Increasing the Efficiency of CO2 Markets for Residentials Consumers with Blockchain Solutions: An Empirical Investigation

Recent studies highlight blockchain’s potential to enhance residential energy efficiency by enabling traceable, verifiable, and incentivized household actions. This research focuses on optimal organizational models, technology choices, and measurement systems needed to support carbon reduction at the residential level through blockchain. To do so, a multiple-case study was conducted, analyzing six companies that leverage blockchain in the context of carbon markets. Data have been collected through direct, semi-structured interviews with informants from each company. Results from the six cases have been analyzed through a cross-case comparison and clustered to identify three different archetypes of business ecosystem. The results suggests that blockchain supports residential energy efficiency and carbon markets through behavioural incentives, infrastructural integration and hybrid measurement, and reporting and verification systems. They also indicate that blockchain effectiveness depends less on specific protocols than on aligning technological design, governance, and ecosystem context across civic, financial, and institutional models.