Four Questions with Doug Miller
Get to know the people of the Energy Web community! In this recurring series, we pose four questions to a member of the team. These are their perspectives and insights. In this debut article, we talk to Doug Miller. He is currently market development manager at EWF, where he works with member companies around the world on digital solutions for renewable energy and carbon markets, including leveraging the EW Origin toolkits. Doug was previously at Rocky Mountain Institute, where he worked on clean energy investment initiatives.
WHY ARE YOU SO PASSIONATE ABOUT WORKING ON DIGITAL AND DECENTRALIZED TECHNOLOGIES IN THE ENERGY SECTOR?
Before joining the EWF team about two-and-a-half years ago, I focused on applying insights from behavioral economics and social psychology to develop solutions that go along the grain with how people make decisions in order to promote the broader adoption of clean energy investments and sustainable practices. With this in mind, what motivated me to join EWF and support the development of blockchain-based solutions was the technology’s promise to streamline processes that, for example, make it easier for companies with clean energy targets to reach and prove progress toward their goals as well as better position solutions like demand response and storage to deliver needed grid flexibility. I remain passionate about the opportunity for blockchain technology to support the clean energy transition for these same reasons and, in addition, because blockchain is, in combination with other technologies, positioned to help manage the sheer complexity and capture the full economic value of introducing millions of new assets (like electric vehicles, batteries, and IoT-enabled programmable devices) to our electric grids during this transition.
ONE YEAR FROM NOW, WHAT IS THE BIGGEST ADVANCEMENT OR MILESTONE WE’LL SEE IN ENERGY BLOCKCHAIN AND OTHER DECENTRALIZED TECHNOLOGIES?
Given several projects already under way at EWF, I expect that there will be several new blockchain-based renewable energy procurement platforms aligned with industry standards in select markets that enables companies, cities, households, and even grid assets like electric vehicles to directly buy certified renewable energy and increase demand for new renewable energy projects. I think we will also learn a lot about how to integrate emerging decentralized technologies and standards (like self-sovereign digital identity) to support grid flexibility solutions for electric grid operators, better demonstrate how blockchain helps unlock value from clean energy assets, make progress around decentralized registries and enable grid operators to comply with privacy-related laws (e.g., GDPR) by design.
WHAT IS THE BIGGEST MISCONCEPTION OR MYTH THAT YOU CONTINUE TO FACE REGARDING BLOCKCHAIN AND DECENTRALIZED TECHNOLOGIES?
There are several perspectives that continue to come up in conversations about the role and associated benefits of blockchain in the energy sector as if nothing has changed over the past few years and as if the industry must collectively make a go-no go judgement about the technology at some point. I think people should do their homework in reviewing various publicly-available resources like those distributed by EWF that explains why certain perspectives are misconceptions, why blockchain in the energy sector means something very different than “peer to peer” systems, and how EWF has worked with major energy sector players across the globe to solve some of the original issues with blockchain around topics like energy use, transaction throughput, and governance.
HOW SHOULD UTILITIES AND OTHER GRID OPERATORS BE THINKING ABOUT DECENTRALIZED DIGITAL SOLUTIONS?
The global energy sector is undergoing significant transformation due to rapid growth of renewables, distributed energy resources, and electric vehicles. Blockchain is not a disruptor in the energy sector, but rather an enabler of this exciting — and, in terms of climate mitigation, necessary — transition. Utilities and grid operators should think about blockchain as part of the larger technology stack for new solutions that help them more easily register energy assets, schedule and track these assets’ activity, settle payments, generate necessary reports, and position any entity or asset to become a renewable energy buyer so that we can provide grid reliability and security along with variable renewable energy and distributed energy resources.
