The energy market is dominated by large corporations, with energy companies often selling the most energy for the highest price while also providing little-to-no reason to reduce energy consumption. Energi aims to combat this by providing a blockchain platform that incentivizes users to reduce their energy consumption.
Based out of Gibraltar, the Energi ICO managed to raise nearly $15 000 000 in just a day.
The platform rewards users who display efficient energy habits. These include but are not limited to buying energy-efficient appliances and electronics, using low-carbon emission cars and even public transport, but it goes beyond that. Each year, studies in the US show that consumers who purchase energy-efficient upgrades to their household appliances and electronics do not see a decrease in energy bills. This phenomenon is called an energy efficiency rebound. The consumers continue to act as they did before, even exceeding the needed usage of a certain appliance. This leads us to the conclusion that simply buying energy efficient products is not enough, a change needs to be made in the human behavioral pattern.
The platform’s realization would have a huge impact on the environment. With every year, human demand for ecological resources exceeds what the planet can replenish naturally more and more.
The energy mine is an existing business started in 2016 by the co-founders of the project. The company carries out energy trading and management services for industrial and commercial clients, managing over $140 000 000 worth of energy on behalf of their customers. It is a fully functioning commercial entity with its own offices, operations and sales, providing energy risk management strategies as well as predictive modeling. The company plans to be the first to integrate the Energi platform for its clients.
The Energi token is a fully compatible, compliant ERC20 token based on the Ethereum blockchain. The token will have several uses. It will be used to reward energy-efficient behavior of consumers on the Energi platform. The tokens can then be used to pay for electricity bills. The consumer can also chose to sell their tokens on an exchange and convert them into fiat. The token will also be used by large institutional clients to pay for their own incentive schemes.
While the implementation of the Energi project sounds exciting, it’s all a bit too utopian in nature. It is very improbable that large energy companies will bother to integrate the platform, even more so hand over any to control to it whatsoever. And the fact that it is going to be used by the Energi Mine doesn’t make it sound much more lucrative, as the company doesn’t really sit big in the grand scheme of things. It’s pretty much an example of a company hosting an ICO in a case where they don’t really need to, just for the sake of cashing in on the ICO craze.
The Energi’s goals are humanitarian, the team’s intention, however, is a different story. They have no working product even a year after the ICO, and even if they manage to come up with a beta or something, there’s no mention how they’ll track individual energy consumption in a real world scenario. Definitely be cautious around utopian projects like this, as many of them trick the investor to invest in the vision, rather than the real world applicability of the project.
