Technology, Society, Work & Play

Smart2020: Enabling the low carbon economy in the information age
 

1. Climate change is real.
2. Accumulation of greenhouse gasses is primary cause
3. Human action is responsible for Accumulation of GHG in the atmosphere
4. ICT is a contributor, 2% of total – 0.53GTCO2e in 2002, 0.83GTCO2e
5. If we continue with Business as usual (BAU) it will rise to 1.43GTCO2e in 2020 (this estimate from Smart2020 “whole life of emissions from PC’s, peripherals, data centers, telecoms & devices (McKinsey) ).
6. 2020 BAU figure assumes continued advances in energy efficiency, but savings obliterated by increased demands for technology.
7. Good news is that technology use has great potential to deliver savings in emissions, up to 7.8GTCO2e (by some estimates)
8. Approx 1.68GTCO2e of these estimated savings are possible in N. American buildings sector (worth ~$340.8bn in savings).
9. So we’re not talking about energy efficiency of ICT products, but how technology can enable efficiencies in other sectors.
10. Load Reducing strategies – Dematerialization (substitution of high carbon activities with lower carbon alternatives) – Typical example is videoconferencing to reduce travel, also shifting paper based services to a digital environment, another is replacing face to face id checks with biometrics
11. Properly sized, efficient motors with electronic variable speed drives (VFD?), improved gears, belts, bearings and lubricants – use 40% less energy.
12. Smart buildings is a suite of technologies across the lifespan of building: Design (LEED etc), Construction (TCAT) & Operations (BMS, Power Management)
13. North American buildings are among most inefficient in the world (accounting for 1/4 of all buildings emissions.
14. BMS’s have saved billions of dollars in building efficiencies. ICT has proved its role, thought technology is not the issue.
15. Hurdles:

• Agency: Buildings not designed or built by the occupants
• Construction cost: lowest first cost, not lifetime cost.
• Too expensive to do pile: enhanced BMS integration first to be ‘value engineered’ out.
• Too difficult to do pile “Lack of open, universally adopted interoperability standards.
• BMS sector slow to adopt – 20-25 year for new technologies to be widely adopted in residential environments; 15 years in commercial environment.
• IT guys don’t understand why its so complicated; BMS wish the IT guys would leave them alone.

16. Overcoming:

• New business models needed – in BMS and ESCO (Energy Service Company) environment.
• To expensive *not* to do.
• Develop, promote open standards – uphill struggle, BMS providers need to step up, or someone else will.
• VC capital flooding into building automation startups, which is speeding up development (but coming from IT sector not BMS).

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