Blockchain Technology Application Challenges in Renewable Energy Supply Chain Management.

Area of Science:

• Supply Chain Management
• Information Technology
• Energy Systems

Background:

• Globalization and new technologies necessitate advanced supply chain management for competitive advantage.
• Blockchain technology offers potential benefits for sustainable energy supply chains, including enhanced trust, transparency, and integration.
• Adoption of new technologies like blockchain in supply chains faces significant challenges that can impede success.

Purpose of the Study:

• To identify and rank the challenges associated with applying blockchain in renewable energy supply chains.
• To assess the disruptive potential of these challenges on the adoption process.
• To validate the findings through a case study in Iran's renewable energy sector.

Main Methods:

• Utilized hybrid multi-criteria decision-making methods integrating gray numbers.
• Employed SWARA-Gray and EDAS-Gray for challenge evaluation and ranking.
• Validated results using WSM-Gray, COPRAS-Gray, and TOPSIS-Gray for robustness.

Main Results:

• Identified key challenges to blockchain implementation in sustainable energy supply chains.
• Ranked challenges based on their potential to disrupt the adoption process.
• Found a high degree of correlation among the rankings from different validation techniques.

Conclusions:

• High investment cost is the most significant challenge to blockchain adoption in sustainable energy supply chains.
• The developed methodology provides a robust framework for evaluating and ranking adoption challenges.
• Addressing financial and investment barriers is crucial for successful blockchain integration in this sector.