DUNEWORKS BV

Their core work

Duneworks is a Dutch SME specializing in citizen engagement and community-driven approaches to the energy transition. They design platforms, gamification tools, and participatory processes that help residential communities organize as energy communities — trading energy peer-to-peer, managing demand response collectively, and changing energy behavior. Their work sits at the intersection of social science, digital platforms, and energy policy, translating complex energy systems into tools and frameworks that ordinary citizens can use and benefit from.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

Duneworks began in 2016 with broader energy and urban sustainability topics — demand response in buildings (DR-BOB), nature-based urban solutions (Nature4Cities), and social sciences in energy policy (SHAPE-ENERGY). From 2020 onward, they sharply focused on citizen energy communities, with all four later projects centered on blockchain-enabled peer-to-peer trading, gamification, demand response flexibility, and energy behavior change. The trajectory shows a clear specialization from general energy-adjacent consulting toward becoming a dedicated energy community platform and engagement specialist.

Duneworks is deepening its focus on digital tools (blockchain, gamification, digital twins) that enable residential energy communities to self-organize and trade energy — expect continued work on community energy platforms and citizen engagement tech.

How they like to work

Duneworks operates exclusively as a project participant, never as coordinator, which suggests they contribute specialized expertise rather than manage large consortia. With 103 unique partners across 22 countries from just 7 projects, they work in large, diverse consortia — typical for CSA and IA projects focused on citizen engagement and policy support. This makes them an easy partner to integrate: they bring a focused skill set without competing for project leadership.

Duneworks has built a broad European network of 103 unique partners across 22 countries through 7 projects — a remarkably wide reach for a small SME. Their partnerships span universities, municipalities, and energy utilities across Western and Southern Europe, reflecting the multi-actor nature of energy community projects.

What sets them apart

Duneworks occupies a specific niche that few organizations fill: the human and community side of energy technology. While most energy SMEs focus on hardware or software, Duneworks brings gamification, behavioral science, and participatory design to make energy communities actually work for citizens. Their combination of social science expertise with digital platform development (blockchain, digital twins) makes them a valuable bridge between technology developers and the communities that need to adopt these solutions.

Highlights from their portfolio

• NRG2peers
  Combines three of Duneworks' signature capabilities — peer-to-peer energy trading, blockchain, and gamification — into a single platform for next-generation energy communities.
• Nature4Cities
  Their largest single project budget (EUR 243K) and their only non-energy project, showing capacity to apply platform and engagement expertise beyond energy.
• HESTIA
  Most technically ambitious project in their portfolio, integrating consumer digital twins, cooperative demand response, and open marketplace concepts for residential communities.