Energy and the environment were significant threads covered at Web Summit and garner additional importance when considering the travel and accommodation footprint created by almost 44,000 attendees. It calls for greater awareness of the CO2 produced by the event and its participants. While Web Summit took place on the same days as COP26, it still managed to attract energy and environmental industry pioneers.

Being selected at the Web Summit Alpha program means something. It means your startups are disrupting their industries. The Alpha program offers the chance to join a global community of startups, each selected by the Web Summit team for potential, uniqueness, and world-changing ideas. If chosen, they get tickets to Web Summit, access to the world’s most influential investors, and can apply for pitch workshops, startup masterclasses, and mentor hours.

Given the importance of the energy and environment sector, we took a look at some of the more exciting Alpha program participants in Lisbon at the end of 2021.

Emax – a Belgian peer-to-peer energy trading platform 

Emax offers a trading platform that allows users to trade electricity, including providers who supply electricity to homes, grid operators that provide consumers, businesses, and industry with electricity, and service providers that develop, design, build, and fund projects that save energy, reduce energy costs and decrease operations costs at their customers’ facilities.

In short, its users can sell excess renewable energy to other network participants through automated smart contracts using blockchain technology. What’s unique about Emax is that it makes energy trading as smooth as booking a hotel room. 

All transactions are recorded instantly, with minimal effort, and safely and transparently through a blockchain. One observation, however; this technology may face growth challenges in that all participants need to have smart meters and be registered in the network.

Bio-Carbon International – a US startup focused on producing biocarbon for all industries and helping mitigate climate change

Bio-Carbon International utilizes waste biomass from timber and agriculture and creates quality biocarbon products at an industrial scale. The biocarbon production from waste biomass sequesters CO2 and prevents methane and other harmful gasses from being generated during the decay process.  Biocarbon can be used in dozens of industries in different forms and can help restore arable land and increase global biomass organically.

What is unique about their patented Terra Preta Mix is that it could revolutionize agriculture, reforestation efforts, and water conservation by increasing water retention in soil, promoting microbial activity, and eliminating the need for chemical fertilizers that pollute earth and groundwater.

In addition, Biocarbon international is thinking ahead and will tokenize its biocarbon production and the associated carbon credits and allowances. After tokenizing its products, it will develop an asset-backed crypto commodity exchange and project platform. This will allow other carbon and climate-friendly companies to list their products and credits and connect a global project network that token holders can donate to or set up token farming on to develop new businesses.                                                                            

Blue Planet Ecosystem – an Austrian startup turning sunlight into seafood

Blue Planet Ecosystem has miniaturized an entire ecosystem in a closed-loop, recirculating aquaculture systems facilitated by computer vision to turn sunlight into seafood.

The sun feeds the algae, which provides fuel to the zooplankton, feeding the fish with no fish meal or pesticides. Quality is controlled by computer vision, which monitors every fish’s health, resulting in healthy fish free of any harmful additives. 

ANNEA – a German startup that makes renewable energy machines intelligent

ANNEA is the leading next generation of condition-based predictive and prescriptive maintenance platforms for wind turbines, solar farms, and hydropower plant machines. Its end-to-end solutions enable you to create digital twins of each component of your devices through artificial intelligence, physical modeling, and normal behavior modeling. It then analyzes any damaged parts and replicates them.

Laava Tech – an Estonian startup that makes indoor farming more efficient through artificial intelligence

Laava Tech uses smart lamps, sensors, and IoT controllers to manage the indoor farming growing process. The CEO, Tatsiana Zaretskaya, claims that Laava Tech reduces energy consumption up to 88%. Their AI solution is trained to automatically monitor the types and states of crops and adjust physical surrounding parameters, such as light wavelength, pulsation, temperature, humidity, and CO2 level. It’s like having an indoor greenhouse on your phone. 

Ecofye – a UK startup that evaluates the sustainability performance of businesses and organizations

Ecofye grades a company’s level of sustainability while generating tailored solutions for improvement. Ecofye uses algorithms to analyze a client’s entire value chain, including emissions and social impact. 

Its 360º Assessment evaluates its clients’ value chain and provides an ESG score – a measurement of a company’s level of sustainability – free of charge. Using that information, Ecofye develops solutions aligned with the client’s business objectives, designed to minimize environmental impact. It looks into waste, material use, supply chain, distribution, and energy to create solutions that make commercial sense and have a high potential to reduce emissions. 

KEME – a Portuguese company that aims to expand renewable energy generation in companies and society

KEME implements individual and collective self-consumption projects in renewable energy communities, offering a service that allows any citizen, group of citizens, or companies to produce, consume, share, store, and sell surplus energy, connecting production units to one or more points of consumption. 

What is different about KEME is its business model. KEME Energy’s services follow the ESCo (Energy Service Company) model, where KEME plays the role of a Self-Consumption Management Entity during the contract period agreed with the client. During this period, the savings obtained from implementing the project are shared. After the contract period, the equipment ownership is transferred wholly to the customer, and all the savings obtained in energy costs. This means that clients gain immediate benefits after implementing the project without any initial outlay.

Big events need big energy and environment solutions

These were some of the outstanding energy and environment startups from the Web Summit Alpha program. It behooves such huge events always to take this sector seriously, and help find the next generation of solutions, since the energy cost of bringing so many people together is difficult to explain without equal attention on how to solve the problem, not just for the event, but the planet as a whole.

The challenges facing cities in the 21st century are greater than ever. A new focus is required to overcome the emerging social, technological, economic, environmental, and political forces exerting pressure on cities. This new focus must address how to create cities that are sustainable– for citizens, for business and for the environment.

Tackling this issue head on, Arcadis has developed a Vision 2030 plan that sees new platforms, capabilities and domains operating in cities– with citizens at its core.

According to the Arcadis Sustainable Cities Index 2018, “Sustainable cities can be thought of as places that are planned and managed with consideration for social, economic, environmental impact, providing a resilient habitat for existing populations, without compromising the ability of future generations to experience the same. Accordingly, measures of sustainability need to be able to measure current city performance, ability to mitigate future impacts as well as investment in future capability– ideally measured from the perspective of the citizen.”

Data– and how we analyse it– is the game changer. Data provides the tools to plan, develop and construct cities in which citizens can thrive in harmony and order. Advanced analytics allow organisations to think differently, using data to uncover trends, insights, and even unearth hidden problems. The results allow cities to plan for the future and budget more effectively, leading to stronger end results.

Arcadis is working with organizations in cities across the globe to co-create solutions to their unique challenges, and develop sustainable new models that will improve the quality of life for their citizens.

New York: Reducing Traffic & Carbon Emissions

New York City has committed to reducing commercial waste disposal by 90% by 2030 as part of its “One New York: The Plan for a Strong and Just City”. We have been working with the New York Department of Sanitation (NYDS) to introduce reforms to optimise its commercial waste collection. The improvements will result in cleaner and safer streets, improved air quality, and a more efficient commercial waste collection system, all of which will advance the City’s zero waste goals. Advanced data analytics provided the evidence for authorities to make informed decisions for a better system across the five boroughs.

Our research of 9,900 routes revealed multiple commercial waste haulers covering the same routes, driving on average 123 miles each day. This resulted in long shifts (15+ hours), and created related safety concerns for drivers and citizens– including fatalities.

The team analysed the routing data, customer locations and haulers’ behaviour at a granular level and simulated a variety of options.

The result: Arcadis recommended a strategy for a zoned system with a limited number of haulers in each. This approach would provide a modern commercial waste collection system that would reduce waste disposal-related traffic by 60%, and CO2 emissions by 500 tonnes a year.

San Francisco: Managing BART’s Assets & Creating 15-Year Work Forecasts

SEAMS, an Arcadis company, has been working with Bay Area Rapid Transport (BART) since 2017 to develop a network renewal optimization model using SEAMS’ Enterprise Decision Analytics (EDA) software. The model predicts the changing condition of every asset on the BART network, from the rolling stock and track assets, to staff vehicles and computer terminals. It can account for the impact of the introduction of a new fleet of trains, new signalling systems, the construction of line extensions and the associated disposal of legacy assets to deliver the best overall network plan.

The value of this model is in its ability to identify the optimal mix of asset renewals to deliver the best overall reduction in network risk, whilst complying with the highly complex funding rules imposed on BART. EDA is currently the only solution that has proved powerful enough to achieve this.

The result: the model allowed the client to account for the impact of introducing of new assets, identify the best overall asset investment plan to manage the overall system risk, and create detailed work forecasts for the next 15 years.

Manchester: Fighting the UK Housing Crisis With Data-Driven Investment

Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) has a problem: the UK Housing Crisis. It is enormous in scale and recognizable in cities across the UK, and beyond.

GMCA has a target to deliver 10,600 new homes each year for the next 20 years, and they are currently set to deliver 7,900 in 2018. They also need to make sure they are the right types of housing (20% must be “affordable”), on the right type of land (brownfield vs green belt), in the right areas, with the right infrastructure and investment from the right developers. The existing process to marry these demands is complex and time-consuming; it also involves multiple teams, datasets and approvals.

Arcadis has been working with GMCA (using our “design thinking” approach focusing on the end-user) to co-create City Analytics, a solution that provides GMCA with a platform to support data and evidence-based decision-making by utilising a mix of land, building, commercial and geospatial planning data to demonstrate and model the impact of planning decisions across a range of assets and variables.

The result: The platform has the potential to create robust and defensible plans and to guide investment across regions to build more of the type of homes we need. By breaking down the siloes and integrating data held across GMCA’s 10 districts– alongside publicly available data and external providers and companies– and presenting the data with a simplified interface, processes have become more consistent and streamlined.

Northumberland: Optimizing Investments to Provide Better Value to Customers

Utilities companies are under enormous pressure to provide high-quality, uninterrupted service to their customers. SEAMS’ work with Northumbrian Water Group (NWG) is helping them to optimise and plan for better investment. SEAMS have helped NWG achieve their aim of embedding an in-house analytical and modelling capability to ensure data-driven decision-making became business as usual, reducing dependence on external contractors.

SEAMS worked side by side with NWG to train the team over the course of five years. The first model focused on clean water infrastructure assets, predicting the forward investment needed to maintain service levels for customers including bursts, interruptions and repairs on assets. In the second exercise, a waste water model for their gravity network was developed, which helped NWG understand the impact of sustainable, long-term investment over 25 years on collapsed sewers, blockages, flooding and pollution.

Through the co-creation of these models, the internal team now has the skills to complete a full range of services including data infill, probability of failure analysis, performance analysis, quantification of deterioration, whole life cost modelling and investment scenarios.

The results: NWG are empowered to optimize their investments and provide better value to customers. Analytics and modelling– a key part of their planning process– have improved their decision making, and they are investing in the right assets at the right time.

Tools For a Sustainable World Today, and Tomorrow

Data analytics allows us to maximise the power of the data at our fingertips. Simulating models and demonstrating outcomes enables us to help our clients make the most informed, data-driven decisions with the ability to track performance on their our long-term goals.

The methodology applied in these examples proves that through standardized data collection, cities have the tools to measure, monitor and improve their performance, creating sustainable environments that will improve the quality of life for us all.

Apple has announced an investment of €1.7 billion to establish two data centers, one each in Ireland and Denmark, running completely on renewable energy and will support its services iTunes Store, App Store, iMessage, Maps and Siri in Europe.

Marking Apple’s biggest such investment in Europe, the data centers will be located in County Galway, Ireland, and Denmark’s central Jutland.

“We believe that innovation is about leaving the world better than we found it, and that the time for tackling climate change is now,” noted Lisa Jackson, Apple’s VP, Environmental Initiatives. “We’re excited to spur green industry growth in Ireland and Denmark and develop energy systems that take advantage of their strong wind resources.”

Measuring 166,000 square metres, the facilities will become operational in 2017 with sub-projects on the cards, including educational spaces and reforestations that provide benefits for the local communities, claims the Apple press release.

Apple in Viborg, Denmark, will do away with generators by locating the data centre adjacent to one of Denmark’s largest electrical substations. Heat generated from the data center will be channeled into the district heating system to help warm homes in the neighbouring community.

Apple and broadly the tech industry has been flagged by environment advocates for their negative impact on the environment, points out the Guardian. Having been called the ‘least green’ tech outfit by Greenpeace in 2011 for its dependence on coal, this move will fortify Apple’s marked turnaround of its environmental impact strategy.

The specific details regarding the type of renewable energy to be utilised are yet to be revealed. Onshore wind has been named as a strong contender; one-third of Denmark’s and 16% of Ireland’s electricity comes from wind, The Guardian noted.

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The U.S. Federal Government has been taking notable strides in its drive towards reining expenditure on energy within Government agencies without hampering functionality. And experts believe leveraging Big Data, among other methods is the way to bring about changes.

Sharon Burke, a senior adviser at the New America Foundation and former assistant secretary of defense for operational energy pointed out that the ‘Defense Department alone spends $20 billion annually on energy consumption.’ While speaking in Washington, D.C., earlier last week, Burke, said that about $4 billion of that total goes toward electricity.

“There’s no pushing efficiency if it is at odds with the mission because it won’t survive,” enunciates Burke, “There are a lot of opportunities for improving without losing performance,” Burke added. “It’s key because the second you lose performance, you lose.”

The expenditure on energy includes operating, heating, cooling and pumping water to and from approximately 500,000 buildings globally, reports NextGov, with Federal programs such as the administration’s Climate Action Plan and Executive Order 13514 making significant efforts in this regard.

One such effort is the GPG program that leverages General Services Administration‘s real estate portfolio as a “proving ground” to evaluate emerging building technologies that promise to improve the environmental performance of GSA’s portfolio while reducing operational costs.

Eleni Reed, the Chief Greening Officer at GSA explains that working together with national laboratories on technologies, the proving ground makes recommendations on whether to “broadly deploy, target deploy or not to deploy,” reports NextGov.

Reed also pointed out how  big data and analytics are helping in the government’s sustainability efforts; for instance, GSA’s “Smart Metering” initiative uses analytics on large data silos can track power consumption, helping property managers to better manage energy usage. “Property managers can identify spikes and analyze trends, year after year, and take action to correct,” Reed noted.

However, serious security issues remain.

“There are security vulnerabilities in the era of big data with smart metering, because loads could signify activity,” points out Jeffrey Johnson, regional command information officer for Naval District Washington.

Read more here.

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We caught up with Sandra Kwak, Director of Marketing and Ecosystem Partnerships at US-based Big Data startup Autogrid, to talk about their company and products. AutoGrid uses the power of big-data analytics to handle the exponentially expanding wave of information being generated by smart meters, building management systems, voltage regulators, thermostats and other equipment enabling utilities and consumers track and curb power use, reduce waste, balance the grid, improve system operations and even predict future consumption.

Could you tell us a little bit about Autogrid?

Autogrid is turning the world’s energy data into power. We are organizing the various streams of data collected from smart grids that in turn come from meters, connected devices, homes, businesses, and renewable energy. With this information we have built an energy data platform with powerful predictive analytics. Autogrid algorithms can forecast future supply and demands on the grid. On top of this energy data platform, we have built several apps for utilities, power providers and power users to better manage their electricity.

How did this idea come about?

Our founder Amit Narayan was on the team that designed eight of the 10 chips on the first iPhone. He wanted a harder problem so he started looking into smart grids. He became the Director of Smart Grid Research at Stanford and he realized that the grid is like a giant microchip. He figured that, in order to track all the power flow across the gigantic microchip, he needed to have accurate data. He then started to source all of this data from the grid, and he came across this big problem. We actually secured investment before the company was founded and we’re trying to tackle one of the biggest issues of our time, which is energy.

How do you compare what you do against the competition, if any?

In terms of analytics, most companies in the industry are looking at the retroactive data. They’re taking your historical information and telling you what you did in the past. Our algorithms forecast the future. Not only do we take into account your past behaviour and real-time information, we also look at future implications such as weather and voltage conditions on the grid. We can take in this information and predict what your future power usage is going to be, so that we can optimize and hedge against  risk on the grid.

Is your product for businesses only or is it also for consumers?

Our apps are for power providers and power users. We just co–­developed an app with NTT Data, which is the fifth­ largest IT company in the world. (This app is called the Energy Cost Optimizer, and it’s for facilities to manage their energy-remove). Our utility portals, in a lot of cases, are being branded by the utility or a third­ party provider like Silver Spring or Schneider Electric. In those cases it is presented to the end­ users as their apps but it is essentially Autogrid’s underlying platform that is supporting it. The app is also available for end­users, so we have several different versions of the app and different hierarchy for different user levels, ranging from the power provider (the top level) all the way down to the end­ user.

The second way in which we differentiate is that we have a complete open system of eco-vendors. Hardware providers can join the Autogrid ecosystem and we can send out signals to actually control devices in the field. That way we can communicate over all the different protocols and channels. Instead of the utility being locked into a single stack of hardware, they can continue to add new technology as it comes online. We can send out signals to control thermostats or lighting, built-in control systems, electric vehicle and battery backup systems. As utilities want to add new technology, we can continue to add those into the mix of devices that they can use to send signals and control.

How do you communicate with these devices? Are the devices in field 3G devices or GPRS? How do they connect to your platform?

We basically have protocols for every existing type of communication channel that is out there. We support open standards. We are board members of the OpenADR Alliance which stands for Open Automated Demand Response. It’s a global protocol and you can automatically communicate with anyone who is already integrated with OpenADR. However, we also support a number of proprietary and proprietary protocols and systems integrators.

What is your revenue model?

We operate it as Software As A Service, so we license our applications and platforms. We will sell our apps directly to the market, and then we are also working with a couple of select third-party providers who co-develop apps on our platforms right now. Eventually we will have APIs, so third-party providers can build their own apps on our platforms.

Moving forward, what does your company need most? Is it more investment, more talent, or more customers?

We need developers, and we will hire internationals. If you know of any brilliant computer scientist or data scientist, send them our way to auto-grid.com/careers. We have a pretty amazing team right now. We are based in Silicon Valley and we have programmers from Stanford, Berkeley and MIT.  We will hire of 14-year-old if they’re a genius, so send them my way.

Where do you see Autogrid one year from now?

We have been doubling in size or more every year. We’re now moving into the European market. We just announced a major investment from E.ON as a strategic investor, and this will be a long-term plan for us to better understand the utility market from here on.

Image and video credit: Autogrid

Who are you ?

My name is Eran Aloni and I am the CEO of Leanciti. We are originally from Tel Aviv, Israel and for the past one year we have been working on developing a platform for cities to run their energy systems more efficiently.  For Lean Citi, I joined forces with my partner, whom I now know for around fifteen years .  I personally come from the business development side and this is currently my sixth start-up. In regards to my partner, he  is an ex-Oracle guy, who with support from other colleagues adds strength to Leanciti from the technology side.

What makes you unique?  There seem to be a lot of people who are doing this ?

I don’t think there are a lot of people doing what we are doing.  We saw that a lot of people are offering solutions for monitoring but we took a different approach.  Everybody is going through the utility or from the top down approach. For us,  we directly go for the end consumers.  We provide a solution that can engage all the stakeholders in the grid or in the city in one single place.  For example, we give a city a solution to see what’s going on in real time as far as consumption, production, and greenhouse gas emissions.  We convert all this information to greenhouse gas emissions, so cities that sign a petition to reduce their emissions can see what is going on in real time rather than just signing a pledge.

 What is your business model?

We give our product to you for free.  Consumers can use it for free, the citizens will use it for free, schools, everyone can use it for free.  We take our money from whatever we save for the cities.  If a city is paying $30m a year on electricity bills and we manage to save it by 15%, we take 30% out of it.  But if we don’t save, we don’t get paid.

 So it’s performance based?

Yes, completely.  If we’re not good, we’re in the wrong business.  We will do something else. I was in one of the big cities in Europe three weeks ago and another company offered the local government to do this for several million dollars.  I said ‘I will do it for free and I will do it just as well.  You only pay me if you save.’   So the city said, “For free!  Go ahead, do it.”

Are there any case studies you would like to discuss?

Our product is currently being used in three cities in Israel, and we are starting a project in Korea as well.  Next month we’re starting a project in France and I hope by the end of February we will be starting a project in Berlin. One of the things we’ve noticed so far, is that we have already managed to cut the energy bills of various public schools by 10-15% just by changing the behavior of the consumers, which is really amazing in itself.  We give people the option to see on their mobile phones how much they are consuming, and for students they can compare to other schools.  They even have a program where the city is sending them an alert on their screens saying “watch out, you’re consuming more than you consumed last week”.  So, this is quite an amazing advance.

 You said you are bringing your product to Berlin.  Are you aiming at special public places there?

We are in talks to start a project now, but I cannot disclose it.  We are  in discussion with one of the projects in Berlin to start on a pilot level  at the end of February.  If it succeeds we plan to expand into to the German Silicon Valley.

So your strategy is mostly incentivising consumers to save their electricity?

We work with cities,  many a times specifically with their municipalities.  However, in order to give a very clear picture for the municipality on what’s going on in the city, you must get all the people engaged in one place, otherwise, it’s just devices in cities.  What we believe is that if you want to create smart cities, you have to have the people engaged in this concept, otherwise it’s just data and devices – you must have people behind the devices.  What we’re trying to achieve is looking for ways to attract consumers to log into our system so that the data will be of people, not just of devices.  And that’s what we have done.

What other markets are you looking to enter?  Is it only Europe or emerging countries as well?

The US market is very important for us. We’re going to Silicon Valley next month because the market is very big and there is a lot of money, so we’re trying to raise capital.  In general, the German market is extremely important for us, because of what’s going on in the energy market here.  Germany and Scandinavia is really where we want to start.  We signed a contract recently in Korea for a project on smart buildings and devices that go up to the level of your home appliances.  What we’re going to do in Korea will be very interesting, because we can show the city and the utility company what’s going on in your refrigerator.  Everything will be on a dashboard, and of course, the privacy is up to you to decide.  You can decide if you want to expose your information, or if you want to stay completely anonymous.

 Are you looking for anything special, like talent or funding,?

We’re looking for funding;  we have raised about 300K so far from a private investor, and now we’re talking to VCs.  And we’re looking for more cities of course.  Because with more cities in our system, what we envision is that cities will be able to share this information between them to improve the lives of the citizens.  So as a student in Berlin you will know how much you consume in comparison to a student in Hamburg or a student in Amsterdam.  Then the cities can share this information so they can improve their own efficiency and improve life experience.

 Where do you see yourself one year from now?

The way we move, we move really, really fast right now.  We’re ranked in about five big cities in the world right now that we reached within four months, and we can add about two big cities each month.  A year from today we will be in most of the big cities in Europe I hope, and in some of the big cities in the US.

LeanCiti enables smart cities and residents to cut energy, water and gas expenses by changing consumers’ behaviour using social networks, data analytical tools to reduce costs per units and monitor greenhouse gas emissions generated in urban environments.