Blockchainar

Engineers towards green energy

Blockchainar started in 2018, when a group of senior engineers came together, as each of them was searching for innovation contributing to sustainable development in the field of energy. Each team member has dealt with energy matters in different areas: Sara Goldberg with demonstrated track-record in innovation and entrepreneurship, Mariano Nogueron is an industrial operations leader with sustainable energy sourcing bias, Veronica Venturini is a data scientist related to atomic energy security and Cecilia Mayas Paez has experience in energy supply agreements for big companies and the energy market. Aside from that, all team members worked on sustainable/green energy projects for third parties until they decided it was time to start making a difference on their own, bringing together their various perspectives, knowledge, and tools. And so, information technology engineer with a PhD in data science, chemical, industrial, and mechanical engineers post graduated with MBAs teamed up and founded Blockchainar. Recently, experienced chemical and electrical engineers and a project manager specialized on sustainable energy projects have joined the team as advisors. The name Blockchainar expresses their desire to take an action (–ar in Spanish indicates a verb, an action) and describes the process of adding blocks in a productive chain to contribute to the green energy transition. Furthermore, the start-up used blockchain technology for their first project in energy certifying the green energy injection to the grid.

From carbon credits to green hydrogen technologies

As mentioned above, Blockchainar started with carbon neutral certificates for green energy solutions based on blockchain´s smart contracts. This helped them to understand the industry challenges and their own capabilities in collaboration with their network, and thus Blockchainar started to focus on possibilities of green hydrogen technologies. “Our country is rich in resources but has a high poverty index. We have first-hand experience with the social and environmental impact that this economic fact carries, and we look forward to take action to minimize it,” says Cecilia (CEO and co-founder). They aim to build modular electrolytic cells to convert the solar energy produced in the north of Argentina and the wind energy produced in the south of the country into green hydrogen right in the place the energy is produced, enabling a decentralised and longer-term energy storage and distribution in rural areas. The solution they are developing would also support the electro-mobility efforts that are being made in the region. Blockchainar’ s solution is an alternative to big and centralized production facilities, which require higher investment capacities and do not correspond with the market development speed in Argentina (there is currently only one facility in construction to produce green hydrogen). “In addition to energy transportation losses, the centralized production model results in inefficiencies” Cecilia explains. “Because energy demand is growing faster than investment capacity, and we want to grow sustainably, we need to make the technology accessible, modular, and efficient in order to buster the grid profile transformation and increase energy availability. As a result, we can expand block by block, faster and cheaper.” Cecilia adds.

Next steps at Blockchainar

If you are interested in our Start-up of the Month series or would like to learn more about our Global Start-up Service, please contact our Start-up Relations & Communications Manager Silvia Nikova:silvia.nikova@isc3.org.