Smarter Climate Policy
Our homes, cars, buildings are all being integrated with “smart” devices that allow them to be connected to the internet, cloud computers, and artificial intelligence (AI). The Digital Climate Alliance sees an opportunity to integrate climate policy with interconnected data and digital tools. The result – “Smart”er Climate Policy.
The economy’s digital transformation will have significant implications for efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and deliver products and services that consumers need and want. The Digital Climate Alliance (DCA) is a first-of-its-kind coalition of leading global companies with the purpose of informing public policy regarding the role digitalization can play as an enabler of climate solutions and nexus issues such as water, energy and agriculture. Yet, scaling digital solutions to address climate change will not happen on its own. It will take purposeful action by both the public and the private sectors.
Smarter Food and Water
The domains of water, food, and energy don’t exist in siloes but are interrelated in ways that can bring together policymakers, agriculture and water planners, practitioners, and researchers invested in digital climate solutions. The government can expand the frontiers of market and climate-based solutions by influencing inclusive uptake of digital tools and technologies in food and water management. Federal research into the critical ag-water-energy nexus is a major opportunity to scale system-level digital innovation across these sectors, present new ideas for cross-sector engagement, promote greater access to real-time data and information sharing, and create new markets for efficiency and sustainability solutions.
Smarter Grid
Modernizing the electricity grid is an opportunity to achieve two goals: 1) enhance traditional grid functions of economics, efficiency and reliability within the power industry; and 2) enable significant carbon footprint reductions through new data access regimes that makes sharing of real-time data on emissions readily available in the public domain.
Smarter Supply Chains
Supply chain transparency has shown itself to be a valuable tool to enable companies to swiftly adjust to disruptions. The next step is to improve supply chain sustainability by standardizing emissions reporting and improving the interoperability of sustainability data from one company to the next.
Smarter Efficiency
New sensor systems and smart meters, IoT, AI, machine learning and digital twin technologies transform real-time data into actionable insights to inform strategic decision-making and enhance energy and operational efficiency for the buildings and industrial sector. Federal investment in intelligent efficiency technologies, encouragement of technological innovation, dissemination of research and education, and demonstration of efficiency impacts on emissions reductions will create unprecedented opportunities to mainstream smarter management systems which catalyze greater sustainability outcomes.
Smarter Recovery:
Build Back Better
As governments discuss economic recovery plans, closing the digital divide must be a priority. Access to digital tools is a necessity for education, healthcare, and industrial competitiveness. At the same time, these investments should also include ways to ensure data is available to measure economic and environmental impacts.