A token - eg a unit of currency - is not the same thing at all as the abstract unit of account/standard unit of measure by which exchanges of tokens are priced.

You assume that the two are necessarily the same, because the convention is that the empty/base-less credit tokens issued by banks/credit intermediaries are also our units of account.

But it ain't necessarily so. Exchanges of value may be priced in $ without being settled in $.

Accounting in energy transcends politics and ideology.

Would you agree that there is a difference in outcome between 'least energy cost' and 'least dollar cost' policies? If not, I simply point you to Denmark as a case study.

Energy currencies? That is another issue, because energy sources are rivalrous and may be enclosed, so that energy currency issuance could indeed be subject to politics. But an energy unit of account is no more political than a metre or kilogramme. The only question is, does it work for the user?

Knowledge, on the other hand, is non-rivalrous. If I give you an idea I can't take it back. One of the Big Trades of the 21st century - the transition trade if you like - will be the exchange of the value of knowledge and knowhow for the value of carbon fuel saved.

On that subject - and investment in energy efficiency and renewable energy through 'energy loans' using energy prepay instruments - I'm advising a group of ten Near East nations.

This is another - macro rather than micro level - prototype, for which luck is indeed required.

"The future is already here -- it's just not very evenly distributed" William Gibson