How technology is using data to reduce carbon emissions

Decarbonisation efforts are occurring in every sector of business and society. Commercial and personal consumption is being audited for wastage, leakage, reuse of energy

Demand for energy is rising even while efforts to change sources are gaining momentum. Emissions from energy sources are yet to reach peak point, the level after which they will begin to fall. 
 

“The energy sector is also the primary cause of the polluted air that more than 90 per cent of the world’s population is forced to breathe,” says the International Energy Agency (IEA). “The global average surface temperature is already around 1.2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, prompting heatwaves and other extreme weather events, and greenhouse gas emissions have not yet peaked.”
 

Despite the rise in investments in renewable energy, there is some way to go for curbing emissions from fossil fuel-based energy. “The share of coal, oil and natural gas in global energy supply – stuck for decades around 80 per cent – starts to edge downwards and reaches 73 per cent by 2030,” says IEA in its global energy outlook for 2023. 
 

Technology is reducing the impact of fossil fuels by decarbonisation of the energy value chains. A slew of technologies is being implemented for decarbonisation– the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions through the use of low carbon power sources – while the world moves towards renewables.
 

These range from Internet of things-enabled smart grids that reduce energy wastage to capturing heat from manufacturing plants for higher usage of energy. Industrial use of energy is being more efficient with artificial intelligence (AI) and predictive planning.
 

Removing CO2 from the atmosphere needs both natural and technological solutions.
 

Carbon capture and its utilisation is another important aspect. “Technological processes aim to tackle the issue of permanent carbon removal by capturing and storing CO2 indefinitely, usually in the form of solid minerals or in rock layers deep underground. The leading technologies are direct air capture with carbon storage (DACCS) and bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS),” says a report by the World Economic Forum. In DACC carbon is sucked out of the air and then converted into CO2 that is then buried underground. BECCS is a process that captures and stores CO2 emitted by power plants by converting biomass into heat, electricity or liquid or gas fuels. BECCS can process many types of “feedstock,” including residues from forestry and agriculture, algae and energy crops. 
 

Decarbonisation efforts are occurring in every sector. Commercial and personal consumption is being audited for wastage, leakage and reuse of energy. Researchers at University of Cambridge have developed AI models to assess leakages. “A first of its kind AI model can help policymakers efficiently identify and prioritise houses for retrofitting and other decarbonizing measures,” the University says. The university’s researchers trained their AI model using data for their home city of Cambridge. 

They fed in data from Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs), street view and aerial view images, land surface temperature, and building stock. In total, their model identified 700 hard-to-carbonise houses and 635 not-hard-to-carbonise houses. Houses can be 'hard to decarbonise' for various reasons like age, structure, location, socioeconomic barriers and availability of data. By using images and open-source data this model can help local governments in alerting users about energy reduction.
 

The use of data for understanding energy consumption and wastage is itself leading to higher demand for energy. The need for data centres is rising sharply. Companies are using new innovations to minimise the use of energy in such data centres. Technology leaders like Microsoft are investing in underwater data centres that need less energy for cooling servers. Power for such centres could be used from renewable sources as well. 
 

Decarbonisation efforts are being deployed across the energy value chain. From the generation of energy to its transmission and finally its usage. These efforts will be boosted by emerging technologies.