Carmen Pastor Sempere, lead researcher at LegalCripto by BAES, Clara Isabel Cañero Lois, postdoctoral researcher at LegalCripto by BAES, and Cristian Javier Vera Arenas, technician at the BlockchainFUE cooperative, participated in the International Seminar “Self-consumption Energy Communities: Organisational analysis of the legal perspective of management and technology”, held at the University of Coimbra on 24 and 25 January 2024 and organised by Mª José Vañó Vañó, Director of the University Institute of Social Economy, Cooperativism and Entrepreneurship (IUDESCOOP), principal investigator of the project TED2021-129787B-I00, funded by CIN/AEI/10. 13039/501100011033 and by the European Union “NextGenerationEU”/PRTR, called “Key self-consumption communities in the energy transition [POWERCOOP]” and researcher at LegalCripto; Teresa Carla Oliveira, lecturer at the Faculdade de Economia da Universidade de Coimbra; and Deolinda Meira, lecturer at the Instituto Politécnico do Porto/ISCAP.
It was a very complete event, bilingual in Portuguese and Spanish with a multidisciplinary perspective, in which the complex problems of energy communities were addressed in various plenary sessions by academia, industry and administrations. Carmen Pastor Sempere was part of the scientific committee and moderated the Fifth Plenary Session dedicated to Democratisation, decentralisation and digitalisation in the energy transition. In addition, combining the research objectives of both LegalCripto and Powercoop, three papers were presented on Thursday 25 January 2024: Carmen Pastor Sempere presented the paper entitled “Cooperative governance in essential services and infrastructures: special reference to the energy and telecommunications sectors”; Clara Isabel Cañero Lois presented the paper “The kilowatt token as a unit of exchange in local communities”, and Cristian Javier Vera Arenas, the paper “SolarCell 1. 0: boosting public-private collaboration and democratisation in the energy transition through the integration of IOT and blockchain”. This last paper presented the proof of concept of Powercoop designed by the BAES laboratory as a fulfilment of its research objectives, which will soon be tested in the Valencian municipality of Aras de los Olmos.
We had the pleasure of receiving a guided tour of the ancestral University of Coimbra, the Chapel of San Miguel and the Joanine Library, spaces of great historical and cultural value with an extraordinary beauty. We also enjoyed a Fado show by the group Canto Coimbra accompanying the Seminar dinner. It was a wonderful event that we will never forget and we are very grateful to Mª José, Teresa and Deolinda for hosting us at the University of Coimbra.
