GreenCertEC
Blockchain-based green certificates for Energy Communities (GreenCertEC).
In the current turbulent energy environment, with EU energy markets under severe stress, renewables are a promising solution for low-cost electricity generation. Energy Communities (ECs) democratize access to renewables by deploying shared PhotoVoltaic (PV) parks to meet members’ energy needs. However, fair and transparent sharing of produced electricity remains a barrier to market adoption, compounded by greenwashing in renewable markets, where false claims undermine trust in sustainable initiatives.
GreenCertEC proposes a blockchain-based monitoring and verification mechanism to ensure the traceability and authenticity of green energy data. By leveraging distributed ledger technologies (DLTs), smart contracts, and a trusted oracle, the system stores only verified data on the blockchain. EC members are incentivized to host energy-efficient DePIN nodes for automating the issuance, tracking, and verification of green certificates. Local data storage and aggregation ensure privacy for individual consumption data. Although the project is tailored to the needs of energy communities, its elements are applicable beyond the energy sector.
The project unites the Energy Community Bessarion (ECB) and the Municipality of Sofades (MoS). ECB brings technological expertise as both a developer and early adopter, leveraging its members’ professional experience in new technologies and EU projects. MoS, already part of two ECs, seeks to reduce its energy costs and provide electricity to citizens in need. GreenCertEC fosters renewable energy adoption and empowers communities with reliable green certificates, contributing to Europe’s green transition goals.
- Motivation for the project: GreenCertEC promotes the use of new technologies and applied research for sustainability. It will contribute with the development of a trustworthy, privacy-preserving and energy-efficient decentralized verification framework that tracks energy from generation to consumption.
- Generic use case description: GreenCertEC enables fair and efficient sharing of a common PV park by the members of an energy community via verifiable green certificates. The main project results are applicable throughout the energy sector.
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Essential functionalities:
1. A smart green certificate and contract service that performs ‘time’ and ‘location’ stamping of energy generation & consumption events
2. Integration with a trusted oracle that verifies the data before being written on the blockchain.
3. A renewable-aware load orchestration service that schedules the DLT tasks to maximize the utilization of free green electricity - How these functionalities can be integrated within the software ecosystem: Specific GreenCertEC components, such as the energy-efficient DLT orchestration and the green certificate service, will be designed in a domain-agnostic manner to enable their further reuse. The user-friendly APIs, together with the comprehensive documentation, will enable the seamless integration with other components of the TrustChain ecosystem.
- Gap being addressed: GreenCertEC will enable a more flexible shared PV system operation, in which, users become aware of the greenness of their consumption behaviour and renewable energy can be dynamically allocated to each consumer, e.g., on a daily or even hourly basis.
- Expected benefits achieved with the novel technology building blocks: By tracking green energy generation and consumption GreenCertEC will provide the necessary toolbox for the development of additional novel services, such as dynamic pricing and net-billing where electricity is charged differently throughout the day, incentivizing users to adjust their consumption profile to follow the availability of green energy or V2G services that automate EV charging and discharging accordingly.
- Potential demonstration scenario: The solution will be deployed and demonstrated over the ECB running system and in selected MoS citizens.
Team
Lazaros Gkatzikis
Dr Lazaros Gkatzikis is a solution architect with a focus on energy and telecoms solutions. He is the founder and CEO of Energy Community Bessarion.
Dimitrios Chatzoulis
Dr Dimitrios Chatzoulis is a computer engineer with a focus on 5G and 6G networks
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Dimitris Chatzopoulos
Dimitris Chatzopoulos is an assistant professor at University College Dublin, investigator at Insight Research Ireland Centre for Data Analytics. His broad research foci are on the overlap between distributed and decentralised systems (including blockchain) and artificial intelligence.
Entity
Energy Community Bessarion (ECB)
Energy Community Bessarion (ECB) is a non-profit association established in 2022 that promotes novel technological solutions to enable sustainable development mainly in the fields of agriculture, renewable energy and connectivity in rural areas.
Website: https://sites.google.com/view/ecbessarion/home
Municipality of Sofades
The Municipality of Sofades (MoS) is a rural municipality in central Greece that is actively exploring ways to empower its citizens through new technologies to promote sustainability.
Website: https://sofades.gr/