Green ICT

Green VTT -seminar, Messukeskus 7.10.2010Mikko HongistoVTT Technical Research Centre of Finland

Mikko.Hongisto@vtt.fi

208/10/2010

ICT for Environmental Sustainability

Use of ICT for developing societala c t i v i t i e s i n o r d e r t o i m p r o v ee n v i r o n m e n t a l s u s t a i n a b i l i t y

Use of ICT for developing societala c t i v i t i e s i n o r d e r t o i m p r o v ee n v i r o n m e n t a l s u s t a i n a b i l i t y

= Improving environmental efficiency of ICT itself + use of ICT to makeother industrial branches, public services and human activities moresustainable

Objective:-Changing the impact of ICT to environmental sustainability to clearlypositive and-eventually to decouple economic growth from overdriven resource use

How:New ideas and concepts can be realized into ICT-services capable toinduce major systemic, structural and behavioural changes in society

– when externalities of the price mechanism become visible…

308/10/2010

Towards Green ICT vision?

Services,products and

markets

Bottlenecks

Enablingtechnologies

Present

Drivers

Medium term Long term

V I S I O N

V I S I O N

Increasing prices of energy and raw materials

Steering of consumer behaviour and utilization of natural resources through regulation

Increasing awareness of global consequences ofclimate change

Economic recession

Green values: duration, upgradeability, recyclability Shortage of fossil fuels and fresh water

Standardization of green monitoring solutions

Emission trading starts to have effect on companies Structural change in resource intensive industries

Rising living standards in BRIC countries Global treaties, initiatives and campaigns onenvironmental questions

Reliability of information and security ofsystems becomes a really critical issue

Social issues: people are not ready to reduce theirliving standards, uneven global spread of Internet

Systemic issues: life cycle emissions of products notknown, information fragmented in isolated systems

Technological issues: capacity of telecom networks,battery technology

Information overload

Systems become complex and hard to manage

Complexity of information systems: limitstransparency, sets challenges for privacy and data

security

Technological issues: capacity of telecom networksstill limits the utilization

Basic LCA software

Automatic meter reading (AMR)

High-end videoconferencing solutions and services

Digitalized production processes

Services based on smart metering

Distributed small-scale energy production

Agile manufacturing: Integrated industrialproduction and easily configurable processes

Intelligent products and services with life cyclemanagement modules

Remote collaboration solutions: seamlessintegration of virtual and physical

Simulation solutions

Solutions based on cloud computingCross reality applications

Green ICT traffic solutions: driving style monitoring,CO2 emission analysis, route applications

Basic home automation systems

Carbon footprint calculators

Consumer information systems for complex green data

Personalized footprint services

Intelligent housing solutions

Intelligent transportation solutions

Intelligent consumer solutions, such as smartappliances for automated decision making

User-generated new green ICT services

Intelligent and more automated transportation

Advanced virtual solutions and services e.g. inhealth

Data mining, management and analysis

Advances in battery technology

ICT in everyday environment

Social media – evolving from separate services towards integrated seamless net combining virtual and physical spaces, web 3.0

Sensor networks and home monitoring

Augmented and virtual reality – towards real environment sensations in virtual spaces

Artificial intelligence

Methods of environmental impact assessment

Modelling and simulation technologies for LCA and digital production

Sensor technology

Image processing technologies

AMR hardware and software

3D environments and virtual worlds

ICT for smart gridsMulticore computers and solutions for parallel processing

Parallel computing

Post-PC era GUI technologies

” A Roadmap ”ICT for Environmental Sustainability” available at http://www.vtt.fi/inf/pdf/tiedotteet/2010/T2532.pdf

408/10/2010

ICT will increasingly be present in our everyday activities,e.g.

1) ICT will offer available and understandable data and easy to use toolsfor the people

to decrease their ecological footprint and to make moreenvironmentally sustainable choices in their everyday consumption

2) Smart production and recycling technologies will result in optimisedproducts, processes and systems

taking the whole life-cycle into account3) Smart metering and smart grid technologies will enable flexibledistribution and economical energy generation

using renewable energy sources4) Intelligent transportation systems and remote collaboration technologieswill reduce unnecessary traffic and

minimise the energy usage of transportation in general

More sustainable decisions will also be supported by governmentalregulation, market incentives, and social media!

508/10/2010

VTT’s scientific and technological focus on GreenICT

Four research themes were selected:

1) Environmentally sustainable consumption deals with generationof tools and incentives for consumers to change their behaviour andto enable making environmentally sustainable decisions in theirdaily life

2) Energy efficient buildings involve development of new smartmetering and grid enabled digital services for diverse stakeholders

3) Life-cycle efficient production demands more extensive andsystemic ways for utilising ICT in enabling more ecologicalproduction paradigms for making products and services

4) Optimised and adaptive networks aim to produce new intelligentnetwork operations and management solutions for optimisingdiverse networks in multiple levels

608/10/2010

Environmentally sustainable consumption

“Environmental intelligence for management and decision making”Digital (mobile) services that provide end users with environmentalinformation and enables them to make environmentally sustainabledecisions.

Simplifying and personalising the complex environmentalsustainability informationStandards, databases and marketplaces for the accessing theinformationOnline communities and user-driven design for presenting anddistributing the information

Examples: automatic calculators of the carbon etc. footprints andsocial media applications and other “feedback-systems” promotingecological behaviour.

708/10/2010

Smart energy and buildings

“Energy delivery and consumption gets smart ”New smart metering and smart grid enabled digital servicesfor diverse stakeholders from energy companies toconsumers.

Actualising direct feedback from the energy consumptioninformation to load controlSensors, sensor networks and automation solutions forinformation provision and intelligent controlSmall-scale energy generation in building orneighbourhood level using mainly renewable energysources

Examples: demand forecasting and dynamic pricing, energyperformance benchmarking, energy consumption monitoringand real-time feedback.

808/10/2010

Life-cycle efficient production

“Not wasting a drop of resources”More extensive and systemic ways for utilising ICT enablingnew, more ecological, production paradigms for the productand service production.

Environmental monitoring, integrated product informationsystems, and large scale simulation and modelling forassessing the life cycle impacts of the productsICT-enabled optimisation for tailored mass production,utilization of production lines, raw material usage,preventive maintenance, software production etc.Automatic recycling solutions for the efficient utilisation ofall the raw material

Examples: Virtual prototypes, integrated production facilities,and robotics-based recycling systems

908/10/2010

Optimised and adaptive networks

“From subsystem level to system level optimisation”New intelligent network operation and management solutions foroptimising diverse networks in multiple levels; structure, energyconsumption, throughput etc.

Novel network management solutions that enablecomprehensive optimisation and can even be applied to manydifferent networksImproving solutions for intelligent transport and eco-mobility formaking the transportation environmentally more efficientRemote collaboration solutions for reducing the need fortransportation

Examples: Energy management of network elements and terminals,electric cars, eco-driving, and teleconferencing.

1008/10/2010

Some technological building blocks for Green-ICTapplications:

Sensors and sensor networksEmbedded device R&DWireless sensing, e.g. RFID, NFC..Solutions for energy efficiency and waste management, chain of custody

Network solutions and managementRadio systems, computing platformsSmart electricity managementIntelligent home solutionsRemote collaboration

Software technologiesSoftware engineering methodsProcesses, tools and architecturesProof of concepts (products and services)Mobile and cloud computing solutions

Modeling simulation and analysisIndustrial automation and system simulationProduct life cycle assessmentsEnergy monitoring servicesTransportation optimisation

User interaction and user centered designContext adaptive user interactionVirtual and augmented realityTeleconferencingVirtual prototypesSustainability services for consumers

-ICT experts are collaborating with environmental experts to outline new solutions

1108/10/2010

Partners, publications & information:

http://extranet.vatt.fi/climatebonus/

Climate-Bonus Consortium: VTT created ICT-demonstrationsfor “personal emission management”

1208/10/2010

Some conclusions:

The developed “Climate-Bonus &Feedback” system was demonstratedand tested in practice by a group ofconsumers.

The system was perceived to beinteresting and useful !

The authors of the study believe, that feedback systems could activatenotable voluntary emission reduction potentials (5-15%) if disseminatedfor extensive use (Perrels et al. 2009b).Automatic registration of purchased products was found to be a key-factor when improving the usability and easiness of the climate relatedpersonalized feed-back service.Commercialisation is expected to occur step by step starting from thesectors and product groups where reliable and public emission data isavailable.

1308/10/2010

VTT develop automatic activity monitoring optionsfor emission management –

Empowering people to show progress!

E.g. Smart and/or secondarymeters, mob recognition & newsolutions!

Alternativemonitoringdevices -sensors andmeters

Data sharingwith web-communities -generating refs.and value-appreciation!

Specific recordingapplications - realtime feedback tosupport behaviouralchange

Aggregatingfragmented data -linking Prod-ID’swithenvironmentalexternality data

Commercial end-userservices,multipleinterfaces

You

Friends

Finland

World

Housing

Food

Mobility

Other

Carbon footprints

Climate-Bonus?

E.g.

-Emerging environmental feed-back systems (demo-projects) and supporting ICT-platformsare expected to be key-solutions enabling transition towards more sustainable production,consumption and lifestyles.

1408/10/2010

Various Green-ICT applications are emerging quickly:Public sector; regulatory systems and services management

E.g. EU-ETS, RES-E ja RED….

Private companies;supply chain management (LCA+CoC)product/service specific emission and resource use calculatorssmart product-service systems…etc.

Associations, NGOs;independent data sources

Key challenges:How to improve user experiencedata-aggregation (immaterial property rights)data transfer standards & languagesopen API’s (devices + applications)

1508/10/2010

Towards global environmental feedback systems?

Assessments: around 15% reduction potentials by means of ”environmentalfeedback” systems are achievable:

product/service specific and aggregated carbon footprints (monitoring)foodstuffshousingmobilityfuels & electricity

real time feedback -> behavioural change:energy monitoring applicationsecodriving + intelligent mobility management systems

-> Green ICT can be seen as a strategic option to mitigate globalenvironmental problems.

->Opportunities to imagine and develop local- and regional-, but also globalGreen-ICT services exist !

1608/10/2010

VTT creates businessfrom technology

1708/10/2010

Additional slides:

Some topical links:

FiCom Green ICT pages:

http://www.vihreaict.fi/fi/index.html

TEKES

http://www.tekes.fi/info/vihreaict

VTT – Green ICT roadmap:

http://www.vtt.fi/inf/pdf/tiedotteet/2010/T2532.pdf

Climate Bonus project:

http://extranet.vatt.fi/climatebonus/publications

1808/10/2010

New materialsbiomass based productsindustrial biomaterialsfunctional materialsreinventing paper

Specialty electronicshigh-performance microelectronicsprinted intelligenceoptical instruments

Green ICTAmbient intelligence

digital servicesnetworked devicesand environmentshuman - technologyinteraction

ICT technologiescognitivecommunication systemsnext generation internetinformation security

Intelligent productsand production

digital product processglobal distributedproductionintelligent machinesand materials

Ecoefficient built environmentecoefficient traffic andcommunity infrastructureICT applications

Innovation processes, technology and servicebusiness

VTT’s research vision

Sustainabledevelopment

Digital world

Sustainable energyquantum leap solutions toclimate changeefficient use and savingof energyrenewable energy sources

Technologies forwellbeing

health promotingfood solutionsdrug developmentand diagnosticsICT for health

1908/10/2010

Key research topics

PRODUCTION

Environmentally sustainableconsumption

Life-cycleefficient

production

Optimisedand adaptive

networks

2008/10/2010

The CLIMATE BONUS Project –Combining carbon footprinting, monitoring, feedback and

rewards –Demonstrating the Climate Feedback Service

Research consortium:KTK National Consumer Research Centre, MTT Agrifood Research Finland,SYKE Finnish Environment Institute, VATT Government Institute for Economic Research,VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland

Funding:Tekes, Research institutes (VATT, VTT, MTT, KTK, SYKE), Ruokakesko Oy, Nokia Oy,Stora Enso Packaging Oy, Tuulia International Oy, Elisa Oyj, HK Ruokatalo Oy

-All Climate Bonus project publications etc: http://extranet.vatt.fi/climatebonus/

-Technical article "The CLIMATE BONUS – demonstrating the climate feedback service“:http://www.vtt.fi/inf/pdf/symposiums/2009/S262.pdf