The project name Blockchain4Prosumers - BC4P links two core elements: On the one hand the “Blockchain” technology and on the other hand “Prosumer”. The blockchain makes it possible to make locally generated energy available via trading platforms or directly to other consumers and users. One of the most media-effective potential applications of the Blockchain in the energy industry is the so-called Peer-2-Peer trade.
This is to be understood as an energy market in which producers such as homeowners with solar systems on the roof and consumers (industry but also household customers) can meet directly, i.e. without intermediaries in the form of energy stock exchanges, energy supply companies, or energy traders, and trade with each other. These are households that produce their own electricity, so-called prosumers are consumers and producers at the very same time.
Blockchain also enables automated and decentralised handling of charging processes for electrical cars through smart contracts. The reason for this development is the increasingly small-scale transactions such as the sale of electricity to an electric car from a supermarket, for example, or a large number of small energy producers by using solar energy, several hundred thousand in the Euregio Meuse-Rhine alone.
The concrete results of Blockchain4Prosumers will be:
- Development of concrete, innovative key blockchain technology for a secure innovative energy market using renewable energies;
- Expanding market opportunities for blockchain and energy system transformation for SMEs in the Euregio;
- Creation of new jobs in the craft trades (installation of equipment), IT, and energy sectors;
- Strengthening the innovative power of start-ups in the EMR;
- Accelerating and increasing the acceptance of energy system transformation in the EMR;
- Strengthening of existing EMR knowledge infrastructures and development of new fields of knowledge;
- Positioning as an innovation landscape in digitisation with simultaneous harmonisation and standardisation between the regions.
