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