How a Green Button energy data hub grew into a privacy-preserving Energy Data Trust — and, within weeks, into a regional platform that put real utility data in the hands of Caribbean secondary-school students.
In early 2026, new partnerships across the energy and education sectors showed how secure energy data-sharing technology can engage youth in climate action and support policy development. What began as EZGB, a Green Button energy data hub, evolved into a prototype Energy Data Trust (EDT) platform in Canada and, within weeks, was adapted into the Caribbean UEnergyHub infrastructure for a unique AI Energy Hackathon involving secondary-school students across Trinidad and Tobago. This case study traces the origins of Screaming Power’s technology and its evolution from a data connector into a regional education and innovation platform — highlighting both the technical advances and the practical outcomes for youth learning and energy policy.
Secondary schools across Trinidad & Tobago contributed and accessed real energy data via the Caribbean UEnergyHub.
All personal info (names, addresses, IDs) removed from datasets — a safe environment for student-led analysis of real data.
EZGB data connector → Energy Data Trust demonstration → Caribbean UEnergyHub, illustrating scalable data-sharing models.
Real utility data sources integrated into the initial EDT prototype, demonstrating cross-platform integration at scale.
EZGB is the core technology behind this case study. It was created to solve a practical challenge: giving authorized users secure, consistent access to energy data from multiple utility providers through one standardized platform — in essence, an energy data hub for parties that need energy data from their buildings. Over time, EZGB expanded beyond data retrieval to support utility system testing, data validation, and research into data quality, communications, and interoperability — funded in part by not-for-profits, primarily Mission|data. This platform helped test and validate utility data that eventually assisted Mission|data in establishing its Green Button Explorer tool.
In current operations, EZGB supports data exchange with more than 60 energy and water utilities. The platform registers users and datasets, connects to utility Green Button Data Custodians, retrieves customer billing and usage data, provides PDF bill extraction services, and converts utility information into standardized formats such as JSON and CSV — as well as providing automated data transport through a REST API. This gives systems, analysts, and researchers a reliable single point of access, reducing manual collection effort and enabling continuous use of energy data from multiple sources.
Building on work undertaken with universities, Mission|data, utilities, and other stakeholders during 2024 and 2025, Screaming Power began exploring how energy data could be shared securely for research, innovation, and policy development — a vision of a UEnergyHub spanning Canada, the Caribbean, and the USA. These efforts contributed to the concept of an Energy Data Trust (EDT): bringing together like-minded organizations seeking to improve access to trusted energy datasets while maintaining privacy, governance, and accountability. In 2026, Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) stepped up to work with SGIN to fund redesign work on the EZGB platform. The EDT became a customized, EDT-branded, non-production pilot designed to demonstrate trusted energy data sharing and validate the following capabilities:
Completed in April 2026, EDT Phase 1 delivered an EDT-branded, EZGB-based trust environment, workflow and governance documentation, and connections to nearly 20 utility data sources. It demonstrated privacy-preserving one-to-many sharing, tested anonymized data sharing at scale, and validated two use cases: meter-to-bill validation and standardized data delivery with AI analysis. The pilot became a practical blueprint for a national or regional Energy Data Trust in Canada.
The EDT prototype functioned as a minimum viable product for a national energy data-sharing platform — showing the technology could support trusted, multi-party access to energy data for innovation and research, building on the same capabilities already used to serve individual customers.
From a Canadian data connector to a Caribbean learning platform
Screaming Power evolves the EZGB data hub, integrating Green Button utility APIs across Ontario to enable streamlined energy data collection and sharing. EZGB’s reliable cloud platform proves the value of treating energy data as shareable infrastructure.
Screaming Power and SGIN launch the Phase 1 Energy Data Trust, a branded EZGB platform demonstrating privacy-preserving one-to-many data sharing (~19 utilities connected) and researcher data access, with use cases for meter-to-bill validation.
Screaming Power partners with CZITT to deploy a Caribbean UEnergyHub (EZGB-based) instance ahead of an AI hackathon — ingesting 13 schools’ electricity data and provisioning accounts for student teams with depersonalized data access.
The CZITT AI Energy Hackathon brings together 13 secondary-school teams to analyze their own school’s energy data using AI tools and propose solutions to reduce carbon footprints. The UEnergyHub provides the shared data platform and support for a successful event.
After the Canadian EDT pilot, the Carbon Zero Institute of Trinidad & Tobago (CZITT) and Screaming Power identified an opportunity to apply the same trusted data-sharing model to education and youth empowerment. CZITT partnered with Screaming Power and SGIN to create Caribbean UEnergyHub: a localized, branded adaptation of the Energy Data Trust platform designed for learning, innovation, and regional climate engagement. In May 2026, Screaming Power deployed a cloud-based Caribbean UEnergyHub environment to support a regional AI Energy Hackathon for secondary-school students across Trinidad and Tobago — and it gradually evolved into a trusted source of energy data for the hackathon administrators and schools.
Caribbean UEnergyHub adapts Screaming Power’s EZGB energy data hub through the Energy Data Trust model for the Caribbean context. Like the EDT prototype, it provides a secure environment for authorization, energy data management, and controlled data sharing between data providers (such as utilities and schools) and data users (such as student teams and program administrators). The platform retained the core EZGB/EDT capabilities — secure cloud hosting, user registration, identity management, data translation, and privacy controls — tailored to an education-focused hackathon with a short implementation timeline.
In summary, Caribbean UEnergyHub translated the technology proven in the Canadian EDT pilot into a regional educational data trust — giving schools controlled access to their own energy data and giving students a secure cloud environment to experiment, analyze, and innovate.
Armed with the Caribbean UEnergyHub platform and their school’s energy data, students from 13 Trinidad and Tobago secondary schools came together in early summer 2026 for the CZITT AI Energy Hackathon. Hosted at the University of Trinidad & Tobago’s Point Lisas campus, the event was designed to transform students from passive energy consumers into active problem-solvers. Each team — 5–6 students with a teacher mentor — analyzed their school’s electricity consumption data and applied AI tools and coding to identify practical ways to reduce their school’s carbon footprint.
The hackathon was the first of its kind in the region, blending digital skills, data science, and climate action. Over a full day of intense work and mentorship, students tapped into the same technology underlying the Energy Data Trust to:
Students learned to read and analyze raw energy data using modern tools, moving beyond textbooks to real-world problem solving — nurturing data literacy and coding skills in a fun, climate-relevant context.
Thanks to embedded depersonalization protocols, even minors could work with authentic utility data safely. Anonymous datasets from each school proved that energy data trusts can enable education and innovation without compromising privacy.
The one-to-many sharing feature let a single data source — a school’s meter data — be reused by many participants under a common framework, mirroring how a national data trust can serve multiple stakeholders under uniform governance.
The hackathon attracted support from government, academia, and industry. Witnessing youths working with real energy data on a controlled platform offered policymakers a glimpse of the next generation’s role in the energy transition.
Crucially, the hackathon was not just a theoretical exercise. By design it was “applied digital skills development, youth-led climate action, and tangible movement toward national climate goals, rolled into one scalable, partner-ready programme.” Students as young as 14–16 accessed and experimented with real data and modern AI, generated code and charts, then derived evidence-backed proposals for energy savings in their schools — building a generation of energy-literate, climate-conscious citizens.
“This Hackathon is an excellent example of what can be achieved when institutions work together to empower our youth and address national priorities.”
— Prof. Rean Maharaj, Acting President, University of Trinidad & Tobago
While the hackathon concluded with winning teams being recognized, its true impact extends beyond the prizes. Immediate outcomes included:
Perhaps most importantly, the hackathon helped make the case that accessible data and supportive technology can accelerate education and climate innovation. Participants and organizers reported that working with real data made the challenges more engaging and meaningful — they were “not just understanding climate science but actually interrogating data and delivering evidence-backed recommendations to their school principals.”
From a technical standpoint, the event validated that the Energy Data Trust model could scale and adapt:
“Hacking into talent and creating empowerment.” The hackathon delivered practical knowledge of energy & climate issues, AI solutions for real-world problems, and fostered critical thinking, leadership, and teamwork.
— Donald Baldeosingh, Founder, CZITT
The event also served as a platform for national and international collaboration. On the day of the hackathon, the judging panel and speakers included the UN Resident Coordinator, the Head of UNICEF Eastern Caribbean, the EU Ambassador, the President of UTT, senior managers from T&TEC, the Head of Communications of Paria Fuel Trading, one of the country’s most recognized climate journalists, and other stakeholders from the energy, education, and policy sectors — with a formal kick-off days earlier from the High Commissioner of Canada. Their participation reinforced that the initiative extended beyond a student competition into a broader vision for climate action, digital-skills development, and the future of energy in the Caribbean.
The Caribbean UEnergyHub Hackathon highlights a model with significant implications for government policy and national strategy:
Screaming Power’s EZGB began as a regional energy data connector in Canada and the United States and has evolved into a flexible foundation for Energy Data Trusts. The same core technology can now support national data-sharing pilots, regional education initiatives, and innovation programs such as the Caribbean AI Energy Hackathon. The success of the hackathon points to three clear opportunities for expansion:
The journey from EZGB to Energy Data Trust to Caribbean UEnergyHub shows how technology, policy, and education can reinforce one another. With secure data infrastructure, strong privacy protections, and cross-sector collaboration, real energy data can be used safely to teach, inspire, and empower. As climate action and digital transformation become increasingly connected, this model demonstrates how energy data can function as public infrastructure — supporting better governance while equipping the next generation to lead sustainable change.
From meter-to-bill validation to secure research data sharing and youth innovation programs, Screaming Power’s EZGB platform turns energy data into trusted infrastructure.
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