Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings, Inc. (TEPCO) recently announced that it closed an early-stage bridging round investment in Electron at the end of 2017.

Electron is a London-based technology company harnessing blockchain technology to establish more efficient, flexible, and reliable systems for the energy sector.

Together, they will explore the potential to change the existing centralized structures to decentralized systems in energy transactions by using blockchain.

“We are excited to work with Electron to explore and obtain additional know-how on blockchain that has the potential to significantly impact the energy market,” said Shin-ichiro Kengaku, Managing Executive Officer and Chief of Global Innovation & Investments at TEPCO. “We believe it is very important to continuously seek new opportunities and create new value for society.”

Paul Ellis, CEO of Electron said, “In the next phase of energy transformation, millions of new assets will be joining energy networks at both the transmission and distribution levels. There is a huge need to create a robust shared infrastructure that can identify and record the properties of these assets – this can be underpinned by appropriate blockchain technologies. TEPCO is an energy industry leader for innovation in Japan, so we are delighted to partner with them to explore expanding our service offerings in other markets.”