From centralized to decentralized blockchain-based product registration systems: the use case of lighting and appliances

In the last years, lighting only accounted for more than 15% of global electricity consumption. Moreover, we expect a high increase of energy consumption in the next years due to the large growth in lighting and appliances usage in developing economies. As the United Nations Secretary-Generals Sustainable Energy for All initiative identified, there exists a high potential of reducing the world's greenhouse gas emissions by improving the energy efficiency of lighting and appliances. For that, we have developed in the past a "centralized" product registration system to allow suppliers, manufactures, or traders to register their products to enter into a market. This product registration system is a crucial tool for identifying non-compliant, inefficient products. It serves as an entry-point for testers and regulators to examine the energy efficiency of the registered products, verify if they satisfy the minimum standards, and decide to let them enter into their markets. Our product registration system, as well as any other centralized implementation, suffers from isolated data storage hindering the collaboration between different markets from both governance and technical perspectives. In this paper, we examine the limits of centralized product registration systems and the advantages of a decentralized model based on the blockchain. Our analysis and prototype suggest that a blockchain-based product registration system can help to reduce the barriers between markets and play an important role in the quest for energy efficiency.