Energy Day @ COP26: We Have a Climate to Un-Crisis
Leaders from around the world have gathered in Glasgow for COP26 with the ultimate goal of solidifying national commitments to dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Today the agenda focuses on energy.
COP has been a crucial platform for countries to formally deliver pledges and establish partnerships that take meaningful steps to address climate change, but what’s missing from this global platform is a foundational framework for markets and innovators. Formulating such a framework is acutely more difficult because the effective and expedient innovation needed to lower greenhouse gas emissions will require access to the right data.
Free, accessible, portable data is the key to benchmarking and fixing the greenhouse gas pollution driving the climate crisis.
The talk of this COP has been a push toward “net-zero,” or the idea that you can sequester an equal amount of carbon to what you release. But countries can’t even begin to measure or account for carbon without actual data on emissions. Carbon markets simply can’t exist if foundational carbon emissions data isn’t readily available. Energy markets, and the carbon intensity geographically on the grid, are often a black box. While independent system operators (ISOs) — which coordinate, control, and monitor the operation of the electrical power system in their localities — have data on carbon emissions from power plants, the public and companies like Arcadia are forced to triangulate and come up with estimates. Open-access and control over energy usage data and costs will make it possible for businesses and industries to create the products and services needed to kick carbon off the grid.
Control and visibility of data, combined with technology innovation, are vital to transforming the energy industry from an analog, closed legacy industry into a smart, decentralized, information network. This will spur the addition of the terawatts of renewables to the grid that diplomats are promising, as well as the smart energy solutions that multinationals are touting at COP.
Bluntly speaking, without better access to data, it will be impossible to decarbonize and decentralize the energy system. To make the data problem in the energy industry even more urgent, according to the UN we have fewer than ten years to make a meaningful impact on the climate crisis.
While the net-zero commitments and bold pledges from nations and multinationals will drive a lot of attention this week, the complex and gritty work of harmonizing these commitments with our legacy infrastructure is what will turn these negotiations from words to actions.
And if we don’t find ways to measure, track, and share data on the emissions driving climate change, it will be impossible to craft a framework for markets and innovators that will ultimately deliver on the climate and sustainability agreements made at COP.
