The InEExS project aims to promote business models that address market barriers to adopting energy-efficient and renewable technologies in buildings employing digital technology enablers and engaging diverse stakeholders in designing, co-developing, and replicating energy solutions.
The European Green Deal (EGD) aims to ensure a secure, affordable, and digitalised energy market while prioritising energy efficiency, renewable energy, and decarbonising buildings, which account for 40% of energy use and 36% of emissions in the EU. However, progress is hindered by barriers such as low consumer awareness, skill shortages, regulatory delays, and underdeveloped markets. To achieve the clean energy transition, it is critical to enable the uptake of viable business models by market actors, addressing these barriers through collaboration, digital technologies, and capacity-building initiatives.
The core concept of the InEExS project is the deployment of integrated energy services across sectors and carriers, and the tokenisation of energy savings in a public blockchain to facilitate cooperation among market segments and actors. InEExS improves the implementation of the Energy Efficiency Directive (EED) Article 7 and supports Obligated Parties to provide integrated service offers that enable energy savings, system efficiency, and include non-energy benefits.
Figure 1: InEExS Concept - Architecture. Source: InEExS Project.
As depicted in Figure 1, at the core of the InEExS approach [1] lies the InEExS DLT platform that enables the creation of decentralised energy services for each Business Case (BC). In more detail, the InEExS DLT infrastructure is built upon blockchain technology to provide a secure, immutable, and transparent framework for storing and managing critical information, such as energy consumption data [2]. This robust infrastructure not only ensures data integrity and traceability but also supports advanced functionalities using smart contracts [3]. Smart contracts enable the automation and execution of complex processes, such as the calculation of Measurement, Reporting, and Verification (MRV) data [4], which are crucial for monitoring and optimising energy performance. Within the InEExS ecosystem, MRV data serve a dual purpose. While they fulfil traditional roles in reporting and verification, they also form the foundation for the development of innovative energy services. These services operate directly on the DLT infrastructure in a decentralised and automated manner, leveraging its transparency and security features. Key examples of these services include Pay-for-Performance (P4P) schemes and incentivization mechanisms, such as the tokenisation of energy savings. These mechanisms are designed to promote positive energy consumption behaviours among end-users by providing tangible rewards for efficiency improvements. By aligning user incentives with energy-saving goals, these services aim to enhance overall energy system performance and sustainability.
The InEExS approach, along with the developed infrastructure, services, and models, is being applied to five innovative Business Cases (BC). These cases span across the EU, namely, Germany, Spain, Greece, Norway, Sweden, and Finland, ensuring broad geographical representation and diverse international contexts, such as regulation. Next, we present each business case context in brief.
Figure 2: InEExS BC1 - Charlottenburger Baugenossenschaft Housing Cooperative in Berlin, equipped with solar panels. Source: InEExS Project.
This business case focuses on developing recommendations for innovative energy contracts that incentivise tenants to optimise solar power self-consumption through a digital app. The app provides real-time visualisation of solar plant electricity production, encouraging tenants to use PV-generated energy during the daytime, thereby enhancing the system's capacity utilisation. By integrating sensors and digital tools, future solar power usage can be accurately tracked, enabling the creation of dynamic electricity tariffs optimised for PV utilisation.
Role of DLT: BC1 leverages the InEExS platform to enable smart contracts that automate actions based on contract terms. This facilitates integrating diverse participants into business models and allows tenants to translate energy savings into economic benefits based on their usage behaviour.
Figure 3: InEExS BC2 - ENERCOOP Energy Community in Crevillent, Spain. Source: InEExS Project.
This business case aims to provide smart energy services that incentivise self-consumption. It focuses on strategies to maximise benefits and minimise costs for consumers, supporting energy efficiency via displaying tips to members of an energy community, optimising Distributed Energy Resources (DER) usage, and reducing energy demand. Specifically, members of the community receive behavioural prompts (e.g., messages) via a mobile app, designed to encourage load shifting, supported by insights on renewable energy generation, self-production rates, overall energy demand, grid pricing, and more. Users receive tailored recommendations to adjust the timing of their residential appliance usage. Lastly, BC2 focuses on increasing PV self-consumption by leveraging incentivisation mechanisms, including token-based rewards via DLT and smart contracts.
Figure 4: InEExS BC3 - DOMX Smart Hearing App for residential consumers. Source: InEExS Project.
BC3 aims to demonstrate how users of legacy natural gas boilers can enhance their heating systems with an affordable IoT-based controller, enabling participation in energy efficiency services offered to natural gas suppliers. In this direction, the performance of legacy natural gas boilers is optimised using smart heating controllers. By these deployments, BC3 seeks to: enhance energy efficiency, provide real-time flexibility services to natural gas suppliers, and enable remote smart monitoring and maintenance through the integration with a cloud-based energy management system. Boilers are upgraded with controllers for Wi-Fi connectivity, enabling gas consumption estimation, remote operation via smartphone apps, and real-time feedback to enhance climate comfort.
Role of DLT: The InEExS platform will be employed to enable 'Pay-for-Performance' smart contracts, which leverage energy savings to determine the repayment of initial investments at each consumption point. The repayment model is based on the financial benefits accrued by the energy supplier through meeting their energy efficiency obligations, as outlined in the Energy Efficiency Directive (EED) Article 7.
Figure 5: InEExS BC4 - Hiven App for steering smart home appliances for the benefit of the consumer, energy company, and the grid. Source: InEExS Project.
BC4 aims to deliver innovative B2B2C (Business to Business to Client) energy management solutions to energy retailers by modernising their offerings to end users. Specifically, BC4 focuses on optimising energy consumption by automatically shifting residential heating to the most cost-effective times, potentially reducing energy expenses by up to 50%. Additionally, the aggregated demand flexibility is offered as a service to energy and grid companies, addressing deviations from expected consumption profiles. These services enhance grid stability by shaping energy demand while considering factors such as CO2 emissions, energy tariffs, and self-production ratios. Finally, BC4 will explore transparent reporting and compensation mechanisms for deviations in consumption profiles.
BC5 focuses on developing innovative energy services through Energy Savings Agreements (ESAs), inspired by power purchase agreements (PPAs) to support project financing. It aims to reduce energy demand and increase flexibility in commercial and residential buildings by integrating technologies like insulation, batteries, and demand response systems. BC5 operates as a Virtual Power Plant (VPP), emphasising demand-side asset management and facilitating building renovations. It serves as a central platform connecting financial institutions, Energy Service Companies (ESCOs), contractors, building owners, and utilities, enabling the financing and aggregation of energy efficiency projects.
In the context of the InEExS project, INLECOM is responsible for designing the DLT infrastructure and implementing the smart contracts that enable the innovative energy services, such as the Pay-for-Performance schemes mentioned earlier. To this end, INLECOM initiated its operations in the project by assessing the stakeholders' needs, which enabled the definition of the technical specifications of the DLT infrastructure, the APIs, and the Service Level Agreements (SLAs). In particular, the developed infrastructure should provide a secure, decentralised environment for data sharing, which will guarantee the integrity of the stored data and enable the creation of reliable, privacy-preserving services.
To address these needs, InEExS leverages DLT technology, more specifically blockchain. Blockchain is a DLT that securely records and manages data across a distributed network, ensuring transparency and immutability. It enables tamper-proof data storage, reliable data exchange, and decentralised execution of smart contracts. Smart contracts are self-executing agreements that encode the terms of the agreement directly into code and automatically enforce them when predefined conditions are met. Within the InEExS project, each BC utilises the infrastructure to enable the secure storage and exchange of energy-related data, including consumption and MRV information. Additionally, by harnessing smart contracts and the stored energy data, BC-specific services such as SLAs are implemented. These SLAs define the scope and quality of energy services, such as Pay-for-Performance, covering aspects like energy generation targets, required standards, and timelines for equipment amortisation. InEExS aims at automating the generation and management of these SLAs, enabling efficient and decentralised execution of business relationships. Built on open blockchain protocols, these smart contracts ensure interoperability, flexibility, and scalability.
InEExS streamlines SLA development using a Smart Contract Generator, which creates and deploys tailored contracts from predefined templates. These templates abstractly model innovative energy services, such as P4P schemes and tokenised energy savings. By incorporating BC specific input (e.g., thresholds), the generator automates SLA creation to meet BC specific objectives. For instance, BC2 uses the generator to create SLAs that incentivise consumers by tokenising self-consumption improvements, setting thresholds and rewards for increased self-consumption ratios.
[1] Papapostolou, A. (2025). Innovative Business Models Towards Sustainable Energy Development: Assessing Benefits, Risks, and Optimal Approaches of Blockchain Exploitation in the Energy Transition. Energies 2025, 18, 4191.
[2] Woo, J., et al. (2020). A New Blockchain Digital MRV (Measurement, Reporting, and Verification) Architecture for Existing Building Energy Performance. Conference paper in “Blockchain, Robotics and AI for Networking Security Conference.
[3] Metcalfe, W. (2020). Ethereum, smart contracts, DApps. Blockchain and Cryptocurrency.
[4] Singh, N.; Finnegan, J.; Levin, K (2016). MRV 101: Understanding Measurement, Reporting, And Verification of Climate Change Mitigation.
