EnergyBlock Copenhagen
In order to achieve higher take-up of renewable energy technology by private citizens and companies, new possibilities underscoring these are required. The EnergyBlock project investigated a combined business case of decentralized energy production, food production, and social inclusion. An important part is to enable local transactions between neighbours.
To sell energy at a local level we need a system that can handle the transactions between peers and neighbors. The nascent blockchain technology holds the promise to bring about a solution where meter to meter transactions can be done in a secure and transparent way.
This project developed a blockchain prototype for local transactions with a proof of concept. The blockchain can serve as a ledger for transactions of energy. We have developed it as entirely open source and can serve as an educational prototype upon which students, coders etc. can build applications and new business models for decentralized energy production.
Blockchain is a possible fundamental smart city technology where the public and the private need to build their comptences together. Thus, the EnergyBlock project accented to build an open blockchain that can include, not only transactions (similar to BitCoin) but documents, executional code (often referred to as smart contracts), and the inclusion of public and private keys to cater for the privacy of citizens.
A working prototype was developed in 2017.