B-ETS: A Trusted Blockchain-based Emissions Trading System for Vehicle-to-Vehicle Networks

TL;DR

This paper introduces B-ETS, a blockchain-based, distributed emissions trading system for vehicles that enhances transparency, incentivizes eco-friendly driving, and reduces emissions through vehicle-to-vehicle communication and extensive simulations.

Contribution

It presents a novel decentralized emissions trading system for vehicles using blockchain and V2V communication, addressing limitations of traditional centralized ETS.

Findings

Increased vehicle connectivity reduces emissions.

The system enables transparent, trustworthy allowance trading.

It supports full lifecycle monitoring and fuel economy reporting.

Abstract

Urban areas are negatively impacted by Carbon Dioxide (CO2 ) and Nitrogen Oxide (NOx) emissions. In order to achieve a cost-effective reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and to combat climate change, the European Union (EU) introduced an Emissions Trading System (ETS) where organizations can buy or receive emission allowances as needed. The current ETS is a centralized one, consisting of a set of complex rules. It is currently administered at the organizational level and is used for fixed-point sources of pollution such as factories, power plants, and refineries. However, the current ETS cannot efficiently cope with vehicle mobility, even though vehicles are one of the primary sources of CO2 and NOx emissions. In this study, we propose a new distributed Blockchain-based emissions allowance trading system called B-ETS. This system enables transparent and trustworthy data exchange as well as trading of allowances among vehicles, relying on vehicle-to-vehicle communication. In addition, we introduce an economic incentive-based mechanism that appeals to individual drivers and leads them to modify their driving behavior in order to reduce emissions. The efficiency of the proposed system is studied through extensive simulations, showing how increased vehicle connectivity can lead to a reduction of the emissions generated from those vehicles. We demonstrate that our method can be used for full life-cycle monitoring and fuel economy reporting. This leads us to conjecture that the proposed system could lead to important behavioral changes among the drivers