# The Potential of Blockchain Technology and Smart Contracts in the Energy Sector: A Review
## 3 Research Methodology and Literature Classification
### Literature Classification
#### 3.2.3 Business Models and Applications (BMnA)
To explore the potential risks and challenges associated with implementing these contracts, a new taxonomy has been developed (i.e., technological risks and challenges at the blockchain and smart contract ledger, and risks and challenges that result from society's perception and use of the technology). The authors mention the importance of collaboration and partnerships between technology developersand researchers to facilitate the adoption of blockchain smart contracts in the renewable energy industry. The potential applications of blockchain technology in the energy sector are explored by [PERSON] in [54]. The authors mainly focus on the deployment of smart contracts by enabling decentralized energy trading and tracking of renewable energy credits. They also discuss the potential benefits (increased transaction security, elimination of legal uncertainty, reduction in transaction costs, and support for pro-ecological activities) and challenges (lack of sufficiently efficient hardware base, lack of uniformity of individual platforms, lack of operational coherence) of using blockchain technology in the energy sector. [PERSON] et al. in [60], propose the use of smart contracts on a blockchain to facilitate P2P transactions for buying and selling electricity among 4000 nodes. The success rate of the suggested method is 99.38% and the average time for each transaction is 16 s. By using smart contracts, the trust cost of electricity market transactions can be reduced, settlement efficiency can be improved, and the electricity retail market can be made more intelligent. Ethereum was chosen by the authors as the smart contract platform due to its ease of use, high speed, low cost, good safety, and scalability, but it has limitations. These limitations include the centralization of consensus, the requirement of tokens to run smart contracts, and vulnerability to certain attacks. Finally, the authors recommend that future research should prioritize improving consensus algorithms' efficiency and developing smart contracts with strict logic and customizable rules that can adjust to the intricate business rules of the grid and different types of settlement contracts. [PERSON] and [PERSON] [65] grapple with several critical challenges in the realm of smart contracts. These challenges encompass the imperative need to enhance smart contract flexibility, ensure seamless interoperability among IT systems for energy exchange, establish platform independence for smart contract design, and devise effective methods for verifying rules. To address these challenges, the authors elucidate their modeling approach using an illustrative system that generates renewable energy. In pursuit of this goal, their article introduces an extension of the Unified Modeling Language (UML) known as the UML Profile for Smart Contracts, designed to facilitate smart contract design, and outlines a method for implementing smart contracts in Java programming language.