Unleashing the power of data for electric vehicles and charging infrastructure

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by Thomas Deloison: “As the world moves toward widespread electric vehicle (EV) adoption, a key challenge lies ahead: deploying charging infrastructure rapidly and effectively. Solving this challenge will be essential to decarbonize transport, which has a higher reliance on fossil fuels than any other sector and accounts for a fifth of global carbon emissions. However, the companies and governments investing in charging infrastructure face significant hurdles, including high initial capital costs and difficulties related to infrastructure planning, permitting, grid connections and grid capacity development.

Data has the power to facilitate these processes: increased predictability and optimized planning and infrastructure management go a long way in easing investments and accelerating deployment. Last year, members of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) demonstrated that digital solutions based on data sharing could reduce carbon emissions from charging by 15% and unlock crucial grid capacity and capital efficiency gains.

Exceptional advances in data, analytics and connectivity are making digital solutions a potent tool to plan and manage transport, energy and infrastructure. Thanks to the deployment of sensors and the rise of connectivity,  businesses are collecting information faster than ever before, allowing for data flows between physical assets. Charging infrastructure operators, automotive companies, fleet operators, energy providers, building managers and governments collect insights on all aspects of electric vehicle charging infrastructure (EVCI), from planning and design to charging experiences at the station.

The real value of data lies in its aggregation. This will require breaking down siloes across industries and enabling digital collaboration. A digital action framework released by WBCSD, in collaboration with Arcadis, Fujitsu and other member companies and partners, introduces a set of recommendations for companies and governments to realize the full potential of digital solutions and accelerate EVCI deployments:

  • Map proprietary data, knowledge gaps and digital capacity across the value chain to identify possible synergies. The highest value potential from digital solutions will lie at the nexus of infrastructure, consumer behavior insights, grid capacity and transport policy. For example, to ensure the deployment of charging stations where they will be most needed and at the right capacity level, it is crucial to plan investments within energy grid capacity, spatial constraints and local projected demand for EVs.
  • Develop internal data collection and storage capacity with due consideration for existing structures for data sharing. A variety of schemes allow actors to engage in data sharing or monetization. Yet, their use is limited by mismatched use of data standards and specification and process uncertainty. Companies must build a strong understanding of these structures internally by providing internal training and guidance, and invest in sound data collection, storage and analysis capacity.
  • Foster a policy environment that supports digital collaboration across sectors and industries. Digital policies must provide incentives and due diligence frameworks to guide data exchanges across industries and support the adoption of common standards and protocols. For instance, it will be crucial to integrate linkages with energy systems and infrastructure beyond roads in the rollout of the European mobility data space…(More)”.

Weather Warning Inequity: Lack of Data Collection Stations Imperils Vulnerable People

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Chelsea Harvey: “Devastating floods and landslides triggered by extreme downpours killed hundreds of people in Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo in May, when some areas saw more than 7 inches of rain in a day.

Climate change is intensifying rainstorms throughout much of the world, yet scientists haven’t been able to show that the event was influenced by warming.

That’s because they don’t have enough data to investigate it.

Weather stations are sparse across Africa, making it hard for researchers to collect daily information on rainfall and other weather variables. The data that does exist often isn’t publicly available.

“The main issue in some countries in Africa is funding,” said Izidine Pinto, a senior researcher on weather and climate at the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute. “The meteorological offices don’t have enough funding.”

There’s often too little money to build or maintain weather stations, and strapped-for-cash governments often choose to sell the data they do collect rather than make it free to researchers.

That’s a growing problem as the planet warms and extreme weather worsens. Reliable forecasts are needed for early warning systems that direct people to take shelter or evacuate before disasters strike. And long-term climate data is necessary for scientists to build computer models that help make predictions about the future.

The science consortium World Weather Attribution is the latest research group to run into problems. It investigates the links between climate change and individual extreme weather events all over the globe. In the last few months alone, the organization has demonstrated the influence of global warming on extreme heat in South Asia and the Mediterranean, floods in Italy, and drought in eastern Africa.

Most of its research finds that climate change is making weather events more likely to occur or more intense.

The group recently attempted to investigate the influence of climate change on the floods in Rwanda and Congo. But the study was quickly mired in challenges.

The team was able to acquire some weather station data, mainly in Rwanda, Joyce Kimutai, a research associate at Imperial College London and a co-author of the study, said at a press briefing announcing the findings Thursday. But only a few stations provided sufficient data, making it impossible to define the event or to be certain that climate model simulations were accurate…(More)”.

How Differential Privacy Will Affect Estimates of Air Pollution Exposure and Disparities in the United States

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Madalsa Singh: “Census data is crucial to understand energy and environmental justice outcomes such as poor air quality which disproportionately impact people of color in the U.S. With the advent of sophisticated personal datasets and analysis, Census Bureau is considering adding top-down noise (differential privacy) and post-processing 2020 census data to reduce the risk of identification of individual respondents. Using 2010 demonstration census and pollution data, I find that compared to the original census, differentially private (DP) census significantly changes ambient pollution exposure in areas with sparse populations. White Americans have lowest variability, followed by Latinos, Asian, and Black Americans. DP underestimates pollution disparities for SO2 and PM2.5 while overestimates the pollution disparities for PM10…(More)”.

How a small news site built an innovative data project to visualise the impact of climate change on Uruguay’s capital

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Interview by Marina Adami: “La ciudad sumergida (The submerged city), an investigation produced by Uruguayan science and technology news site Amenaza Roboto, is one of the winners of this year’s Sigma Awards for data journalism. The project uses maps of the country’s capital, Montevideo, to create impressive visualisations of the impact sea level rises are predicted to have on the city and its infrastructure. The project is a first of its kind for Uruguay, a small South American country in which data journalism is still a novelty. It is also a good example of a way news outlets can investigate and communicate the disastrous effects of climate change in local communities. 

I spoke to Miguel Dobrich, a journalist, educator and digital entrepreneur who worked on the project together with colleagues Gabriel Farías, Natalie Aubet and Nahuel Lamas, to find out what lessons other outlets can take from this project and from Amenaza Roboto’s experiments with analysing public data, collaborating with scientists, and keeping the focus on their communities….(More)”

German lawmakers mull creating first citizen assembly

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

APNews: “German lawmakers considered Wednesday whether to create the country’s first “citizen assembly’” to advise parliament on the issue of food and nutrition.

Germany’s three governing parties back the idea of appointing consultative bodies made up of members of the public selected through a lottery system who would discuss specific topics and provide nonbinding feedback to legislators. But opposition parties have rejected the idea, warning that such citizen assemblies risk undermining the primacy of parliament in Germany’s political system.

Baerbel Bas, the speaker of the lower house, or Bundestag, said that she views such bodies as a “bridge between citizens and politicians that can provide a fresh perspective and create new confidence in established institutions.”

“Everyone should be able to have a say,” Bas told daily Passauer Neue Presse. “We want to better reflect the diversity in our society.”

Environmental activists from the group Last Generation have campaigned for the creation of a citizen assembly to address issues surrounding climate change. However, the group argues that proposals drawn up by such a body should at the very least result in bills that lawmakers would then vote on.

Similar efforts to create citizen assemblies have taken place in other European countries such as Spain, Finland, Austria, Britain and Ireland…(More)”.

If good data is key to decarbonization, more than half of Asia’s economies are being locked out of progress, this report says

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Blog by Ewan Thomson: “If measuring something is the first step towards understanding it, and understanding something is necessary to be able to improve it, then good data is the key to unlocking positive change. This is particularly true in the energy sector as it seeks to decarbonize.

But some countries have a data problem, according to energy think tank Ember and climate solutions enabler Subak’s Asia Data Transparency Report 2023, and this lack of open and reliable power-generation data is holding back the speed of the clean power transition in the region.

Asia is responsible for around 80% of global coal consumption, making it a big contributor to carbon emissions. Progress is being made on reducing these emissions, but without reliable data on power generation, measuring the rate of this progress will be challenging.

These charts show how different Asian economies are faring on data transparency on power generation and what can be done to improve both the quality and quantity of the data.

Infographic showing the number of economies by overall transparency score.

Over half of Asian countries lack reliable data in their power sectors, Ember says. Image: Ember

There are major data gaps in 24 out of the 39 Asian economies covered in the Ember research. This means it is unclear whether the energy needs of the nearly 700 million people in these 24 economies are being met with renewables or fossil fuels…(More)”.

The Untapped Potential of Computing and Cognition in Tackling Climate Change

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Adiba Proma, Robert Wachter and Ehsan Hoque: “Alongside the search for climate-protecting technologies like EVs, more effort needs to be directed to harnessing technology to promote climate-protecting behavior change. This will take focus, leadership, and cooperation among technologists, investors, business executives, educators, and governments. Unfortunately, such focus, leadership, and cooperation have been lacking.  

Persuading people to change their lifestyles to benefit the next generations is a significant challenge. We argue that simple changes in how technologies are built and deployed can significantly lower society’s carbon footprint. 

While it is challenging to influence human behavior, there are opportunities to offer nudges and just-in-time interventions by tweaking certain aspects of technology. For example, the “Climate Pledge Friendly” tag added to products that meet Amazon’s sustainability standards can help users identify and purchase ecofriendly products while shopping online [3]. Similarly, to help users make more ecofriendly choices while traveling, Google Flights provides information on average carbon dioxide emission for flights and Google Maps tags the “most fuel-efficient” route for vehicles. 

Computer scientists can draw on concepts from psychology, moral dilemma, and human cooperation to build technologies that can encourage people to lead ecofriendly lifestyles. Many mobile health applications have been developed to motivate people to exercise, eat a healthy diet, sleep better, and manage chronic diseases. Some apps designed to improve sleep, mental wellbeing, and calorie intake have as many as 200 million active users. The use of apps and other internet tools can be adapted to promote lifestyle changes for climate change. For example, Google Nest rewards users with a “leaf” when they meet an energy goal…(More)”.

Air-Pollution Knowledge Is Power

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Chana R. Schoenberger: “What happens when people in countries where the government offers little pollution monitoring learn that the air quality is dangerous? A new study details how the US Embassy in Beijing began to monitor the Chinese capital’s air-pollution levels and tweet about them in 2008. The program later extended to other US embassies in cities around the world. The practice led to a measurable decline in air pollution in those cities, few of which had local pollution monitoring before, the researchers found.

The paper’s authors, Akshaya Jha, an assistant professor of economics and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University, and Andrea La Nauze, a lecturer at the School of Economics at the University of Queensland, used satellite data to compare pollution levels, measured annually. The researchers found that the level of air pollution went down after the local US embassy began tweeting pollution numbers from monitoring equipment that diplomatic personnel had installed.

The embassy program yielded a drop in fine-particulate concentration levels of 2 to 4 micrograms per square meter, leading to a decline in premature mortality worth $127 million for the median city in 2019. “Our findings point to the substantial benefits of improving the availability and salience of air-quality information in low- and middle-income countries,” Jha and La Nauze write.

News coverage of the US government’s Beijing pollution monitoring sparked the researchers’ interest, La Nauze says. At the time, American diplomats were quoted saying that the embassy’s tweets led to marked changes in pollution levels in Beijing. When the researchers learned that the US State Department had extended the program to embassies around the world, they thought there might be a way to evaluate the diplomats’ claims empirically.

A problem the researchers confronted was how to quantify the impact of measuring something that had never been measured before…(More)” – See also: US Embassy Air-Quality Tweets Led to Global Health Benefits

What Makes People Act on Climate Change, according to Behavioral Science

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Andrea Thompson: “As the world hurtles toward a future with temperatures above the thresholds scientists say will lead to the worst climate disruptions, humanity needs to take all the actions it can—collectively and as individuals—to bring planet-warming emissions down as quickly as possible. Governments and companies need to do the lion’s share of the work, but ordinary people will also need to make changes in their everyday lives. A crucial question has been how best to spur people toward more climate-friendly behaviors, such as taking the bus instead of driving or reducing home energy use.

New research published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA pooled the results of 430 individual studies that examined environment-related behaviors such as recycling or choosing a mode of transportation—and that looked into changing those behaviors through several interventions, including financial incentives and educational campaigns. The authors analyzed how six different types of interventions compared with one another in their ability to influence real-world behavior and at how five behaviors compared in terms of how easy they were to change.

As can be seen in the graphic below, financial incentives and social pressure worked better at changing behaviors than did education or feedback (for example, reports of one’s own electricity use). The results reinforced what environmental psychologists have found when looking at these interventions in isolation…(More)”.

Chart shows effect sizes of various intervention approaches for promoting sustainable behaviors, with education having the smallest effect and social comparison having the largest.
Credit: Amanda Montañez; Source: “Field Interventions for Climate Change Mitigation Behaviors: A Second-Order Meta-Analysis,” by Magnus Bergquist et al., in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, Vol. 120, No. 13, Article No. e2214851120. Published online March 21, 2023

Making AI Less “Thirsty”: Uncovering and Addressing the Secret Water Footprint of AI Models

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Shaolei Ren, Pengfei Li, Jianyi Yang, and Mohammad A. Islam: “The growing carbon footprint of artificial intelligence (AI) models, especially large ones such as GPT-3 and GPT-4, has been undergoing public scrutiny. Unfortunately, however, the equally important and enormous water footprint of AI models has remained under the radar. For example, training GPT-3 in Microsoft’s state-of-the-art U.S. data centers can directly consume 700,000 liters of clean freshwater (enough for producing 370 BMW cars or 320 Tesla electric vehicles) and the water consumption would have been tripled if training were done in Microsoft’s Asian data centers, but such information has been kept as a secret. This is extremely concerning, as freshwater scarcity has become one of the most pressing challenges shared by all of us in the wake of the rapidly growing population, depleting water resources, and aging water infrastructures. To respond to the global water challenges, AI models can, and also should, take social responsibility and lead by example by addressing their own water footprint. In this paper, we provide a principled methodology to estimate fine-grained water footprint of AI models, and also discuss the unique spatial-temporal diversities of AI models’ runtime water efficiency. Finally, we highlight the necessity of holistically addressing water footprint along with carbon footprint to enable truly sustainable AI…(More)”.