Today’s technologies, techniques, and systems leveraged for managing energy trading operations in electric vehicles fall short in providing operational transparency, immutability, fault tolerance, traceability, and trusted data provenance features. They are centralized and vulnerable to the single point of failure problem, and less trustworthy as they are prone to the data modifications and deletion by adversaries. In this paper, we present the potential advantages of blockchain technology to manage energy trading operations between electric vehicles as it can offer data traceability, immutability, transparency, audit, security, and confidentiality in a fully decentralized manner. We identify and discuss the essential requirements for the successful implementation of blockchain technology to secure energy trading operations among electric vehicles. We present a detailed discussion on the potential opportunities offered by blockchain technology to secure the energy trading operations of electric vehicles. We discuss several blockchain-based research projects and case studies to highlight the practicability of blockchain technology in electric vehicles energy trading. Finally, we identify and discuss open challenges in fulfilling the requirements of electric vehicles energy trading applications.

The United Arab Emirates is moving towards the use of renewable energy for many reasons, including the country’s high energy consumption, unstable oil prices, and increasing carbon dioxide emissions. The usage of electric vehicles can improve public health and reduce emissions that contribute to climate change. Thus, the usage of renewable energy resources to meet the demands of electric vehicles is the major challenge influencing the development of an optimal smart system that can satisfy energy requirements, enhance sustainability and reduce negative environmental impacts. The objective of this study was to examine different configurations of hybrid renewable energy systems for electric vehicle charging in Abu Dhabi city, UAE. A comprehensive study was conducted to investigate previous electric vehicle charging approaches and formulate the problem accordingly. Subsequently, methods for acquiring data with respect to the energy input and load profiles were determined, and a techno-economic analysis was performed using Hybrid Optimization of Multiple Energy Resources (HOMER) software. The results demonstrated that the optimal electric vehicle charging model comprising solar photovoltaics, wind turbines, batteries and a distribution grid was superior to the other studied configurations from the technical, economic and environmental perspectives. An optimal model could produce excess electricity of 22,006 kWh/year with an energy cost of 0.06743 USD/kWh. Furthermore, the proposed battery–grid–solar photovoltaics–wind turbine system had the highest renewable penetration and thus reduced carbon dioxide emissions by 384 tons/year. The results also indicated that the carbon credits associated with this system could result in savings of 8786.8 USD/year. This study provides new guidelines and identifies the best indicators for electric vehicle charging systems that will positively influence the trend in carbon dioxide emissions and achieve sustainable electricity generation. This study also provides a valid financial assessment for investors looking to encourage the use of renewable energy.