models, et cetera, for the grid. So, yeah, very bullish on how it will be out there, and we’re looking at it every day to ensure our tech stack supports it.