SAP's GreenToken: How the software giant's new tech can power India's green ambitions

The transition to renewable energy sources away from fossil fuels is a good ambition but it can be accelerated if new fuels and energy sources can be introduced that can be directly replace conventional fossil fuels without changing the machines that consume energy source. This can be a game changer for a developing country like India, which relies heavily of various means of energy sources. But an underline challenge is to have a system to track the better energy content in the fuel, its origins, how it was produced, or even transported. This is something the German technology giant SAP with its GreenToken technology can address, especially for the energy companies India. 

“We are in talks to a number of leading Indian companies,” saID James Veale, Co-Founder of GreenToken, by SAP.

GreenToken is a SaaS-based solution industries across sector that use bulk traded raw materials. Using unique material tracking, blockchain based tokens and configuration-based workflows, it enables organisations to have complete transparency across their hard to trace bulk raw material supply chains, and provides important facts like certified sustainability, scope 3 carbon footprint, ethical and fair-trade labor, child labor free, raw material circularity and guarantee of origin.

For instance, take example of the green electrical power. SAP’s GreenToken can correctly record the percent of renewable power as a total of power delivered and correctly account for how much renewable power is available as tokens and which end customer gets the renewable power tokens in any accounting period. 

Veale told Business Today: “One is an energy company who is making green power and wants to choose GreenToken. Because think about it, if I deliver electrons electricity, you can't tell whether it was made from solar and wind or whether it came from an oil burning power station. With Green Token, the power company can deliver power to you and we can send you the GreenTokens that there's proof that it was made by renewables.” 

Using this, they are able to make renewable power claims, such as lower Scope 3 CO2e emissions. This can accelerate India’s transition to green power by providing a premium to build more green power generation, and an immediate benefit to the customer.

Another example is of bio fuel blending. India is a huge country and relies on diesel for trains, trucks, busses, and other vehicles. Having easy cheap transport enables India’s economy and social mobility, but at a huge pollution cost. Again, bio diesel, which has a percent of content that comes from a non-fossil fuel source, is a direct replacement for conventional diesel. GreenToken is used to prove that the bio diesel really is blend of conventional diesel and bio fatty acid methyl ester sourced form used cooking oil, at a certain percentage. 

“We are in talks with a big oil company in India, which is interested in getting more of a bio source of their fuel oils to blends biodiesel, sustainable aviation fuel," Veale said.  

“The products that they were making, one can't tell from the original diesel. So GreenToken would be used to show that some content has a bio source," he added. The customer can use the tokens that represent the non-fossil bio diesel to make green claims such as lower scope 3 emissions and promote themselves as a greener transport company.

As India is aiming to become a hub for producing green hydrogen, GreenToken can play a crucial role in hydrogen transportation.

“When you transport hydrogen, there's an increasing amount of complex regulation to demonstrate that from the source where it's manufactured to where it is at its destination. So you have to show with a great degree of accuracy, that the hydrogen has not been contaminated through that transportation process because you've got like green hydrogen and then you've got all these other variants. So GreenToken can be used in the transportation process to give very accurate traceability of every step of that process,” explained Paul Marriott - President, SAP Asia Pacific Japan.  

This could be the land, could be shipping, obviously how it's contained, temperature, everything about how the hydrogen is transported is then held in the GreenToken. So that when it when you have to attest that you have transported it and guaranteed that it is exactly the hydrogen that was produced at the source. That sort of traceability is going to be needed.

Although the discussions are still in early days with the Indian companies yet SAP is excited about the Indian market. After all, India has set itself an ambitious goal of achieving net zero by 2070 and eliminating energy footprint will be the key.

 

Also read: Software giant SAP says India is fastest growing market for company, cloud customers doubled in last 2 years