Chile's energy commission activates blockchain technology

As part of her portfolio's plan to increase innovation in the sector, Chile's energy minister Susana Jiménez announced that the national energy commission (CNE) has begun to use blockchain technology, the first public entity in the country to do so.

The objective is to increase security, integrity, traceability and confidence in public information, the ministry said in a press release.

The blockchain data and information will be shared through the Energía Abierta statistics platform.

Instead of having a centralized information system which is "easy to manipulate or hack by third parties," CNE will "share data distributed among hundreds of thousands of servers, which will allow everyone to have access to real-time energy information, with the information being authenticated by many witnesses observing the process," the ministry said.

For the initial stage, CNE uploaded information on installed power capacity, average market prices, marginal costs, hydrocarbon prices, compliance with the NCRE law, medium power generation, emission factors and residential generation facilities, among others.