NO MORE EXCUSES: ACTION NOW FOR SUSTAINABLE TRANSPORT
25 MAY 2018
“We are in the early stages of a sustainability revolution,” says former US Vice President Al Gore. Al Gore spoke at the Scania Sustainable Transport Forum in Stockholm, which gathered industry and political decision-makers to chart the pathway to achieving carbon-free heavy transport by 2050, in keeping with the Paris Agreement.
The call to action has never been more urgent. “Climate change is the most serious challenge that mankind has ever faced,” emphasised Gore. “Scientists are making the point that things are getting even worse than we predicted earlier.”
The situation is worsening as we witness shrinking glaciers, increased flooding, draughts, heat waves, unprecedented heavy rainfalls, hurricanes and disrupted wind and ocean currents. The dramatic consequences are already resulting in uninhabitable areas of the world.
“Although we are at a turning point there is more to do and we are still falling short. Yet the rate of change is pretty impressive,” says Gore.
Solar energy cheaper than fossil fuel
The cost of solar energy is rapidly decreasing and is already below the cost of fossil fuel. In China, 54 percent of new energy comes from solar and wind and in Europe, 77 percent of new generated energy from renewable sources.
Scania has initiated a study that shows that several pathways can be selected to achieve a carbon-free heavy transport system by 2050. These pathways include switching to battery electric vehicles, biofuels, fuel cells or a mix of all these technologies. To succeed, change is needed at a pace never before seen and action must start immediately.
Scania’s President and CEO stated that he was convinced that we can make the transformation to sustainable transport. “We haven’t waited for the politicians, we haven’t even waited for our customers because the two degree global warming increase is not waiting for us. We must work with what we have today – here and now.”
Christiana Figures, who led the negotiations that led to the Paris Agreement, says that prerequisites for initiating these pathways are a compelling vision, stubborn optimism, radical collaboration, contagious leadership and publicised progress.
Shared public and private responsibility
Making progress is dependent on shared responsibility between public and private sectors. “We should not fall into the trap that business needs to take on the role of government. Having said that, we do need purpose-driven corporations such as Scania, with emphasis on a triple bottom line comprising social, environmental and financial goals.”
At the Sustainable Transport Forum Scania, together with energy provider E.ON, infrastructure provider Siemens and global retailer H&M group, announced that they had formed a coalition to accelerate the decarbonisation of heavy transport. “At the end of the day it’s all about mindset,” says Anna Gedda, Head of Sustainability H&M group. “One year ago, my 6-year old son asked my husband why we were destroying the planet by not using an electric car. In six-seven years’ time he will be a H&M customer and these are the expectations that H&M will have to meet. We don’t only need to make fashion sustainable but to make sustainability fashionable.”
Partnerships can accelerate the movement
Partnerships such as this will be instrumental on the continuing journey towards fossil-free heavy transport. “We have the technology today but need to partner to accelerate the movement,” says Henriksson. “We see that teaming up with our customers and their customers gives results. But we also need to work closely with policy makers to remove hurdles. We cannot do this alone; we need friends, partner and partnership to make 2050 happen.”
IMPOSSIBLE TO I'M POSSIBLE — DATA-DRIVEN DECISION MAKING
11 Jun 2019
What is it that transforms the spark of an idea, or an insurmountable challenge, into reality? How do the likes of Elon Musk make the seemingly impossible possible?
Musk wishes to start a real city on Mars by 2050, he's realized almost all his goals. He's an engineer and a visionary with a flair for making dreams a reality, how does he do it? One thing's for sure, whether making his first billion online, or working with rocket science, he has always had an eye for data.
Data drives intelligent decision making. Put another way, we make informed decisions on the basis of hard facts and data.
Realising the impossible
In 218 BC a Carthaginian military leader led a military ambush unprecedented in the history of warfare. What does it take to catch an empire by its tail?
In AD 1962, while addressing a large crowd gathered at a sports stadium in Houston, Texas another leader defines an aim that will necessitate near incomprehensible technical ability to achieve. What is it that transforms the spark of an idea, or an insurmountable challenge, into reality?
JFK, the youthful president didn’t plan to put a man on the moon because he thought it might be possible, it had to be possible.
Visions and plans
The Carthaginian general, Hannibal, chose not to cross the Alps because he thought it was a good idea. Hannibal chose to cross the Alps because he knew it was a good idea.
JFK, the youthful president didn’t plan to put a man on the moon because he thought it might be possible, it had to be possible.
JFK, the youthful president didn’t plan to put a man on the moon because he thought it might be possible, it had to be possible.
Hannibal's enemy, the Roman army, wasn't expecting to wake up to 37 elephants, 15,000 horses and 30,000 soldiers, coming over the mountains and into Italy. The space race against the Soviets had already started, they’d put a man in space, the U.S.A had to put one on the moon.
It’s 1963, we’re back in Texas, this time Dallas, it’s 12:30 pm — the 35th President of the United States is assassinated. A million conspiracy theories are launched. The space race presses on regardless.
And so it came to pass that in 1969 for the first time in human history an American named Neil walked on the moon. Could he possibly have seen the Great Wall of China from outer space? Is it possible that thousands of years before the ancient Egyptians took their inspiration from the lunar body to help layout their burial sites? Or was it aliens…
Data and facts, realizing visions and dreams
Kennedy didn’t put Armstrong on the moon. Not himself, he was no scientist, no pilot or engineer. 400,000 people over ten years did. Aliens didn’t help out with the pyramids, decades of belief in a story assisted by millions of man-hours of labour did. And Hannibal may have crossed the Alps but his elephants, men and horses didn’t make it over without one vital ingredient. Data.
Facts and data, data and facts
Data is the basis of facts, and on facts meaningful decisions made and actions taken.
Data ensured that Apollo 11 could travel 240,000 miles in 76 hours, that a general could make an apparently impossible mission. NASA used data to confirm that the Great Wall cannot be easily seen from space and certainly not from the moon.
Without raw data and facts, advisors would not have advised Kennedy to go ahead with his speech.
Big Data to Smart Data
The sheer amount of data we can now digitally draw upon allows us to make truly powerful decisions. We can now make real that which was previously perceived impossible.
We may have had dreams, such as autonomous driving before but they could never be realised without the ability to harness big data which is now possible. However, just as successive generations have had to manage their information to best realise its power, we also need to manage ours. Smart data is exactly how we make sense of it all in order to drive our decisions forward.
and finally... for the love of pizza// data data data
Put simply data-driven decision making can be boiled down to pizza making.
Big data can tell you everything about making a pizza. From to the optimal temperature of the air that’s breathed by water buffalos required for the production of mozzarella, to the entire history of the pizza across the world. It could tell you how pizza fits into our culture and when it might peak, it could, of course, go further into all foods related and unrelated, it could tell you more. However only smart data will tell you how to make the pizza you want to make. That’s of course, if you want a pizza at all…
THE FUTURE IS GREEN...and almost here
from KTH School of Electrical Engineering yearbook 2016
Lennart Söder has been Professor in Electric Power Systems at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden since 1999. As political will is increasingly influenced by environmental concerns, his field has been generating more attention than ever.
Lennart Söder is committed to his work. It is at once obvious that the subject of renewable energies, promoted by poster-boy tech heroes such as Elon Musk, have long occupied Söder’s professional life.
Irrepressibly positive and with the kind of energy that comes only from those who are on a mission, the Professor begins the conversation by bringing us up-to-date with where we stand on renewable energy sources, and it may surprise some unfamiliar with the subject.
“We are moving towards 100% renewable energy systems,” he states. Many of us may have an interest in the subject of renewable energy systems, but not everyone appreciates that we are so close to getting 100% of our power supply from renewable energy sources.
Söder has long been at the forefront of research in this field, which encompasses a broad range of aspects, including studies of power system stability, electricity price formation, smart grids, the impact of wind and solar energy, the regulation of hydro power, the effect of economic regulation and studies of electric vehicles, to name but a few.
Söder is also busy outside of KTH, having participated in several national studies and having been the government’s sole investigator for the “Grid
“Sometimes people think what I am saying is futuristic but it's not.”
Inquiry”, promoting the development of renewable energy in Sweden. He is also active in several international collaborative projects in Sweden (SamspEL, Energisystem, NEPP), the Nordic Region (Flag Ship project Flex4RES), the European Union (SETS-program, ERA- Net Smart Grid+) and with the International Energy Agency (IEA-Wind Task 25).
As Söder explains: “100% renewables means large amounts of wind and solar power. You will sometimes have very little sun and therefore little solar power, or alternatively in the summer you may have very high levels of solar power or you may have a lot of wind. The question is: how do you handle these situations where you have variable renewable energy sources? That in general is the area we are working in.”
For Söder it is ultimately a question of how we deal not just with the demand but, essentially, with the fluctuations in supply.
“In Germany, for example, they have had 50% more solar power than they have had demand in certain areas. In such situations, you are sending more back into the grid than what is supplied by the grid. You have to work out how to deal with that.”
To get a better understanding of how to balance the variation in wind and solar power, Söder leads a project concerning the optimal use and limits of how to use hydro power as a balancing resource, as well as providing accurate estimations of and market solutions for how consumers could be active in the required balancing process.
However, Söder is not enthusiastic about the energy sources we currently rely on.
“From the Swedish perspective our nuclear power stations are getting rather old. In addition to this we have a very limited amount of fossil fuels, and in Sweden we have a lot of hydro power, biofuel power, wind power and some solar power.
“Sweden is going to close four of our nuclear power stations. New nuclear power is more expensive than new wind power. There will be absolutely no new coal power in Sweden, while gas has many problems associated with it. What is left? An extremely high percentage of renewables.”
Söder reinforces his argument by saying: “What has happened in the past five years is that we have moved from seeing 100% renewables as some kind of obscure ‘green dream’ to something that everyone says ‘yes we are going in this direction’. The question is what are the real challenges and how do we solve them?”
He looks pleased as he explains that: “We finally have support for projects which are looking into these questions. One new project is a study of how to minimise wind power curtailments in a system with significantly higher amounts of wind power than today. In the same way as water is spilled in hydro power stations today, this will happen with a high share of wind power.”
Söder adds “Sometimes people think what I am saying is futuristic but it’s not. Texas is a conservative, oil-producing state but they have a huge amount of wind power, while the biggest wind power country in the world is China, where they have a huge amount of wind power and solar. This is not futuristic, this is reality. Globally we had more investments in renewables than we did in coal power last year. Coal consumption is going down.”
Although Söder is positive, he is also apparently frustrated at times, frustrated that we don’t awake from what we believe to be a ‘green dream’ and realise that it is no dream at all, but rather a practical reality.
NOT JUST ANOTHER ELECTRIC CAR
Uniti engineers are nothing if not passionate. Their constantly updated YouTube videos, all in the name of transparency, exude a passion usually reserved for CrossFit enthusiasts.
Uniti is a Swedish start-up crammed with tech-savvy engineers who have decided to enter the hyper-competitive world of electric cars. Partners are Siemens, robotics firm KUKA energy group E.ON. Uniti brings to the table a near-evangelical fervour that is reminiscent of Apple in the early days. Listening to Lewis Horne, Uniti’s Australian-born ceo, you can hear echoes of a young Elon Musk. His tone is informal, impassioned and driven – an entrepreneur’s tone, the sound of someone on a mission.
Steering unit in the Uniti car.
Uniti’s two-seater electric car is defined by its human-centric design and its focus on the battery, a removable auxiliary system, which enables flexible charging. The vehicle is a light-weight (450 kilograms) and can reach speeds of up to 130 km/h. It has a futuristic heads-up display to allow for more focus on the road, and the steering unit could be from something out of Star Wars. This detail extends to its skf double row deep grove ball bearing for the door-hinge assembly.
Uniti engineers like to see themselves as game changers, bringing a breath of fresh air to an old market. If they manage to maintain the drive they have today, who knows where the road may take them?