Energy: Energy communities, ENEA unveils Italy’s first smart community

The first Italian Smart Community has been launched in Anguillara Sabazia (Rome): an interactive energy ecosystem where members produce, consume and share renewable energy, while securely exchanging goods and services. The initiative aims to improve quality of life and sustainability, delivering benefits not only environmentally, but also economically and socially. The heart of the Smart Community is an innovative web-based tool called Local Token Economy (LTE), designed and developed by ENEA. LTE integrates energy-based rewards (tokens or virtual currency), blockchain technology (ensuring security and traceability), and a marketplace (an online platform for the exchange of goods and services).

The initiative is carried out by ENEA in collaboration with the company Softstrategy, as part of the project “Technologies for the efficient penetration of the electric vector in final uses,” under the Electric System Research Programme Agreement (PTR22-24) promoted by the Ministry of Environment and Energy Security.

With a Technology Readiness Level (TRL) of 6, the LTE web tool is currently being tested among the users of the "RinnovAnguillara" energy community in Anguillara Sabazia, a town in north of Rome on Bracciano Lake.

In addition to promoting efficient energy use and helping mitigate energy poverty, the web tool supports the circular economy and environmental sustainability. Thanks to his energy-efficient behavior, each member of the community earns rewards—tokens issued via blockchain technology—which can be spent within the communityusing the marketplace to exchange goods and/or services locally.

“By promoting the benefits of energy communities also on a social and economic level, LTE acts as a true booster for their expansion from local communities to broader urban systems,” emphasizes Claudia Meloni, researcher at ENEA’s Division for Tools and Services for Critical Infrastructures and Energy Communities, and coordinator of the project “Technologies for the efficient penetration of the electric vector in final uses.” “It also enhances social cohesion and active citizen participation in achieving energy transition goals.”

Using data collected by sensors installed at end users’ premises, the platform can identify consumption profiles and offer suggestions to encourage more efficient behavior. Monitoring consumption and rewarding virtuous actions will help build an economy focused on raising awareness among citizens about the energy needs of the community, while encouraging resource sharing and reuse. This approach supports value creation through the redistribution of unused goods, services, knowledge, and spaces.

“This is a digitalized collaborative economy built around the citizen as consumer and producer of energy,” explains Gilda Massa, researcher at ENEA’s Division for Tools and Services for Critical Infrastructures and Energy Communities and scientific coordinator of LTE. “Around this concept ENEA designed LTE  which combines a resource-sharing service (the marketplace) where goods and services are exchanged and rewarded with virtual currency (tokens). Every transaction is certified via blockchain, which acts as the enabling technology for energy, social, and environmental services. It is a truly blockchain-certified sharing economy.”

With this initiative, ENEA aims to support the creation of cooperative systems that are strongly committed to the management, responsible use and reuse of local resources—allowing the development of districts capable of optimizing energy use. LTE fosters a cooperative vision and encourages an active and equal role for all members of a local community on environmental and social matters. It promotes a paradigm shift in how energy is produced and managed by energy communities, moving toward a smart model that places local communities and citizens at the center.