Smart-contracts-driven personal carbon credit management in smart cities: A review and future research directions

This paper examines personal carbon credits from energy saving in smart cities. Personal carbon credits are carbon credits owned by individuals who reduce their household greenhouse gas emissions by a real and verifiable value. This paper presents a systematic literature review (SLR) to examine how individuals can generate carbon credits as a result of energy saving measures in smart cities. The SLR includes research, reviews and conference papers from 2013–2024 from the IEEE, Springer, ACM and ScienceDirect databases. A total of 14 articles were selected for this SLR based on the titles, keywords and abstracts by following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines. We divide the studies into two groups. The first group pertains to blockchain and the Internet of Things (IoT) for carbon trading while the other group pertains to building energy for carbon credits. A comparative analysis was undertaken to understand how individuals can generate carbon credits by reducing their energy consumption. The results of the SLR show there is a lack of studies on how individuals can obtain carbon credits based on their energy consumption behavior in smart cities. Most studies are concerned about carbon emissions trading and how to reduce carbon dioxide emissions in the building sector. Finally, this paper highlights the crucial need for future research on personal carbon credits systems to enhance their scalability, effectiveness, and efficiency.