What is the AI opportunity for the environment?
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Digital Transformation in Energy and Utilities: The Perspective of Amazon Web Services (AWS) – IoT and Rethinking SCADA
AI and Energy Efficiency in Buildings
From the Nvidia article:
“AI is extending into every facet of our lives: how we travel, how we produce food, how we work, how we live” …“Smart buildings are one of the most valuable and largest opportunities for this trend.”
Report: “Digital Efficiency: Driving Decarbonization and Unlocking Business Value Across Industries”
New report by Intel and GE describes some scenarios for how digital technologies can reduce emissions and cut costs in the fourth industrial age.
One example is wind farm efficiency:
For example, GE’s PowerUp Platform has been extended to become the Digital Wind Farm. With this solution, GE extends analytics and optimization beyond a single wind turbine to the entire wind farm. GE harnessed the power of the emerging Industrial Internet to create the Digital Wind Farm, a dynamic, connected, and adaptable wind energy platform that pairs wind turbines in a wind farm with digital infrastructure to optimize efficiency across the entire wind farm. This platform can account for the wind farm’s topology, surrounding geography, wake effects, and other inputs to control individual wind turbines and optimize the operation as a whole. Through these techniques, the Digital Wind Farm technology boosts a wind farm’s energy production by up to 20 percent and could help generate up to an estimated $50 billion value for the wind industry. The Digital Wind Farm uses interconnected digital technology to address a long-standing need for greater flexibility in renewable power.
Overall, the report’s projections show significant potential, though much work is needed to translate potential into reality.
Center for the Fourth Industrial Revolution – Cleaner Energy, Resource Productivity, and Natural Environment Preservation and Regeneration?
In his book on the Fourth Industrial Revolution, Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum states that:
We are witnessing profound shifts across all industries, marked by the emergence of new business models, the disruption of incumbents and the reshaping of production, consumption, transportation and delivery systems. On the societal front, a paradigm shift is underway in how we work and communicate, as well as how we express, inform and entertain ourselves. Equally, governments and institutions are being reshaped, as are systems of education, healthcare and transportation, among many others. New ways of using technology to change behaviour and our systems of production and consumption also offer the potential for supporting the regeneration and preservation of natural environments, rather than creating hidden costs in the form of externalities. [my emphasis in bold].
I agree, in particular, about the need to change behavior and systems of production and consumption to support the regeneration and preservation of natural environments.
In the video below introducing the new Center for the Fourth Industrial Revolution in San Francisco’s Presidio, this theme appears to be echoed by Microsoft CEO Satya Nadalla, if global climate change is considered a “hard pressed challenge” (at 1:35):
My hope is that we have a robust discussion for how [the Fourth Industrial Revolution] can truly help our world solve some of the hard pressed challenges that we have today.
The WEF press release states that
The Center will focus on technologies, concepts, scientific developments and new business models such as artificial intelligence and robotics, precision medicine, blockchain, drones and their civilian use, autonomous vehicles, 3D printing, and the role of the individual in the era of big data, the internet of things and artificial intelligence. It will also advance Forum projects such as industrial internet of things safety, digital trade, advancing the shared economy and project-based workforce, and harnessing Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies and innovation to improve global ocean health, management and governance.
Though only global ocean health is mentioned, my perspective is that the Center ought to have a focus area on Cleaner Energy, Resource Productivity, and Natural Environment Preservation and Regeneration.
Cleaner Energy
Several approaches to cleaner energy are possible, including renewable sources such as wind and solar, as well as making non-renewable sources cleaner. Possibilities are emerging for digital technologies in the Fourth Industrial Revolution to drive cleaner energy sources.
- The blockchain for enhancing residential PV microgrids.
- GE’s Predix platform to reduce emissions and enhance productivity of power plants.
- Residential smart grids enaabling some geographies to achieve near 100% renewable energy, as in Hawaii, by enabling a “dynamic TOU [time of use] rate that applies on both sides of the equation because it will create incentives for storage, for change of behaviors, and for the smart home future that decides when to use energy to optimize economics.”
Resource Productivity
Big data, analytics, and sensors can enable new transparency into resource productivity and insights into how resource productivity can be enhanced. In this way, it may be possible for individuals and organizations to decouple growth from carbon emissions.
- Smart grids – sensors and wireless communication of digital signals – can enhance facility efficiency and reduce Scope 2 emissions.
- Supply chains using IoT may enhance Scope 3 emissions measurment and management.
- One of my research colleagues, Ory Zik, is developing a carbon footprinting approach to support resource productivity using advanced data and analytics.
Natural Environment Preservation and Regeneration
Water management is a concern for corporate executives, given the growing scarcity of potable water. However, a significant percentage of companies neither measure nor report on their water use. Similarly, while emissions are widely reported within the largest global corporations, it is unclear the extent to which these figures are used to drive emissions reductions and hence support global warming mitigation efforts.
- Big data may support fresh water sources and help to preserve forests.
- Information visualization raises awareness, which could be a first step towards behavior change.
- New software platforms enhance measurement, management, and reduction of emissions.
The above themes provide a glimpse into what is currently possible.
To change the conversation and effect change at a strategic level will require industrial and academic partnerships and collaboration.
The new Center for the Fourth Industrial Revolution appears well positioned to drive this conversation and change – but will it?
More on Blockchain in Cleantech
Emergent: Community microgrid using existing energy infrastructure and the blockchain
Brooklyn Microgrid is using the blockchain for smart contracts and currencies in support of “resilient, sustainable and more efficient energy production of the future.” In simple terms, as FastCompany explains:
On one side of President Street, five homes with solar panels generate electricity. On the other side, five homes buy power when the opposite homes don’t need it. In the middle is a blockchain network, managing and recording transactions with little human interaction.”
