These pilots worked, but there was no follow-up yet, not that the foundation did not try at every twist and turn along the timeline.

Parallel to these pilots, the B-DER project of the University Utrecht went through the implementation phase and together with the developers at Bloxico the foundation delivered the open-source p2p blockchain-based market as part of the research project. We also want to know if people want to exchange their generated solar energy for other means than money. Student Elena Georgarakis of the University Utrecht designed a survey and wrote her Master Thesis about Energy exchange between households What are the preferences for exchanging locally generated renewable energy in the Netherlands?  Currently, the B-DER project is closing as the research is done and the results will be published soon.

Looking forward
Now we are in August, and things start to become active again, in the first half of 2020 the foundation has planted a few seeds to get busy in the second half.

Toukomst

August 20th, we had a meeting to talk about teaming up with local initiatives in the province Groningen. The region invests in the future of its citizens and economy (Toukomst project). Many (local) parties brought creativity to the table on how to do that. The foundation took part in the previous round, due to our link to the next project, to harvest ideas. Now it is time to partner with similar initiatives and leverage each other. We will try to bring the Energycoin blockchain in as a backbone for different Energycoins based tokens, as we did in the pilots mentioned before.

Hackathon Hanzehogeschool Groningen

The foundation will participate in the opening days of the Hanze Hogeschool, September 2nd, 3d and 4th. We developed the program together with Dr. Margreet Boersma lecturer Sustainable Finance Management and her team. In three days the students Business Studies will participate in a hackathon, a design sprint-like event in which they will work together in groups on a real-life case on the ecosystem of the Energy Coin Foundation. The week is supported by delegates from peer to peer energy exchange of local sustainable energy (Resourcefully) and citizens community energy initiative Grunneger Power and facilitated by lecturers through the Design Thinking principles.

The teams are able to achieve the honor of the best pitch, evaluated by a mixed panel of delegates, at the end of the week. They will develop an evidence-based research proposal in the weeks after, according to the concept they came up with during the hackathon. We are honored that the Hanzehogeschool asked us to get involved and define viable business models for the current Energycoin blockchain and its green ties. A possible follow up here is that one of those ideas is part of further research and implementation by the students during their year.

Amsterdam and the Dougnut Economy

In the background, there are talks with the city of Amsterdam. And to become part of a group that works and studies the possibilities of a green-based value economy. We don’t post about this; usually, most of the time, these talks take months of other meetings to progress. But to give all of you an indication that even though we keep getting involved in projects, we also try to unearth the next steps.

How should all of this reflect on Energycoin
That depends, we as a foundation implement our statues, we try to facilitate the use of blockchain technology first, and if it is on Energycoin that is preferred. In our humble view, everything is there for the simplest solutions needing alternative tokens or climate community currencies. We hope that everyone who still follows the Telegram or our posts on other social channels understands the road we take is a long one.
But we try to achieve what the founders of the foundation, including Jan Clement, put down when bringing the foundation to life in 2016. A green currency that works in real life, a reality that changes by the day. What we try to facilitate is a green token economy as an instrument for local climate policy goals, that becomes readily accepted as it connects existing initiatives and regulations though the valuation of intangibles and makes everyday climate choices visible.
We realize fully, every country, region, or even cities have their laws and cultural acceptance. Therefore, we take part in local projects that bring us closer to the goal of a green token economy where saved emissions become inputs for the next step in the process, whether in money or in-kind. The speed is limited to our “doers” network, and our network is huge but it looks like people lack time to do new experiments like this.

We realize this does not bring any monetary gains to the coin. Still, as stated before, we try to turn Energycoin into that green value economy tool for projects that already exist and save climate values in one way or another. Most of the time, these projects are most of the temporary, pilots, or subsidized, and you are dealing with (semi)regulated partners most of the time. We also have to fight an uphill battle against the image of Bitcoin in those circles, which was a learning curve for us too.

The coming period looks promising, but again it is months and not days.