At the Copenhagen Business School (CBS) we were presented with an exciting opportunity to explore the intersection of technology and sustainability. CBS facilitated a workshop led by Kristjan Jespersen, one of their graduating PhD students. Mr. Jespersen lectured our class and made a case for the inherent nature of sustainability in our everyday lives and the idea that combining the Internet of Things (IoT) and sustainable concepts could create Smart Cities. He went on to explain that one of the main barriers to the advancement was interconnectivity of data in the private and public domains. A solution proposed was to decentralize data storage by utilizing Blockchain and distributive ledger technology. This was a welcome topic as our cohort was excited to explore the Blockchain environment more thoroughly after our trip to the E-Government center of Estonia the previous week. Deanna Adell, Co-Founder of Un-Bloc, explained that by creating validated, anonymous data sets, all stakeholders could share data and integrate it into any Application Program Interface (API).
After some further discussion, we were asked to take the structure and apply it to a community being built in Copenhagen centered on an exchange economy utilizing virtual currency. We split up into 4 groups intermixed with CBS masters level students and our cohort. As we brainstormed we identified the main challenge was how to create a net zero or net positive energy community while keeping the Utility companies involved. One strategy centered around repositioning the Utility companies as the miners and validators of the virtual currency and marketplace validators. This would allow the economy to set its own price (in virtual coin) for what the generation of electricity or reuse/reclamation of water was worth and so on. A practical example would be a tenant exchanging coins from energy produced by solar panels for vegetables grown by someone else utilizing vertical farming techniques in the building. This community could then act as a proof of concept and link together with other Smart Communities to share data and create the core for a larger Smart City.
After each group presented our findings, we talked more about what Copenhagen was doing to link its systems to a Smart City grid and studied the Living Lab initiative where they were monitoring air quality and noise. Finally, we had a brief reception where we talked further about sustainability and its role in Denmark, Europe and the world. For all involved, it was an amazing day of collaboration, idea generation and cultural exchange.