- Growthpoint Properties (JSE: GRT) is giving a massive boost to Africa’s first open blockchain-enabled Renewable Energy Certificate (REC) exchange, Fuel Switch, while unlocking certified clean energy trading for tenants when its e-co2 green energy initiative goes live on October 2025.
- Wheeled green energy is available for daily business in South Africa from October.
Growthpoint’s e-co₂ will deliver its first green electrons to 10 Sandton office buildings in October, with hydropower wheeled over the national grid from the Boston Hydroelectric Plant, newly developed in the Lesotho Highlands Water Scheme in partnership with Serengeti Energy. The e-co2 roll-out puts Growthpoint well ahead in bringing certified renewable energy into daily business use. e-co2 wheeled green electricity is cost competitive for Growthpoint tenants and has a zero-carbon footprint, so they can save money and advance their sustainability goals.
For e-co2, the company signed a 195GWh Power Purchase Agreement with Etana Energy in 2023, securing a mix of hydro, wind and solar power. This energy underpins Growthpoint’s pioneering e-co₂ solution, which delivers wheeled renewable electricity directly to commercial buildings and their tenants.
To deliver this capability as part of a growing suite of high-impact business-enabling tenant benefits, Growthpoint partnered with Fuel Switch, a blockchain-based energy tech platform and recent winner of the Agence Française de Développement’s Digital Energy Challenge.
Fuel Switch’s platform certifies the electricity as green using IoT, blockchain and AI, providing independent third-party verification in an innovative manner. Once certified, the green energy benefit is recorded on a digital certificate.
Each REC confirms that one megawatt-hour of renewable energy has been generated and supplied to the national grid. The RECs are stored on the blockchain as a digital asset. Each is time-stamped and linked to a renewable energy source.
Fuel Switch explains that an elegant system of automated actions executes predetermined smart contract rules embedded a secure blockchain data base. The result? Green energy that is independently certified with the highest level of trust and transparency and direct access to an evolving trading market that is usually inaccessible to all but the biggest players due to high participation costs.
With Fuel Switch, transactions that previously took weeks can now settle virtually instantly. Its smart contract technology is a much more cost-effective way to transact leading to marginal fees. Its infrastructure is capable of handling over 10,000 transactions per second, and it is already trusted by major corporates in South Africa.
Author: Bryan Groenendaal
