# A Systematic Analysis of Real-World Energy Blockchain Initiatives
## 3 Methodology
### Search Strategy and Scope  
The search strategy focused on identifying peer-reviewed secondary research that employed systematic methods to investigate energy blockchains, whereby the reported energy blockchain initiatives could be extracted for analysis. Table 2 shows the terms and logical conditions used to search for publications within prominent repositories, including Science Direct, Scopus, Google Scholar, and IEEE Xplore. Given the research approach focused specifically on identifying systematic studies, the term '_Systematic_' was mandatory, while some flexibility was given to allow for variations in the publication's title--using '_Review_', '_Mapping_', '_Study_' or '_Survey_' yielded results where any of these terms appeared in the title along with '_Systematic_' (e.g., Systematic Review, Systematic Mapping, etc.). After using the terminology to search each repository, only one systematic study on energy blockchains was identified [18]. However, other systematic studies made reference to energy applications within a broader scope of work [19; 20].  
\begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c} \hline \hline
**ID** & **Objective** & **Rationale** \\ \hline \multirow{2}{*}{RO1} & \multirow{2}{*}{\begin{tabular}{c} Determine growth \\ rates and trends \\ \end{tabular} } & \multirow{2}{*}{\begin{tabular}{c} Understanding the current growth rates can be used to infer interest in the field, while high growth rates should create some urgency around the establishment of structured research agendas and themes.} \\ \hline \multirow{2}{*}{RO2} & \multirow{2}{*}{\begin{tabular}{c} Determine failure rates \\ and trends \\ \end{tabular} } & \multirow{2}{*}{\begin{tabular}{c} Understanding the failure rates can be used to infer poor business cases or technology choices, while sharing reasons for failures could serve to shape future research efforts and best-practices. \\ \end{tabular} } \\ \hline \multirow{2}{*}{RO3} & \multirow{2}{*}{\begin{tabular}{c} Determine method of \\ sharing information \\ \end{tabular} } & \multirow{2}{*}{\begin{tabular}{c} Understanding how energy blockchain initiatives disseminate \\ information could indicate the scale of the initiative, or level of information sharing. \\ \end{tabular} } \\ \hline \multirow{2}{*}{RO4} & \multirow{2}{*}{\begin{tabular}{c} Determine depth of \\ technical information \\ \end{tabular} } & \multirow{2}{*}{\begin{tabular}{c} Understanding the level of information sharing currently observed \\ across energy blockchain initiatives could serve to highlight a significant barrier impeding research and industry alignment. \\ \end{tabular} } \\ \hline \multirow{2}{*}{RO5} & \multirow{2}{*}{\
\begin{tabular}{c} Determine technical \\ trends \\ \end{tabular} } & \multirow{2}{*}{
\begin{tabular}{c} Understanding the energy applications, blockchain platforms and \\ consensus algorithms provides insights regarding current approaches \\ and trends. \\ \end{tabular} } \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table}
Table 1: Guiding research objectives and rationale.  
Figure 1: Data extraction and analysis process.  
Choosing to target studies adhering to systematic approaches was deemed appropriate given the method could facilitate broad data collection (i.e., identify projects), remove aspects of researcher bias (e.g., search preferences), and present concise tabular data. Although building a new dataset from online searches was considered, the identified systematic review was of (a) high-quality, (b) peer-reviewed, and (c) recently published. Therefore, the benefit of conducting an unbounded internet search for additional energy blockchain initiatives was unnecessary.