Many companies have goals to get to net zero emissions, but they’re flying blind because they cannot connect their real-time energy consumption with the availability of renewables.
Trouble is, most carbon emission numbers don’t reflect the time of day in which energy is being used relative to the availability of renewables. To better enable smart decisions and get to net zero, we must align when we use electricity to when renewable energy is available on the grid.
WattCarbon, a recent new member to LF Energy, enables organizations to quantify their hourly carbon emissions. Its software takes energy data from a building or a device, say an electric vehicle charger, and connects it to the grid so that an organization can inventory its entire electricity load, and get the carbon emissions associated with it.
“You can only manage what you can measure,” says McGee Young, founder and CEO of WattCarbon. Even sophisticated companies like Google and Microsoft struggle to make those connections, Young said. Also, companies use different numbers and terminology to explain the same things so quantification is even harder.
With open source solutions like those being developed by WoodCarbon—and others at LF Energy—more transparent methods and tools will emerge to empower companies to make more informed decisions about power use.
“Smart people have been working on these issues for a long time … but they’ve been working at it within their own silos,” Young said. “Open source … is about tapping into a lot of individual work streams. But bringing those together in a way that carries a better result than if individuals were just working on their own in their silos.”
For more information on WattCarbon, see the interview here.
