Technology-driven innovations for the energy sector

A fundamental paradox lies at the heart of AI’s role in helping to create a more sustainable planet.

Tech companies are increasingly taking steps to tackle the climate crisis. The data-churning power of AI is being employed to measure methane emissions via satellite imagery, hold firms accountable for misreporting carbon emissions and help consumers to manage their usage in the home.

However, data centers are also known to be major pollutants. They consume 3% of global electricity and contribute 2% of total greenhouse gas emissions, expected to rise to 14% by 2040. Server farms also require vast amounts of water to keep cool: the average facility needs 300,000 gallons a day.

Despite being part of the problem, AI is integral to many solutions in the energy space. Disruptor businesses are leveraging AI to do everything from producing cleaner energy to making the data centers themselves more energy efficient.

Investors are focusing on asset-light models in energy, says Christian Patiño, Tech, Media and Telecoms at UBS Investment Bank, speaking at the recent UBS Private Companies Showcase conference. “The market goes in cycles, and we need investment in real infrastructure, such as building hydrogen facilities, but recently a lot of money has been going into energy software produced by companies such as Tado, Kayrros, Sweep and Context Labs” he adds.

“What you can measure, you can manage,” emphasizes Mark McDivitt, Chief Climate & Sustainability Officer at Context Labs, which uses AI/ML and Blockchain to enable near real time trust in the provenance and veracity of data to support the acceleration of the energy transition. “We ingest a multiplicity of disparate data sets, to include satellite, sensor and other publicly available data, to reveal ‘ground truth’ on the asset being quantified”. A turning point came in 2017, when the launch of the European Space Agency’s Sentinel-5P satellite made it possible to measure methane emissions for the first time.

“Companies’ reporting is meaningless because they are obfuscating. Independent measuring satellites are really changing the game,” says Antoine Rostand, president and co-founder of environmental intelligence company Kayrros.

Kayrros uses geoanalytics technology to measure greenhouse gases and satellite imagery to calculate wildfire risk – bringing a new level of clarity to valuing risks and closing the gap between companies’ reported data and provable reality. “Our job is to use satellite and science to measure that, so that policy makers, financial institutions and operators can change their behavior,” says Rostand.

Sweep, a sustainability data management platform, helps companies track, disclose and act on their carbon emissions. “Granular data means actionable data,” says co-founder and chief design officer Raphael Güller, who hopes every product and service will eventually come with both a retail price and a carbon cost.

“AI is a tool, not a solution,” Güller says. AI shouldn’t be employed simply for the sake of it, but energy software that can accelerate climate action is a worthwhile use case. By using Sweep, companies can see where they can make the biggest impact on their emissions – and potentially save money in the process. Güller sees comparatively big wins for small companies, such as a US company with approximately 100 employees that swapped planes for trains as a means of transportation and saved $1m in the first year using Sweep.

New data-measuring tools help put a price on carbon emissions, bringing greater transparency. “Attributing carbon intensity to your asset, from natural gas to data centers, helps to quantify the ‘true’ value of your asset, making it not only more competitive but also potentially supports it fetching a premium price in the market. We help companies demonstrate this potential enhanced return on investment. Quantifying carbon intensity of assets is simply good business,” says McDivitt. He believes that policymakers now need to use available technology to properly price these externalities of emitters to level the playing field on who ultimately pays for the impact of carbon emissions.

In EU households, heating and hot water account for approximately 80% of total final energy use, according to Tado. Tado uses AI-based algorithms to help households manage their energy use, such as controlling heating through smart thermostats that consider building characteristics, existing systems and weather forecasts. Tado also allows households to operate heat pumps based on user profiles, actual energy demand and energy price information. “We bring efficiency into any home. While we believe that heat pumps are the future of sustainable heating, households can already make their heating systems more energy-and cost-efficient, including gas and oil systems.” says Christian Deilmann, Tado’s co-founder and managing director.

Nicolas Banchet, co-founder of the French start-up Zeplug which operates under the brand name ChargeGuru outside of France, predicts households could cut their EV charging costs from around €1,000 a year to up to zero, by using their vehicle as a giant battery, charging when energy is cheap and selling it back to the grid when energy is more expensive. Zeplug’s EV charging solution, designed with residents of multi-occupancy buildings in mind, installs the infrastructure at no extra cost to the building, helping them become an important driver of green mobility.

It’s not just about how we measure, track and reduce our emissions through new solutions. Major breakthroughs are also coming, increasing availability of fossil-free sources of energy. Cleantech company Synhelion has developed the world’s first industrial plant to produce synthetic fuel using the heat of the sun. Synhelion’s plants concentrate solar radiation to create high-temperature process heat. This heat then drives a thermochemical reactor to produce syngas, which is converted into liquid fuels that can be used for aviation, shipping, or road transportation.

“We are focusing on transportation sectors that are very difficult to defossilize, and aviation is the prime example. Our primary mission is to disrupt the fossil fuel market by replacing fossil fuels with sustainably produced synthetic fuels. Our key customers include the Lufthansa Group, the biggest kerosene consumer in Europe,” says CEO and co-founder Philipp Furler. “Today, sustainable fuel only accounts for 0.2% of aviation, but airlines are urgently demanding it. Demand is not an issue. It’s about building up supply. I’m not worried about competition– we need lots of suppliers to meet the demand.”