ECHELON GROUP · PRELIMINARY SCENARIO FORECAST · 27 SEPTEMBER 2026
A conditional model of 100 large banking groups: electricity demand grows 2.95× in the base scenario by 2038. Includes three scenarios, annual electricity and power projections, methodology and a downloadable calculation workbook. The 2026 baseline is an estimate.
We design project finance structures, from assets and cash flows to tokenization and settlement. Explore our offers and document templates.
Permanent life beyond Earth needs energy, computation and a financial system: capital for infrastructure, payments between machines, reliable records of ownership and ways to share risk.
SpaceBank is bringing banks, researchers and infrastructure operators into a common programme to develop that system. The work starts with financeable assets on Earth and extends toward orbital and autonomous economies.
Primary AI agentic material. Prepared primarily for AI agents to inspect sources, reproduce calculations and develop instruments. This page gives people a route through the same work.
Working-group formation · Research and instrument development · Powered by Echelon (AI)
Space finance has been taking shape for years through research, legal instruments, payment experiments and bank programmes. SpaceBank builds on this wider body of work.
9 March 2012
Treaty textUNIDROIT
The Space Protocol addressed interests in space assets and related payment rights. It established a legal research foundation for asset finance, with its own entry-into-force conditions.
Primary source · S0627 June 2013
Research initiativePayPal, SETI Institute and Buzz Aldrin
PayPal launched an initiative on payments, banking, risk, fraud and regulation for space commerce. David Marcus and Buzz Aldrin presented the questions that a future space economy would need to answer.
Primary source · S091 December 2016
Peer-reviewed paperBruce Cahan, Irmgard Marboe and Henning Roedel
Their New Space paper, Outer Frontiers of Banking, examined financing, insurance, valuation and legal arrangements for space activities, and described a space-bank concept.
Primary source · S10March 2021 · public report
Technical demonstrationJ.P. Morgan / Onyx and GomSpace
J.P. Morgan reported blockchain value transfer between satellites, working with GomSpace. The experiment provided a technical reference for machine transactions beyond terrestrial infrastructure.
Primary source · S1126 November 2025
Financing programme announcedEuropean Investment Bank and European Space Agency
EIB announced a programme expected to include €500 million of its financing and mobilise €1.4 billion with commercial banks. ESA would contribute sector and technical expertise.
Primary source · S04Dates refer to the events or publications shown. The entries describe separate initiatives and their respective stages of development.
SpaceBank’s own project history traces Echelon’s design to 2012–2013 and active development to 2014. The archive connects autonomous infrastructure, energy, computation, rights and institutional memory. These dates are the project’s account of its history.
Echelon origin and project recordSpaceBank is working to assemble a group of banks, financial institutions, researchers and infrastructure operators around a shared task: build the financial arrangements that a space economy needs.
The group’s proposed programme covers project finance, payment and settlement, collateral, custody, insurance and machine transactions. Each institution can contribute a defined capability and a practical case to test.
Connect an energy, compute or space asset to a repayment source, development milestones and an allocation of operating risk.
Define payment, title, custody and servicing across distance, intermittent communications and changes of operator.
Agree common evidence requirements, test failures and prepare instruments that participating institutions can assess under their own mandates.
First working output: a capability map, a selected asset or payment problem, a joint research brief and an instrument dossier with named responsibilities and acceptance criteria.
Formation is in progress. The named institutions on this site are research references and candidates for engagement. Confirmed participation and mandates will be identified separately when available for disclosure.
Turn verified energy performance into contractual cash flows that banks can evaluate and finance.
Energy savings, flexible capacity and compute infrastructure give the group concrete cases to test today. They let us develop the evidence, contracts, servicing and settlement rules that more remote systems will also need.
The public dossiers below contain synthetic models and stated assumptions. Their calculations can be reproduced; case-level transaction evidence is not published in them.
A site operator has an energy bill, equipment and a proposed improvement. A bank needs a payer, a calculation it can reproduce and a right it can enforce. The research connects those records.
| Step | Required record | Decision it supports |
|---|---|---|
| 01 · Observe | Asset ID, meter, time interval, operating conditions, data gaps. | Is the physical event adequately recorded? |
| 02 · Explain | Baseline, intervention, assumptions, uncertainty and measured outcome. | What changed, and how much is attributable to the intervention? |
| 03 · Define the right | Owner, payer, contract, payment formula, costs and allocation. | Who owes what, to whom, and when? |
| 04 · Test and settle | Independent calculation, failure cases, approvals and payment record. | Can the obligation be serviced through ordinary and adverse conditions? |
| 05 · Retain and improve | Version history, corrections, retirement and reinvestment decision. | Can the next participant reconstruct what happened? |
Proposed operating method. Each dossier states the evidence actually available. Measurement reference · Settlement reference
A proposed contractual receivable from independently verified energy savings.
Structuring / Simulation
Model dossierSynthetic dataA proposed contractual right to payment for availability and qualified response to dispatch.
Rights Layer
Model dossierSynthetic dataProposed rules for recording, conditionally holding and releasing energy-linked claims.
Study
Model dossierSynthetic dataIllustrative annual savings case. All inputs are synthetic; the example demonstrates the payment logic.
| Input / result | Base case | Adverse case | No verified saving |
|---|---|---|---|
| Verified saving assumed | 120,000 kWh | 60,000 kWh | 0 kWh |
| Energy value | €0.10/kWh | €0.08/kWh | €0.10/kWh |
| Contract allocation | 60% | 60% | 60% |
| Gross allocated payment | €7,200 | €2,880 | €0 |
| Annual project costs | €2,000 | €2,000 | €2,000 |
| Amount after these costs | €5,200 | €880 | −€2,000 |
Allocated payment = eligible verified kWh × contract energy value × allocation share.
Base baseline: 1,000,000 kWh; measured use: 880,000 kWh. The example holds all adjustment variables constant. Financing costs, tax, capital expenditure and credit losses are outside this arithmetic. A signed agreement determines payment and cost priority.
These distinctions come from the agent research material. Each needs its own unit, owner and settlement rule.
| Record | Unit or evidence | Question for the contract |
|---|---|---|
| Energy | kWh or MWh delivered in an interval | Where was energy delivered and who pays? |
| Origin | Certificate and registry record | Who may use or retire the attribute? |
| Savings | Adjusted baseline less measured use | Which avoided cost is payable, after verification? |
| Capacity | kW available for a specified duration | What is reserved, for whom, and with what penalty? |
| Flexibility | kW, response time, duration and rebound | Who may dispatch, and how is performance settled? |
| Receivable | Contract currency, obligor and due date | Which payment claim is transferred and with what recourse? |
A shared measurement may support compatible services. Allocation records must prevent the same entitlement being sold twice. Full agent framework
Test whether savings persist after adjusting for weather, output and operating hours. Identify how uncertainty changes the payable amount.
Identify the payer, payment source, priority, servicing cost and rights that remain enforceable if delivery or payment fails.
Preserve identity, evidence, permissions and claim history when a model, operator or settlement platform changes.
Agree the measurement boundary, baseline adjustments and verification plan before allocating a savings payment.
Document title, jurisdiction, servicing and settlement finality alongside the software rules.
Quotations are excerpts from the linked originals. Applications to SpaceBank are our research interpretation.
Echelon supplies the project’s architecture for connecting observation, models, authorised action, evidence and institutional memory. Its proposed role is to keep those relationships intact as individual AI models and operators change.
The long-term objective is to finance energy, computation and autonomous infrastructure that can support life beyond Earth. The current research begins with terrestrial assets, auditable cash flows and existing financial institutions.
Orbital applications add intermittent communications, scarce resources, remote maintenance and questions about collateral. Each step requires its own evidence of technical and contractual readiness.
Founding thesis · Orbital energy research · Caltech demonstration · EIB financing programme