The digitalization of the electricity sector marks the second energy revolution, according to Joanna Hubbard of blockchain company Electron.

“If the first energy revolution was clean energy, the second energy revolution is shared data structures that anyone can build-out on top of,” she told me in an interview at European Utility Week in Vienna last week.

“I see that happening over the next three-to-five years and it’s going to completely change the energy market and the whole supply-consumer relationship.”

She added: “What’s exciting about the digitalization of energy now, is that it is a foregone conclusion. I don’t think that was true a year ago. There’s a huge amount of work going on.”

Hubbard is chief operating officer and co-founder of UK-based Electron, which has already won government backing as well as the support of several major energy sector players including EDF Energy, Statkraft and TEPCO for its decentralized energy trading platform.

She says that “there’s a lot of different flavours of blockchain: a lot of different use cases. The overarching benefits for me are enabling price transparency in markets – and I say ‘markets’ because there’s not going to be one market for all energy like we have today: there’s going to be a market for grid services, local energy, clean energy, big energy – so the blockchain can provide the co-ordinating layer for all those different value streams to move on top of one another instead of against one another.”

Watch the full interview here: