Biggest Dutch blockchain project live in the city of Emmen

17 January 2022 - Published by Evite van Winkoop

The municipality of Emmen in The Netherlands has introduced a new way to help residents save energy: the Energy Wallet (or “EnergieKnip” in Dutch). This is a blockchain-app that allows residents to earn points for answering questions about energy saving measures in their homes. The points or coins are send to the wallet in reward and citizens can buy energy saving devices at local retailers. The app was developed by the Blockchainlab Drenthe together with the municipality of Emmen as part of the BLING project.

49.000 Households of the city of Emmen in the Netherlands received a letter last week to invite them to participate in the ‘EnergieKnip’. With a QR code, citizens can unlock their wallets and earn coins by answering questions about sustainability of their homes. This information is used on a neighbourhood-level to help the municipality to make better future policies. Citizens can use the earned coins at local hardware-stores for energy saving measures for their homes, such as LED lamps, radiator foil, or draft excluders. This goes up to a maximum of €50,-. The retailers receive money in exchange for these saving boxes from the municipality.

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Due to blockchain, this app is a super-secure tool that allows sustainability data to be stored. Citizens can participate completely anonymously and fraud or passing on the code to, for example, the neighbor to participate in the promotion, is not possible. It is the first time in the Netherlands that this technology has been applied on this scale by a municipality or government.

In this application, IOTA-protocol is used. This blockchain is very energy efficient and it is fast and is feeless. This makes IOTA very suitable for this blockchain application. Read this blog at the IOTA website: https://blog.iota.org/building-a-local-green-currency-on-iota/

This pilot runs until the last money (€150.000) is spent and it is going fast. Already Euro 60.000 has been spend. Citizens can see how many points are left when using the wallet. They can even return money that is left over to the pilot to make it available for other citizens.

Monthly meeting Blockchain Lab Drenthe on January 20 at 19.00 hours (CET)

This is an example of a good use case with real users based on blockchain. Would you like to know more about this pilot, what do citizens think? Follow the BLING project, and join the next monthly meeting of the Blockchain Lab Drenthe where more will be revealed about the “Energieknip”: https://lnkd.in/e3pQk-k8

You can find more information here: www.energieknip.nl

Article on EnergieKnip in Dutch