Update August 2020
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A short look back
We started the year with high hopes for two concrete implementations in a pilot. Energycoin was used as a token to convert climate savings into value on the blockchain. The first project involved the Ring-Ring bicycle app: distances traveled by bike became a CO2 saving, and a token became an Energycoin. The integration worked thanks to our technical partners on both sides.
The second project was temporary; together with Warm Sweaterday, the biggest national climate campaign in the Netherlands organized by Klimaatverbond Nederland and Shifft, heating savings were converted into CO2 savings and valued in ENRG.
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.
EnergyCoin Dashboard (ECD) Phase 2
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ECD is finally on the Blockchain and long expected converting climate savings into a value is now possible; with ECD phase 2 tested and in production you can start cycling, and via Ring-Ring track your mileage, routes and earn EnergyCoin through the ECD! If you don’t have an account, don’t wait any longer to create one! Download Ring-Ring on your iPhone or Android smartphone and connect with ECD! Make sure to take a look at the article where you can see how to create an account on the ECD and join the pilot.
*NOTE: Your email address has to be the same as your login email address for Ring-Ring!
The dashboard displays accumulated ENRG value, accumulated Bicycle Bits (BB) value and your green behavior (prevented CO2 emission) as a graph for each day you were active. Here is how the Dashboard looks like:
Generate EnergyCoin address!
To start getting rewards, you must generate your own EnergyCoin address. You can create an account on one of the following exchanges: Crex24, Nova Exchange or Bitibu. If you have any issues generating your address or receiving funds, make sure to join our Telegram channel and ask any question; you’ll get a response ASAP.
New partnership for ECD integrating soon
As you already may know, we have a partnership with WarmSweaterDay, the biggest Climate Action in the Netherlands that had a huge success on the 15th of February this year with over 200k participants! Their partner Shifft uses smart gas meter technology which they are going to integrate with ECD in order to show the difference in energy usage between March 2018 and March 2019 on our dashboard. Based on that, participants on the WarmSweaterday pilot project will get WSD’s virtual token that will be exchangeable for ENRG on ECD, just like Bicycle Bits.
Cyclists can earn carbon credits
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EnergyCoin Foundation, Ring-Ring and Bloxico launch a marketplace to capture and exchange value of local climate action. Cyclists can now earn the virtual token Bicycle Bits for every hundred kilometers they cycle. The bicycle kilometers are registered via an app and are stored on a EnergyCoin Dashboard. A Bicycle Bit is a certified emission reduction credit for avoiding greenhouse gas emissions and fine particles by traveling by bicycle.
The EnergyCoin Foundation and the technical development team Bloxico work together with Ring-Ring, the service that has encouraged the use of the bicycle for more than five years at dozens of companies and organizations and accurately records the bicycle kilometers that have been made. With one bicycle kilometer you avoid the emission of an average of 150 grams of CO2, this avoided CO2 emission is now being rewarded!
We start a pilot with hundred participants. Be quick. Register via Ring-Ring app, which can be downloaded on both Android and iOS. From this app you can register your bike kilometers and convert from today to Bicycle Bits. You get 1 Bicycle Bit per 100 bicycle kilometers, and this will be exchangeable in the second phase of this pilot — through the EnergyCoin Dashboard for 1 EnergyCoin (ENRG). Cyclists earn a reward for their choice of mobility. In urban areas, the replacement for one car-kilometer by a bicycle-kilometer yields 41 eurocents of societal benefits, as calculated by knowledge platform CROW.
Making visible the positive (climate) impact that cyclists make together is paramount. In addition, Ring-Ring and the EnergyCoin Foundation are working towards a better valuation of bicycle kilometers.
How to join a pilot
After you create an account on Ring-Ring and log in, click on a bicycle at the bottom of your screen:
After that, click on “My Settings”
Which will lead you to the EnergyCoin Dashboard by clicking on ENRG icon:
Show local climate benefits
The Bicycle Bit is the first virtual token in the collection of virtual tokens that people can earn from measurable climate actions and collect them on the EnergyCoin Dashboard. We are also currently developing a pilot together with the largest climate action in the Netherlands: Warm Sweater Day, where we record the avoided emission of greenhouse gases through realized energy savings.
Building a clean and fair economy
In our current economy the damage to the environment is not calculated. And the positive impact of daily climate-friendly choices is not visible. People are currently not being rewarded for preventing the emission of greenhouse gases and strive for clean air, and the EnergyCoin Foundation wants to change that by facilitating local networks that build a society that fits within the boundaries of the Earth.
The EnergyCoin Foundation makes available the blockchain technology, the technology that makes information transparent, unchangeable and decentralized, for recording and making the value of measurable positive actions visible and exchangeable for a sustainable world. The EnergyCoin blockchain does not use mining, as a result of which energy consumption and transaction fees are low.
The launch of the Bicycle Bits and the marketplace are the first two important steps to facilitate citizen climate initiatives and local authorities to enable the construction of local new value systems, at low cost.
