This use case was initiated in collaboration with the Data Sharing Coalition, one of the founding partners of the CoE-DSC.
Over the last few years, increased adoption of smart meters has resulted in an increase in available data on energy usage. This data is currently mainly being used for balancing the energy grid. New value and a significant contribution to sustainability can be created when new applications of this data are supported.
Matching developments in the energy and financial domain
Grid operators are looking for ways to allow consumers to exert more control over their energy data and use it for applications that provide new value to them. In the financial domain, loan providers and intermediaries are looking to diversify their product and services portfolio, especially around sustainability. For many financial products, a wide range of documentation (e.g. income statements) needs to be submitted by the consumer of the product. Replacing these documents with structured data from validated sources would provide more reliable information. Besides, it would provide a better customer experience, as the data can usually be shared with one click. In the Data Sharing Coalition, participant Hypotheken Data Netwerk (HDN) discovered this common interest between the financial and energy domain. HDN provides a standard and platform for data exchange in the Dutch financial domain and already supports the use of validated external data sources in several financial processes. Together with system operators and several other stakeholders, HDN started to further explore the Green Loans use case.
Enabling consumers to share energy data with financial service providers
In this use case, the consumer will be enabled to use their energy data to receive support with making their house more sustainable. This support can range from sustainability advice to a favourable “Green Loan” for investments in energy saving measures (e.g. heat pumps or solar cells). The consumer shares data on his or her energy consumption with an intermediary and/or loan provider, who in turn is able to assess potential savings from certain energy saving measures. This can be standalone advice but can also be incorporated in advice on a loan to finance these energy saving measures. This use case gives the consumer more control over their energy data, as they can decide to use their data to access advice or attractive financial value propositions. With their new “green loans” and input for sustainability advice, financial institutes are able to support the transition to a more sustainable society.
Providing relevant insights for generic data sharing agreements
Besides creating direct value for consumers and stakeholders involved, the Green Loans use case also provides insights that are important for the development of generic agreements for data sharing, which is the Data Sharing Coalition’s key deliverable. Since this use case involves data sharing across different domains, alignment between different ways of sharing data is needed. Standards, requirements and tools for data sharing are different in the financial and energy domain. In order to realise the use case, common agreements need to be made on a wide range of topics, such as identification and authentication of actors in a transaction, the consent a consumer needs to give or the legal basis for data sharing. The process behind and the content of some of these agreements can be extrapolated to other contexts of data sharing. By capturing and incorporating these insights in a comprehensive document, the Data Sharing Coalition lays the foundation for generic, cross-sectoral agreements for data sharing.
Ensuring alignment between key stakeholders through frequent workshops
Through frequent workshops, HDN, the Data Sharing Coalition, system operators and other stakeholders work towards a design and implementation of this use case. The use case will be designed to facilitate many-to-many reach, allowing all consumers to share their energy data with all intermediaries and loan providers in the same way. Loan providers are currently developing new financial propositions to be able to provide these green loans. This is a prerequisite for the launch of a live pilot of this use case with several parties in the financial domain.
Findings of this use case
Do you want to learn more about the use case design, insights on the context of the use case and insights on how the use case can be implemented in a scalable way to other use cases with similar roles? Please download our report which includes our most important findings so far.
Do you want to know more about this use case? Or do you have an interesting idea to define and realise new cross-sectoral use cases of data sharing? Please send us an email at info@coe-dsc.nl.
