Energy consumption is one of the challenges of the 21st century. The energy demand is rising, while climate change dictates that we all need to reduce our consumption. A difficult situation that is difficult to solve. One project in the Netherlands is trying to impact the everyday lives of the citizens of municipality Emmen.

What is EnergieKnip, and how is IOTA’s distributed ledger technology improving the energy consumption of households?

Everything started with an app

To estimate a household's consumption and check if there is room for improvement, users of the EnergieKnip app were asked several questions. For each in-app task completed, they were rewarded with tokens. In effect, we are looking at a two-stage system that improves energy consumption by identifying outdated devices. The reward can then be used to buy items in local stores that help to reduce energy consumption, such as LED lights.

EnergieKnip was brought to life by the BlockchainLab Drenthe and partnered with IOTA and the municipality Emmen. The data that was collected through the app was not only used to improve each household but also to check on the overall power consumption.

According to a recent blog post, the project was a full success. IOTA managed to distribute tokenized rewards without impeding data privacy. All the data that was collected provided full anonymity to each user.

There is more to improve

The project started in January 2022 and users of EnergieKnip had time until the end of last year to redeem their points. Over €300,000 in rewards were disturbed to 9,000 wallets and a total of 50,000 app downloads were achieved. Over 30,000 users remain active according to EnergieKnip. This clearly shows that distributed ledger technology can indeed impact and improve our daily lives.

According to the statement, the project is eying to improve other sectors with the same model. Such as tourism, health, and heat stress in cities.

Once again, IOTA has successfully proven that it offers a smart contract platform that is capable of dealing with tasks beyond DeFi and NFTs. Not only was the data collected anonymously, but all the tokenized rewards were paid almost instantly through its distributed ledger. This is another showcase of IOTA’s strength in providing highly adaptable blockchain solutions. However, it remains to be seen if mass adoption is possible since IOTA’s biggest project called Coordicide is in the making for years, and it is still unclear when it will be finished.