Tech For Good - Issue 19

CANON’S GUIDE TO A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE THE BANKING RACE TOWARDS NET-ZERO DRIVERLESS CARS: STILL THE FUTURE? HOW TO BECOME A CONSUMER VIGILANTE

ISSUE 19

HOW TO MAKE THE

WORLD BETTER IN

2022

How can technology save the planet in 2022? We speak to leaders from Intel, Capgemini, Lenovo and social good startups to find out

DANIEL BRIGHAM Content Director

A

mongst the inevitable parade of platitudes spouted by politicians at last year’s COP26, there was one line that crackled with genuine anger and warning. It came from Simon Kofe, Minister for Justice, Communication and Foreign Affairs of the South Pacific islands nation of Tuvalu.

“We cannot wait for speeches,” he said, “when the sea is rising around us all the time.”

With every minute that passes, the urgency for action to bring man-made climate change under control gets ever more pressing. It is already a matter of life and death for many millions, and that threat continues to spread across continents. It is all-consuming.

It isn’t only the environment that is facing a crisis, of course. We have entered 2022 with the COVID-19 pandemic

still raging, an ever-expanding chasm between rich and poor, and an appalling lack of diversity across industries that only serves to increase bias and discrimination against minority communities.

Our cover story takes a long, deep dive into the role – both good and bad – that technology should play in reimagining how society can tackle these crises. We spoke to a series of tech startups, and global organisations such as Intel and Capgemini, to get a full picture of what needs to happen to technology industries in 2022 to start steering a better path.

As Elodie Read of global non-profit tech accelerator Subak says in the feature, “The world’s recovery from the pandemic presents a powerful opportunity to build a new society instead of restoring our old broken systems.”

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From life-saving drones to gas stations in space, we round up the news

Expert Insight: Andy Tomkins on the steps towards sustainability

GLOBAL GOOD

CANON EUROPE

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Experts tell us how tech can help save the planet this year

Expert Insight: Salvatore Lombardo on fair labour practices

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SAP

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TEMENOS

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Are driverless cars a safety risk?

Why Unitrove is building the world’s first liquid hydrogen bunkering unit

How NetApp is greenifying the cloud through consumer vigilantism

GOOD OR BAD?

Expert Insight: Kalliopi Chioti on banks’ race to net-zero

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GLOBAL GOOD

Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes found guilty of defrauding investors Elizabeth Holmes, CEO and founder of blood test company Theranos, has been found guilty of four out of 11 counts of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Theranos was valued at $9bn in 2015 on the promise of revolutionising healthcare with a blood analysis technology that was later found to not work. Holmes now faces up two 20 years in prison.

Drone saves man from cardiac arrest An autonomous drone has helped to save the life of a 71-year-old man who was suffering a cardiac arrest in Sweden.

The drone delivered a defibrillator to a doctor helping the man, who became ill while shovelling snow outside his house.

Everdrone, the company behind the drone, says the device allows the defibrillation to begin before the arrival of an ambulance.

Source: BBC

Source: The Washington Post

GLOBAL GOOD In case you missed them, we’ve debriefed six of the most interesting Tech For Good stories from the last four weeks 6

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mPharma raises $35m to build a network of pharmacies across Africa Ghanaian healthtech startup mPharma has raised $35m in a funding round that included Tinder co-founder Justin Mateen’s JAM fund and Lux Capital. The company will use the funding to build a network of community pharmacies across Africa as it plans to be the go-to primary healthcare service provider for millions of people residing in the region.

Source: TechCrunch

NEWS DEBRIEF

Orbit Fab partners with Astroscale to power sustainable gas stations in space Startup Orbit Fab has signed an agreement to provide Japan-based Astroscale with on-orbit refuelling services for its LEXI (life extension in-orbit) geostationary servicing spacecraft. The partnership will help extend the useful life of satellites and power sustainable ‘gas stations’ in space.

Source: Spacenews

LEAD becomes India’s sixth edtech unicorn Twitter agrees to conditions to end ban in Nigeria The Nigerian government has ended a seven-month suspension of social media platform Twitter after the company agreed to set up a local office and pay taxes in the country. The ban began when Twitter deleted a post made by Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari threatening a violent crackdown of secessionist groups.

Source: The New York Times

Mumbai-based Lead School has become the second startup to reach unicorn status in 2022 after raising $100 million in a funding round led by WestBridge Capital with participation from GSV Ventures. The ten-year-old startup joins Byju’s, Unacademy, Eruditus, UpGrad, and Vedantu as the sixth edtech unicorn from India. The company has integrated its digital learning platform into thousands of K-12 schools, most of which serve low-income families.

Source: Insider

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As the world redefines itself in the midst of a medical and environmental crisis, Tech For Good speaks to business leaders to find out how new technologies will shape the coming months and drive a more sustainable future

AUTHOR: Beatriz Valero de Urquía

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he world is always in transformation; but even more so now as countries strive to define what a post-COVID future will look like. With rapid digitalisation and innovative ways of approaching healthcare, work, education, and sustainability, 2022 presents itself full of possibilities for growth - for those willing to embrace change.

Since the invention of the wheel, technology has always been a key driver of social transformation. Now, only eight years short of the deadline set by the United Nations to reach the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), digitalisation initiatives are the protagonists of any major plan to address the many challenges that the world is facing, from the healthcare crisis to the climate emergency.

As the fourth industrial revolution unfolds under the eyes - and smartphone cameras - of the world, Tech For Good talks to business leaders about the changes that the next 12 months have in store. From huge companies such as Intel, Lenovo, and Capgemini to startup accelerators like Subak and non-profit organisations such as Nesta, industry stakeholders discuss the key learnings from the past two years and how the new technologies and ways of working will drive the creation of a more diverse, accessible, and sustainable world.

Work in the post-COVID world “Almost two years on, what started as a response to a crisis has now become our opportunity to reimagine how we work,” says Trish Blomfield, Intel’s UK Country Manager. In 2020, Intel established flexible working arrangements as a response to COVID-19. But although these changes were originally envisioned as temporary, it is now clear many of them are here to stay.

With the COVID-19 pandemic ongoing, much of 2022 will still be defined by hybrid work and the changes and challenges of a global health crisis. The virus caused what a McKinsey report described as the “deepest economic disruption since World War II” - one

Jamil El-Imad

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from which the world has not yet recovered. In order to address this situation, companies globally have had to adapt and rethink their operating models and ways of working.

The 2020 lockdowns forced businesses to rapidly shift to online channels, automate production tasks, increase operational efficiency, and speed up decision making. As people transitioned to online work, companies digitised many activities 20 to 25 times faster than they had previously thought possible and the number of employees working from home regularly increased by 173% since 2005, according to Global Workplace Analytics.

Now, as businesses reshape their long-term strategies, the discussion 10

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around improving working conditions are expected to take centre stage.

“The past 20-odd months offer some clues on what the future of work may turn out to be like,” Blomfield says. “Earlier this year, we asked Intel employees what they thought about the future of work and 90% preferred a hybrid workplace where they would split their time between working remotely and being in the office; and that’s the direction that we’re going in as a company.

“What I hear from my colleagues is good riddance to rush-hour commuting and long live flexible working hours.

I also hear renewed appreciation for human connections, both virtual and in-person, because that’s what drives innovation and makes work fun.”

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What started as a response to a crisis has now become our opportunity to reimagine how we work” Trish Blomfield

Intel’s UK Country Manager

The business changes motivated by the pandemic have led to the development of more flexible attitudes towards working and a sense of community in the face of adversity. If they could, 98% of people would choose to work remotely, at least part-time, for the rest of their careers, according to research

by Buffer. This would have been almost unthinkable three years ago.

The many changes that the world has undergone over the past two years are a testament to society’s capacity for adapting. In the midst of a global talent shortage, hybrid and flexible ways of working present themselves as the key to ensuring employee satisfaction and productivity.

“I believe the future office’s primary function is to heal and to re-humanise the work environment and entrench a culture of compassion and individuality,” says Jamil El-Imad, CEO of tech startup Technovus and Chief Scientist at NeuroPro. “The deeper we connect - not only with our minds but with our hearts too - the more motivated and empowered we become to outperform.”

In order to be able to rapidly respond to the crisis and advance research, organisations and private citizens were able to come together to work collaboratively in new ways to speed up the innovation process; to great success.

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Virologists, epidemiologists, public health officials and citizen scientists have been able to share their COVID-related discoveries through the open data repository NextStrain. The project allowed realtime information from labs around the world to be shared in one place, allowing scientists to track how the virus spread at an almost unprecedented scale.

“The pandemic has been tough,” says Kathy Peach, Director at Nesta’s Centre for Collective Intelligence Design. “But it has also thrust our collective intelligence under the spotlight, whether through neighbourhood WhatsApp groups or

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international scientific research. We’ve seen that at its best, collective intelligence can help us respond to crises with greater confidence, speed and cooperation.”

The COVID crisis has demonstrated how collective intelligence methods can help fill data gaps fast and tap into public appetite to contribute. The COVID Zoe symptom tracker app is a great example of this. Over 4.6 million people used it to track their symptoms and the data they generated became a valuable source of information to help scientists understand how the virus affects different groups of people. In addition, 327,000

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gamers participated in Project Discovery, grouping data from thousands of cell samples. Their work saved scientists an estimated 471 years of research.

The pandemic was a powerful reminder of the genuine existential risk posed by black swan events (low probability, high impact) and grey rhino events (high probability, high impact) and an impetus to prepare for if - or when - the next crisis occurs, be it social, medical or environmental.

“The world’s recovery from the pandemic presents a powerful opportunity to build a new society instead of restoring

our old broken systems,” says Elodie Read, Programme and Community Partnerships Lead at Subak, the first global non-profit tech accelerator dedicated to combatting the climate emergency.

“One thing we’ve all witnessed is what can be achieved when a problem is treated with the urgency it warrants,” she says. “I think the time spent in lockdown made many people reconsider how we live our lives, the choices we make and what our priorities are. I see this as a critical precedent for global climate action, which must be our next urgent priority.”

From unprecedented mobility restrictions to enormous vaccination programmes and rapid digital transformation requirements, the pandemic challenged society to rise to the occasion - and it did. But it might all prove to be pointless without adequate solutions to the next crisis, which is bound to be climatic.

Changing with the climate The past eight years have been the warmest since modern record-keeping began in 1880, according to NASA. As a result of global warming, 800 million people - 11% of the world’s population - are currently vulnerable to climate change impacts such as droughts, floods, heatwaves, and extreme weather events. Looking forward, climate action ISSUE 19

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is no longer desirable, but absolutely indispensable.

Although experts like El-Imad believe that 2022 will only bring “more talk but little action,” others have hope in the promises of companies and public organisations, who have pledged to do better. So far, many nations have made commitments to end deforestation, curb methane emissions, and stop public investment in coal power, as they build towards their net-zero emission targets.

But is it too little too late?

“2022 needs to be different,” Read says. “As we come out of the pandemic, we have an incredible opportunity and impetus for a just transition to a more sustainable society. Climate issues are critically important to a growing share of the population. Now, the UK and global governments must seize this moment to make more ambitious and justice-driven climate commitments.”

Although climate change is old news, it has been only in recent years that environmental concerns have broken into the mainstream. A recent report from YouGov shows that the environment is back to being one of the top priorities among the UK public. Moreover, the majority of citizens in 17 advanced economies demonstrated a willingness to change their living and working habits to combat the effects of global warming, as reported by the Pew Research 14

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2022 needs to be different. As we come out of the pandemic, we have an incredible opportunity and impetus for a just transition to a more sustainable society” Elodie Read

Programme and Community Partnerships Lead at Subak

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Center. Instead of waiting for another global crisis, preventative measures could be the solution to the climate emergency.

Last year, the world’s leaders came together in Glasgow to design a plan to fight climate change. Although the conclusions of COP26 were disappointing for many, the conference did demonstrate a global commitment to rethinking environmental policies to drastically reduce CO2 emissions in the next eight years, starting right now.

“Progress was made at COP26: it’s now time for action,” says James Forrest, EVP, Global Industry Leader for Energy and Utilities at Capgemini.

“We need to multiply the investments in energy, electrification and low carbon techs, from 2.5% of global GDP to 4.5%.

“To solve the planet’s carbon problems, we need to track energy and carbon in the way we track finance. There are also many climate change hurdles yet to be overcome that require cross-sector effort, such as decarbonising transport, electrifying heating in homes, buildings, commercials and industry, and providing solutions to reduce energy demand while improving efficiency.”

Changing minds is a fundamental process of every full-scale transformation. Now that the global population has agreed on the need to decarbonise society, it is time for technology to step in and provide the tools required for the creation of a greener world.

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nuclear and small modular reactors; there are plenty of alternatives to fossil fuels. Moreover, new technologies such as artificial intelligence and deep learning can also help power the green transition, as shown by the projects developed at Subak. Open Climate Fix - co-founded by former DeepMind engineer Dr Jack Kelly - is employing machine learning to forecast solar electricity generation to help optimise the grid and Climate Policy Radar is mapping and analysing the global climate policy landscape using machine learning and AI to support evidencebased policymaking.

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Although customer demands and changing market trends are key drivers of sustainable development, public bodies will also need to step up in the fight towards climate change if any meaningful progress is to be made in 2022.

“We urgently need to increase and make more visible public engagement with net-zero,” Peach says. “In doing this, it creates the political will needed for potentially difficult policy decisions - and helps build the internal pressure needed within countries to raise their level of ambition when it comes to climate change. We also need to see new ways of driving large-scale, rapid

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Colombia, South America

collective action. Real-time data, more accessible models, and citizen deliberation and collaboration are all important enablers of this.”

Recently, Nesta funded an organisation called Umbrellium to design and run an experiment to help people take action to reduce air pollution. It found that when citizens were able to use technology to communicate and collaborate on actions, it led to saving four times more carbon dioxide emissions than the groups of individuals who didn’t collaborate.

Like COVID-19, climate change is not a national concern, but a global crisis.

Therefore, experts agree that individual

commitments must be underpinned by a common international agenda to address the danger that the environmental crisis poses to the world’s population. COP26 was a start, but there is still a long way to go before the planet is safe - starting with the next 12 months.

“Catastrophic climate change will not be prevented if our response is piecemeal, incremental or siloed,” Read says.

“We need wholesale systemic change.

Decarbonisation, large green jobs programmes, etc., are significant shifts that require proportionate involvement from governments, the private sector, multilateral institutions, nonprofit organISSUE 19

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isations, and so on. New technologies need to be developed, deployed, and scaled faster.

“Whether it’s by innovating and developing better tech, holding governments accountable, increasing public awareness, or driving behaviour change, we all have a crucial role to play in implementing the changes we need.”

Regulating seat belts and digital tools In 1982, Michigan Representative David Hollister received a letter likening him to Hitler after drafting a very controversial bill. It was Michigan’s first seat belt law.

Although seat belts were first invented in 1920, at the time Hollister drafted his bill fewer than 14% of the US population wore them regularly. Drivers complained they were uncomfortable and restrictive. Less than a year after the law was passed, this number rose to 60%. Now, 30 years later, the national seat belt use rate in the US is at 90.3%, saving almost 15,000 lives every year.

The public sector has always been slow at transforming, but challenges such as COVID-19 and climate change have forced public organisations to adapt. Looking ahead, regulatory decisions will be vital to ensuring that new technologies are equitable and ethical, as well as strategically deployed to 18

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make the most of what they can offer society.

“Technology plays a crucial role in humanity’s ability to prevent catastrophic climate change,” Read says.

“However, technological development and deployment often raise ethical risks and challenges; and debates about equity and distribution. Governments need to be responsive to these rapidly changing technological landscapes and engage in these difficult conversations to prevent further inequity.”

When it comes to climate change, one piece of regulation that has long been discussed is the introduction of a carbon tax. This policy would have governments set a price that emitters

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must pay for each ton of greenhouse gas emissions they emit. Experts believe new regulatory systems that improve economic incentives for investment in sustainable developments are key to paving the way to net-zero.

Another aspect that has also caught regulators’ attention has been the lack of diversity in the technology industry.

Although the move towards more inclusive workplaces has been an organic development that has gained traction over the last several years, public organisations are responsible for regulating technologies to ensure they are not reproducing bias and discriminating against minority communities.

“The lack of diversity in tech is already well documented,” Peach says. “The

consequences of this are already becoming obvious in the manifestation of technologies that have fundamental blind spots in relation to their broader social and ethical implications, such as Amazon’s discriminatory hiring algorithm. It’s a hard job for regulators, but collective intelligence methods could help inform how technology is regulated by helping to understand public views on socially acceptable uses and the values that need to be coded into emerging technologies.”

An example of how collective intelligence methods can help regulators tap into more diverse values that need to underpin emerging technology is Moral Machine. This online game was designed to understand the values that

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Progress was made at COP26: it’s now time for action” James Forrest

EVP, Global Industry Leader for Energy & Utilities at Capgemini

should be coded into self-driving cars.

It presented players with scenarios about accidents involving driverless cars - with an emphasis on choices about who to save: humans or animals, men or women, old or young people.

Nearly 40 million people from 233 countries actively participated and the data showed how values and decisions varied significantly between cultures.

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targeting equity and inclusion, building a culture of trust and transparency, and strong communications, both internally and externally,” says Shobha Meera, Chief Corporate Social Responsibility Officer at Capgemini. “It’s a long-term effort, but one worth fighting for.”

There is no stopping industrial growth or artificial intelligence deployment, just as there wasn’t a way to keep people from driving cars. However, policy decisions can ensure that technological innovations are deployed in a safe and sustainable way, preventing the loss of human lives.

Entering the room where it happens Despite the temptation of believing the contrary, machines are not infallible they reproduce the biases and assumptions of the people that built them.

From facial recognition technologies to Amazon’s hiring AI tool, there are countless instances in which computers have been proven to discriminate against minority groups. In October 2019, researchers found that an algorithm used on more than 200 million people in US hospitals to predict which patients would ISSUE 19

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likely need extra medical care heavily favoured white patients. The algorithm relied on a faulty metric for determining need that didn’t take into account the correlation that exists between race and healthcare expenditure.

The most effective way of ensuring that technologies are not biased is to increase the diversity of the teams that design them. However, despite growing industry commitments to address gaps, these still prevail. For example, the proportion of men and women being appointed directors of tech companies in the UK has remained almost exactly the same since 2000.

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and accessibility to the forefront of their work, there is still plenty of room for improvement,” says Calvin Crosslin, Chief Diversity Officer at Lenovo and President of The Lenovo Foundation.

“We, as technology companies, have a responsibility to ensure the products and services we provide are both inclusive and accessible to customers, while also building a workforce that is representative of the world we live in.”

Society has always been very diverse, but it has not been until very recently that technology companies have started to look the part. However, the job is not yet done. Currently, only 2.1% of Facebook’s technology positions are held by Black employees and women make up

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just 25% of computer science-related jobs in the US, according to the Pew Research Centre.

However, as the world redefines the new normal, experts are hopefuly about tech companies’ commitments to make their workplaces more diverse and inclusive. A global survey of over 3,000 business leaders commissioned by Intel found that over 60% of leaders felt that new ways of working, enabled by technology, contribute to a more inclusive experience for employees globally.

Moreover, 89% of leaders indicated that technology will make achieving diversity and inclusion goals easier.

Despite its dangers, data can also be a powerful tool in the fight for more diverse workforces. Understanding the extent of the problem and the reasons behind the lack of inclusivity in the industry will be key to ensuring that discriminatory practices are not reproduced in the future.

“Intel is a data-driven company,” Blomfield says. “We measure and track inclusion, and our data does show improvements. Intel has global pay equity across its workforce when you take into account legitimate drivers of compensation; for instance, time in a particular grade.

“We like to celebrate successes, but the data is also there to show us where we have more work to do, as a company

We, as technology companies, have a responsibility to ensure the products and services we provide are both inclusive and accessible to customers, while also building a workforce that is representative of the world we live in” Calvin Crosslin

Lenovo’s Chief Diversity Officer

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and as an industry. To continue the example, Intel UK has a gender pay gap as calculated by the UK government methodology which looks at the average pay of a woman compared with the average pay of a man across the whole Intel UK population. This is due to a lower representation of women in senior roles which is a challenge that Intel and the tech industry is trying hard to address.”

In the same way that emission targets are powering the way to a greener future, companies and public sector organisations must also make diversity and inclusion commitments. Last year, Google pledged to improve leadership representation of underrepresented groups by 30% by 2025 and Apple invested $30 million into its Racial Equity and Justice Initiative. Their results show the programme is working, with nearly 50% of its employees belonging to underrepresented groups.

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Intel’s plan to address this issue includes a commitment to doubling the number of women and underrepresented minorities in senior roles and increasing the percentage of employees self-identifying as having a disability to 10% by 2030. In addition, Intel has joined the Alliance for Global Inclusion with the aim of bringing organisations together in an industry-wide commitment to and accelerating impact in diversity targets.

“Inclusion is now a real priority for governments, tech companies, consumers, and our society at large,” Meera says. “And while there is increasing recognition of the need and business case for inclusion and accessibility, and some progress, we still have a long road ahead.”

Evidence shows that diverse and inclusive workplace cultures are more creative, resilient, and impactful. They are also more successful. McKinsey

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Inclusion is now a real priority for governments, tech companies, consumers and our society at large” Shobha Meera

Chief Corporate Social Responsibility Officer at Capgemini

reported that companies with high gender diversity on their executive teams were 25% more likely to have above-average profit. Moreover, internationally diverse boards, on average, raise 453% more investment than non-internationally diverse boards, according to Tech Nation.

The establishment of standards and processes is key to the prioritisation of long-term inclusion. This includes putting diversity or inclusion approvals in place and questioning how products are received or used by people of different genders, races, abilities, and orientations. Lenovo has created the position of Product Diversity Office to ensure diverse teams are represented in the product planning and execution phases.

“Reducing bias begins with ensuring the teams behind the products and solutions are diverse in experiences, backgrounds, perspectives, and abilities,” Crosslin says. “Workplaces can truly become more diverse and inclusive once these two ideas are considered foundational values of a company.

“We’ve seen first-hand how technology can be a powerful enabler of diversity and inclusion, especially as it relates to design and development. When companies integrate it into their processes, products, and services, it allows for accessibility and innovation to flourish.

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positive change internally, but can also build a greater, more equitable society.”

However, progress doesn’t only happen top-down. There are plenty of crowdsourcing initiatives that aim to create more representative training datasets for machine learning models.

A great example is Mozilla’s Common Voice project, which is creating the world’s largest open dataset of diverse voice recordings spanning different languages, demographic backgrounds and accents. It aims to stimulate the development of AI voice assistants that are able to serve the needs of more diverse communities.

“We think collective intelligence can be used across the AI development cycle to reduce bias through a process we call ‘Participatory AI’,” Peach says.

“Put simply, this means involving a wider range of stakeholders - including affected communities - in the design, development and auditing of AI systems.”

From increasing the diversity of design teams to testing products with diverse users, there are many things organisations can do to reduce the risk of data biases. But they will require resources and a real commitment to making a change. Going into 2022 and beyond, positive inclusion experiences, when combined with the right technology, will strive to create better products and workplaces.

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The digital promise Technological developments have always shaped societies, but never more so than in the last few decades. Connectivity is one clear example of this. Since the invention of mobile phones in 1973, the number of mobile connections has surpassed the size of the global population.

Today, there are almost 2.46 billion more mobile connections than people, making it the fastest-growing human-made technology phenomenon in history.

The COVID-19 pandemic has drastically accelerated the adoption of digital

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technologies. During the first three months of the lockdown period, UK SMEs reportedly underwent three years’ worth of innovation. These changes were necessary to address the health crisis while continuing business operations. However, companies expect them to outlive the pandemic, with over 90% of innovative firms reporting an intention to make digital technologies a fundamental part of the plans for the new normal, according to a report by Be The Business.

With the world still facing climate and healthcare crises, experts have

predicted that digital transformation will be the protagonist of 2022, defining the future of work, health, education, and the environment.

“Society was already becoming increasingly digital well before the disruptions of the past two years,” Blomfield says. “And then, with COVID19, the pace of digitalisation has massively accelerated. In the world of work, the response to the pandemic compressed a decade’s worth of change into months. Who would ever have thought that most of Intel’s 116,000-strong global workforce would ISSUE 19

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transition to working from home in a matter of days?”

In addition to transforming business operations, digital solutions also have a huge potential to create social good.

Over the next decade, digitally-enabled platforms are estimated to create 70% of new economic value. Moreover, according to a United Nations report, technology can also become “the great equaliser” by enhancing connectivity, financial inclusion, and access to trade and public services.

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There are plenty of ways in which technology can power sustainable development. From citizens’ insights to grassroots solutions, data from mobile phone companies to satellite imagery and AI, new smart resources are being harnessed by organisations around the world to understand complex problems and find new solutions to global challenges. Looking ahead, experts expect these trends to accelerate dramatically.

“I think we’ll see much more experimentation with technologies that help

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Some of the most important challenges we face in society rely on collective actions and decisions in the face of competing priorities. It is time we invested in the technology that can help us collaborate better to improve our chances of tackling these problems” Kathy Peach

Director at Nesta’s Centre for Collective Intelligence Design

to drive positive collective behaviours - the opposite of some of the negative effects we’re seeing on social media right now,” Peach says. “I think we’ll also see much more of technologies that try to make the most of human-AI cooperation, particularly to help improve group decision-making.

“Some of the most important challenges we face in society rely on collective actions and decisions in the face of competing priorities. I think people are starting to realise that it is time we ISSUE 19

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invested in the technology that can help us collaborate better to improve our chances of tackling these problems”.

A collaboration between Nesta’s Centre for Collective Intelligence Design and the UNDP Accelerator Labs is the first attempt to map how diverse collective intelligence approaches are being used to speed up progress on the SDGs. One of these ways is by anticipating, monitoring and responding to systemic risks by testing out new ways of combining local collective intelligence and predictive analytics to improve the speed and effectiveness of responses to natural disasters and conflicts.

Nesta’s initiative builds on projects such as Sentry Syria, which captures sensor data and reports from community volunteer plane spotters who live near Syrian conflict zones. Using AI, it is able to predict when airstrikes will occur and warn civilians. During 2018, it is estimated that the initiative led to a 20-30% reduction in casualty rates in several areas under heavy bombardment. Digital tools have been proven to have enormous potential for good - for those able to access them.

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Crosslin says. “But, while many of us have benefited from technology, for those without access to PCs or the internet, the digital divide widened.”

With less than a decade left until the 2030 deadline, digital technologies will be key to realising the United Nations’ SDGs. However, this would only be possible if access to these solutions is available worldwide.

As the world becomes more digitally dependent, almost half the world’s population - 3.7 billion people - is still offline. The majority of them are women, and most live in developing countries.

This has meant that over the last two years of a global pandemic, those

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without internet access have been unable to benefit from remote education, work, or health services.

“As the world gets increasingly digital, the divide between the digital haves and have-nots is widening,” Meera says.

“We operate with the firm belief that as a leader in digital transformation, it is our responsibility to address this digital divide and ensure that technology is leveraged and applied to address key societal challenges.”

Technology is a tool that can both reduce and widen inequalities. It is up to public and private organisations as well as consumers worldwide - to determine how to make the most of

these innovations that are disrupting the industry and ensure they are used to power a better future.

We’re already into the year 2022, and it comes with as many challenges as it does opportunities. As the world comes out of a pandemic having developed new technologies and ways of working, it is now the time to utilise those learnings in the building of a more sustainable and diverse society that is ready to take on the coming crisis, be it social, economic, medical or environmental.

Looking forward, change is an absolute certainty, but progress has to be fought for. The future is unknown, but it will undoubtedly be digital.

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CASTING A CLOUD OVER IT

CASTING A CLOUD OVER IT Denise Bryant, Channel Director at NetApp, talks to Tech For Good about the environmental cost of storing data and the importance of becoming ‘consumer vigilantes’ AUTHOR: Beatriz Valero de Urquía

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oing paperless has been for years an indication of an increased preoccupation with the environment. However, these efforts often overlook the carbon emissions created by the cloud, at a great cost.

Every day, the world produces about 2.5 quintillion bytes of data, and the energy required to power and cool the data centres where it is stored has been found to generate 80 megatonnes of carbon dioxide a year. If things continue in the same way, it is estimated that data centres will consume 8% of the world’s electricity by 2030. Yet, only 32% of the data that is stored is ever 34

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used again. In total, the 68% of data that we are creating, storing and forgetting about is producing more CO2 emissions than the entire airline industry.

The increase in concern regarding sustainable business practices has been parallel to the rise of the IT industry as a whole. Denise Bryant, Channel Director at cloud-led data-centric software provider NetApp, tells Tech For Good about the importance of consumer awareness of their digital carbon footprints, especially when it comes to cloud technologies.

“In the 40 years I’ve worked in this industry, IT has changed massively for

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the better,” she says. “It’s now time for us to take the next step, because sustainable IT could never be more important.”

When Bryant started her university degree, she was undertaking one of the first computer software courses at Manchester University. At the time, the term ‘computer software’ had not even been invented. Now, in her role at NetApp, she is responsible for the ongoing successful partnership with the UKI NetApp partners, ranging from GSIs to resellers to born-in-the-cloud partners, and enabling these organisations to lead with data.

During Bryant’s 40-year career in the industry, she has seen a definite change in consumer behaviour, by which consumers have increasingly bought IT products that align with their ethical principles, including sustainability.

“When I first started in IT, there wasn’t a focus on sustainability in the industry,” she says. “It was about getting IT to deliver accurate results - that was challenging enough in the early days.

However, we are long past that now.

IT and the native data intelligence and analytics that can now be provided is a business necessity.

“Increasingly the focus has been on environmental, social, and governance [ESG] principles and the resulting IT carbon footprint measurements and controls. Recently, the global nature of

When I first started in IT, there wasn’t a focus on sustainability in the industry. However, we are long past that now. IT and the native data intelligence and analytics that can now be provided is a business necessity” Denise Bryant

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The issue is not only around the data that we store. Carbon emissions are also massively negatively impacted by the actions we, as IT users, take”

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the pandemic has made us all ‘consumer vigilantes’ as we realise our fallibility and the fragile nature and delicate balance of our environment. It has not just pricked but exploded the collective conscience, both individually and corporately, in terms of our responsibility to our fellow humans and future generations.”

When Bryant refers to ‘consumer vigilantes’, she emphasises the important role that both individuals and organisations have in taking responsibility for their own environmental impact and ensuring that organisations become more sustainable in every facet of their operations, including IT. Consumers are increasingly aware of the ethics of the companies they buy products from. According to a survey conducted by Forbes, 92% of consumers say they’re more likely to trust brands that are environmentally or socially conscious and 87% of consumers would buy a product with a social and environmental benefit if given the opportunity. In addition, more than half of consumers are willing to pay more for sustainable goods.

However, although businesses are responding to this market demand to become more environmentally conscious, there is still a long way to go. Out of 1.5 million organisations worldwide today, only 12,000 of them regularly report their greenhouse gas

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emissions. Moreover, some initiatives that might seem like a step towards sustainability hide a high environmental cost, such as moving to the cloud.

“The issue is not only around the data that we store,” Bryant says.

“Carbon emissions are also massively negatively impacted by the actions we, as IT users, take.

“Corporate citizens have a huge role to play to ensure we are not just moving ‘our mess’. It’s easy for organisations to talk about minimising their carbon footprint because they have moved workloads to the cloud. Cloud providers pride themselves on their sustainable platforms and rightly so. However, it is the responsibility of every organisation that moves workloads to the cloud to

be acutely aware that they continually optimise their data, no matter where that data is stored. All data should be de-duplicated, optimised, compressed, and tiered. Storing ‘a mess’ anywhere, in the cloud or on-premise, is not good practice and certainly not sustainable.”

Who doesn’t have hundreds of videos of their pets stored on their phone?

Although it might seem that going paperless is environmentally friendly, storing and sending hours and hours of content also comes with its own emissions.

For example, an email that takes 10 minutes to write and is sent to 100 people - 99 of whom take three seconds to realise they should ignore it and one of whom actually reads it - creates 26g of CO2 emissions. To make matters ISSUE 19

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worse, multiple copies of that one original email are stored both locally and in the cloud. When one multiplies this by all the people that send multiple emails both while at work and at home, it is easy to see that the impact is massive.

Therefore, although moving data to the cloud does improve sustainability, it is fundamental that that process is accompanied by increased awareness of the data that is being produced, to avoid merely pushing the problem further down the supply chain.

“Finding the optimal way of using, storing and processing data is important on our journey to becoming more sustainable,” Bryant says. “This is where NetApp can play a pivotal role.”

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The industry average Power Usage Efficiency (PUE) rating, which measures the energy efficiency of a data centre, is 1.8%. NetApp’s PUE rating is 1.15%.

According to Bryant, this great rating is due to the fact that NetApp uses its own technologies to optimise the data in its data centres. However, she also admits that the journey is still ongoing.

ESG goals stress the importance of standards, measurements and accurate reporting. Although NetApp has put a lot of effort into improving these standards, Bryant still believes that many companies have not gone “granular enough” in terms of defining specific standards that correlate to the scopes of the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Protocol and the targets of the Paris Climate Agreement.

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Only by defining specific standards, the efficacy of ESG strategies can be adequately measured, avoiding the traps of ‘greenwashing’. This is a process by which organisations pick the standards that best suit their ESG reports and market those successes, changing them every month or year to best suit their position at every given moment. Greenwashing creates a situation in which companies use different standards to measure their impact and remove the possibility of making a comparison with competitors.

“We are all on a journey towards carbon neutrality and we are aware that the IT industry consumes huge amounts of energy,” she says. “We are collectively working towards minimising this by prompting the right discussions and calling for better standards. If we have common standards, and those standards are mandatory, and companies have to report on them, the more we tighten those standards, the less open to interpretation they can be, then the better the industry will become.

“It will take a global effort to ensure we are managing data correctly and requires corporate citizens within every business to be acutely aware and vocal regarding the environmental impact of what they are storing and how we are using IT.” While cloud providers operate extremely efficient data centres, it isn’t

sustainable to keep superfluous data anywhere, either in data centres or in a cloud service provider. Regardless of where it is stored, superfluous data will consume the same amount of electricity, producing the same level of emissions as it would anywhere else.

Therefore, although companies should be aware of the need to reduce the data that they store, it is also, ultimately, a global and collective responsibility.

“Just because you are exporting data to other locations, doesn’t mean this data is no longer your problem,” Bryant says. “Data proliferates a bit like COVID, it’s going to go everywhere. And we need to change not only the corporate conscience, but the consumer conscience.”

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According to Bryant, a way in which awareness can be raised about this issue would be to have an emoji on every phone screen that would change colour from green to red, depending on use and the carbon emissions associated with it. This would incentivise people to, for example, send links to spreadsheets instead of several attachments.

During the Women in Silicon Roundabout Conference, Bryant spoke to a group of female tech leaders about the importance of being aware of one’s own digital carbon footprint, as well as inquiring about the companies they work for and with. Only then, a real 40

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impact will be made and greenwashing will be avoided.

“I still think we have a long way to go,” she said. “But I can tell you that in 40 years, we have come a long way.

And it’s now time for us to take the next step in becoming today’s consumer vigilantes. Because I believe that the word consumer now is not somebody who watches TV adverts. It’s us, behaving as corporate citizens in the companies that we work for.”

During the past few decades, companies have made great progress in terms of inclusivity. When Bryant began her studies, less than two percent of her

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It will take a global effort to ensure we are managing data correctly and requires corporate citizens within every business to be acutely aware and vocal regarding the environmental impact of what they are storing and how we are using IT”

cohort was female. Today, there is over one million women working in STEM in the UK, according to the 2019 Workforce Statistics. In the same way that the corporate world has risen to the challenge of making workplaces more inclusive, it can now change its approach to sustainability and the cloud.

“Importantly, there is a need for unified standards of sustainability measurement in the IT industry,” she says. “Accurate standardised reporting on GHG Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions is fundamental – this needs to be the focus of all of us as corporate consumer vigilantes.

“A green future means a future with better awareness of the impact of our behaviours when using IT and better awareness of the importance of managing data optimally.”

IT is the future. However, in order for technology to continue improving lives, it must cease to do so at the expense of the planet. Consumers have the power to make this happen, by demanding better environmental policies from the companies they buy their products from, and learning to make use of them in a way that is both useful and sustainable.

Only then we will be able to keep our heads - and data - in the cloud.

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GOOD OR BAD?

GOOD OR

BAD? Great power comes with great responsibility, and that is particularly true of new technologies. Each month, Tech For Good discusses the potential benefits and dangers of technological advances that are coming to market. This month we ask: Are driverless cars a safety risk?

AUTHOR: Beatriz Valero de Urquía

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DRIVERLESS CARS

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magine getting into your car, saying where you want to go and enjoying the journey while you read a book, talk on the phone or watch TV, without having to worry about traffic, directions or road safety. This is what the future of cars could look like.

Over one million people die every year as a result of road traffic crashes, according to data from the World Health Organization. Moreover, UK government data identifies driver error as a factor in 94% of crashes. Autonomous cars can be the solution to this problem. By using ​​a combination of sophisticated AI software, LiDAR, and RADAR sensing technology, self-driving cars will be able to learn the rules of the road, detect potential hazards and safely avoid them. Moreover, they don’t get tired, drunk or distracted.

Driverless cars will be a fundamental part of the cities of the future. The UK Department of Transport has announced its plans to allow certain driverless vehicles on its roads in 2021, and US states such as California and Arizona have relaxed rules for the testing of robotaxis. In addition to their safety benefits, autonomous vehicles will make 44

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GOOD? life easier for older people and those with disabilities who cannot safely drive.

They might provide better, safer, and cheaper options for people currently forced to own a car to get anywhere.

And, eventually, they might even fly.

What the expert says: “ Few technologies hold as much promise to improve people’s lives with safe, accessible, and environmentallyfriendly transportation” Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO at Uber

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he promise of self-driving cars has been looming in the distance for decades. Tesla, General Motors, Waymo, Toyota and Honda all predicted they would have self-driving cars on the road by 2020.

However, this benchmark came and went, and autonomous vehicles are still in development. The reason is clear: the technology just isn’t there yet.

In March 2018 a self-driving car ran down a pedestrian for the first time. An investigation into the accident revealed that the system was designed to assume that people would never cross except at a crosswalk, so when Elaine Herzberg walked her bicycle across the road, it failed to identify her, with tragic consequences. Although self-driving cars will reduce human-caused accidents, this will only be the case once all cars on the roads are driverless. A survey by J.D. Power claims that by 2034, autonomous vehicles will only make up 10% of all vehicles being bought and sold, so the ideal scenario for this technology is still a long way ahead.

But will people adapt to the technology, once it arrives? In a recent survey, 15% of the US public said

BAD?

they don’t believe there will ever be an autonomous vehicle on the market, and 42% said they would never ride in a fully automated vehicle. Moreover, in 2020 Uber sold off its autonomous division to Aurora in a deal worth about $4 billion - roughly half what it was valued at in 2019. At the moment, autonomous cars sometimes seem like the dream of a few, rather than a working solution for all.

What the expert says: “ Even after years of testing, autonomous cars are unable to match the human driver’s performances.

There are a lot of scenarios - weather conditions, road conditions - where these cars are not as smart as we want them to be” Dr Francesco Biondi, Associate Professor at the University of Windsor

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EXPERT INSIGHT

EXPERT INSIGHT In every issue of Tech For Good we speak to experts leaders in their field. This month we get the expert insight from Canon Europe, SAP and Temenos

FEATURING CANON EUROPE Andy Tomkins

EMEA Sustainability Engagement Manager

SAP Salvatore Lombardo

Senior Vice President & Chief Product Officer, Procurement Solutions

TEMENOS Kalliopi Chioti

Chief Environmental, Social and Governance Officer

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Prioritising sustainability

Andy Tomkins, EMEA Sustainability Engagement Manager, Canon Europe, on the steps companies can take to become more sustainable

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ustainable business has become a high priority for every organisation. Due to the urgency and scale of the issue, many might not know where to begin. Luckily, change doesn’t have to be extreme.

You can start small: it’s all about the details. The first steps can include separating the paper, plastic and cardboard used in the office, and reducing the use of disposable cutlery. Businesses can also review their transport or packaging practices, use recycled and sustainable material, shift to more environmentally friendly manufacturing. These small changes will all add up and create impactful change in the long term.

Back in 2007, technology accounted for 1% of global greenhouse emissions.

Today, less than two decades later, it represents 3.7% of the world’s carbon footprint.

We will of course continue to use technology – it is an important tool for humankind and modern business, but

it can be used more sustainably. Organisations can take a few small, but beneficial steps to address environmental problems. Something as simple as keeping a business phone for three years instead of two, or a laptop for six years instead of five, can change a company’s use of raw materials.

Think of the impact it would have on our planet if all organisations were to do this on an international level. Demand to create new machines each year would go down. As a result, the overall amount of raw materials mined to meet the demand would be reduced.

Now is the time to change Before COVID-19, a few companies had already introduced more flexible working policies and were allowing employees to work remotely. However, the impact that the pandemic has had on working practices has brought the perfect opportunity to reconsider and adapt how businesses approach sustainability.

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Hybrid working improves employee wellbeing, offering a positive work-life balance. And, of course, there’s a massive added benefit: less time in the office reduces travel needs, which means lower carbon emissions. In fact, the average co-working space, or a communal office closer to home, can help save 118 metric tons of annual carbon emission between now and 2029.

Technology can also play its part. Even before the pandemic, video conferencing was connecting colleagues working in different offices around the world.

However, today it has become a staple in workplace communication. This shows that with the right solutions and tools, workers can transition between offices and remote working environments with minimal disruption.

It is a win-win Enterprises acting on sustainability can increase their chances of attracting and retaining top talent. Research has revealed that a strong sustainability plan would positively impact an employee’s decision to stay in a company for the long term. Notably, 75% of millennial workers, who will make up three-quarters of the workforce in about four years, would accept a lower salary to work for a company that’s environmentally responsible.

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sustainability benefits the environment and the bottom line too. Studies show that 60% of UK and US consumers will spend more on eco-friendly products and services. This means that organisations striving to change and impact the environment less can attract customers willing to pay more. And thanks to rating programs and awards schemes, consumers now have greater visibility of brands and products that are less harmful to the environment.

The good news is that today, sustainability for businesses is not about the ‘if’, but about the ‘how’. By making small changes and focusing on the details, organisations in any sector can have a truly positive impact on the environment.

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Visualising fair labour practices Salvatore Lombardo, Senior Vice President & Chief Product Officer, Procurement Solutions, SAP, on icebergs, fair labour practices and supply chains Like icebergs, which only show about one-fifth of their overall mass above the water’s surface, supply chains rarely present a full view of their end-to-end activities at first look. This lack of visibility into the supply chain and the procurement processes that feed into it can cause damaging outcomes for companies striving to maintain compliance with both government regulations and consumer demands for ethical business practices. Much like ships that can’t see what lies beneath the surface to differentiate between a floeberg or iceberg, businesses run the risk of sinking due to a lack of visibility into their own procurement processes - and those of their trading partners which they rely on for goods and services beginning with sourcing and extending all the way to payment.

Consider the topic of fair labour practices, which is rapidly gaining importance among consumers. According to research from Markstein and Certus

Insights, 70% of consumers want to know what brands are doing to address social and environmental issues.

Just 17% said they don’t pay attention at all. These numbers reflect a highly engaged consumer base that tracks the activities and workforce practices of the brands they purchase from.

While many companies are committed to maintaining fair labour practices within their businesses, compliance does not stop there, at least where the consumer is concerned. Today’s consumers want to ensure that the products they purchase aren’t just sold by socially responsible companies; they demand that every link along the supply chain, all the way down to the original sourcing of materials, be equally committed to enforcing fair labour practices. Therein lies the danger of not knowing an iceberg’s size - or the workforce practices of your supply chain’s tier one, tier two, and tier three suppliers. Visibility is essential.

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Transparency and visibility in procurement magnify fair labour practices We are seeing an increased focus on consumers choosing everything from bananas and chocolate to diamonds and smartphones that are made, grown, harvested, assembled, or mined by companies that do not use child labour or forced labour at any point in the supply chain. Companies can gain this critical information when they have a clear view of their procurement processes and endto-end supply chain and transparency amongst their trading partners.

When companies have that level of visibility, they can choose to only partner with suppliers that share their values and commitment to ensuring that all materials, direct and indirect, are ethically sourced and produced using fair labour practices. Establishing trust and 50

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transparency throughout the supply chain enables businesses to confidently declare that their products are ethically sourced, created in an environmentally friendly way and that workers are treated humanely.

Organisations need to examine and address social responsibility along their supply chains, not just because failing to do so could be disastrous for their reputation and sales, but because it’s the right thing to do. Responsibility ripples beyond what your company is doing to comply with ethical standards, out to all the organisations with which you do business. You need assurance that each trading partner is acting responsibly. That requires looking under the surface at the entire iceberg to understand the practices of not only your strategic suppliers but your tier two and tier three suppliers too.

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Companies concerned with gaining and retaining market share absolutely need to make sure that every one of their trading partners follows agreedupon standards and have the ability to report on the social responsibility measures infused throughout the supply chain. This requires both trust between trading partners and a commitment to transparency regarding each other’s business practices.

Digital procurement boosts social responsibility The risks of procuring materials from suppliers that don’t protect their workers are real. Beyond damaging the brand’s reputation and driving away consumers, legal mandates regarding fair labour practices within supply chains have been put in place in nearly every country around the world.

Laws are changing to protect workers and vulnerable populations, requiring multinational companies to trace deeper into their supply chains and maintain transparency about their business practices when it comes to fair labour.

Some regulations require that companies proactively report on their human rights efforts while others require that companies demonstrate their due diligence if human rights abuses are discovered in their supply chains.

Most recently, in June 2021, the Ger-

man Federal Parliament approved a draft bill on corporate due diligence in supply chains, which intends to protect human rights and ensure sustainable production.

The resulting Supply Chain Due Diligence Act prohibits child labour, forced labour, slavery, and servitude. German businesses must now identify and assess human rights and environmental risks and establish an adequate, effective risk management system.

Identifying and avoiding these risks is less challenging for organisations that have embraced digital procurement.

By enhancing visibility across every category of spending, digital procurement solutions enable businesses to pursue compliance with these ethical standards. When companies gain true visibility into their suppliers’ labour practices - from the iceberg’s visible tip to its hidden base - they can be sure to engage only with socially responsible suppliers.

Ultimately, companies must commit to maintaining high ethical standards in order to survive with today’s socially conscious consumers. But it isn’t all about reducing risk and maintaining market share. As good corporate citizens, procurement leaders must step up and take on more responsibility for protecting the vulnerable from dangerous workforce practices. It’s not only good for business, it’s good for our world.

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Making banking greener Kalliopi Chioti, Chief Environmental, Social and Governance Officer, Temenos, on why banks need the cloud in the race to net-zero Banks have accelerated cloud implementation throughout the pandemic to help lower costs and transform customer experiences.

While the pandemic required proactive solutions to immediate challenges, another continuing and pressing challenge is the race to net-zero. Banks have realised that the cloud can provide part of the answer.

The role of the cloud in net-zero commitments The leading public cloud hyperscalers estimate that businesses using their infrastructure generate around 95% fewer carbon emissions. This is due to the optimisation of application development and performance and significant efficiency gains from hyperscale data centres.

The case is clear. Banks that have set themselves bold and ambitious targets to reach net-zero have little chance of getting there in time if they don’t make the shift to the cloud.

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Cutting carbon emissions At Temenos, we recognise how central ESG has become to banks’ strategies.

Our cloud-native SaaS offering, the Temenos Banking Cloud, incorporates ESG as a service to help banks gain carbon insights from using our products and to track their progress towards reaching their sustainability targets.

It also runs on public cloud infrastructure, and the hyperscalers we partner with have all made strong commitments to sustainability goals and using 100% renewable energy. All these energy efficiencies are passed onto our clients.

An example is Flowe, a cloud-enabled digital bank built on green principles and powered by Temenos. Within the first six months of launching in 2020 it onboarded 600,000 customers and is growing at twice the rate of its nearest competitor.

Supported by Temenos Banking Cloud, Flowe can grow sustainably, passing on benefits to customers for a cleaner, greener planet and a better society. Flowe is

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the first bank in Italy to be certified as a B-Corp and is also carbon-neutral.

Understand the green consumer Consumers are not bystanders to the climate debate, and they are increasingly matching their money with their values and voting with their wallets. No more so than millennials, who are more inclined to judge banks by their ESG record and commitment to sustainable banking. This is the generation in line to receive $68 trillion in inherited wealth by 2030. Banks can’t afford to ignore them. Today, a bank’s green credentials matter just as much as their financial services. Fall short on the former, and the latter may not even matter.

Large banks are well aware of their customer demands, as this is quickly penetrating into banking culture, moving beyond simple statements to net-zero emissions pledges and green deposits. We have seen this with the net-zero Banking Alliance, a global organisation comprised of 43 banks from 23 countries, all committed to having net-zero emissions by 2050 or sooner.

Empowering green customers This relationship between the bank and the customer is symbiotic. Institutions are now developing financial services that empower customers to take control of their own carbon footprint.

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By enabling individual insights through cloud banking, banks can build apps that give their customers tools to measure and manage the carbon impact of their spending, so that they can make more mindful spending decisions; reward them for their contributions toward sustainability; give them options to offset or reduce the carbon generated from a credit card payment; make it easier for them to invest in sustainable funds, and to switch to less carbon-intensive energy providers.

Walking the talk One of the big challenges for banks is knowing who to trust with their net-zero ambitions and who is pursuing greenwashing tactics. Thankfully, there is much more transparency than ever.

Reputable global indices such as The Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI) rank the leading companies’ ESG performance.

More than ever, the banking technology sector has a critical role in driving change in the banking industry and leading by example. Our mission towards a modern banking technology transformation is critical to providing our clients with the products to enable them to transition to a low carbon global economy. So, in addition to incorporating climate change as a risk into our operations, we are equally committed to

helping our clients transform into smart, sustainable organisations.

One bank that is making this happen is EQ Bank. It is the first bank in Canada to be fully hosted in the cloud.

EQ recently announced it had become carbon neutral. Their President and CEO Andrew Moor noted that “enriching the lives of Canadians can and should be accomplished simultaneously alongside a low carbon transition,” citing digital banking capabilities and energy-efficient, cloud-based architecture as key drivers of this alignment.

And this is the ultimate point. Innovation and addressing environmental challenges go hand in hand. More than that, digitilisation is reliant on sustainability, and vice-versa.

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SAILING INTO THE FUTURE Steven Lua, CEO of Unitrove, talks about building the world’s first liquid hydrogen bunkering unit, which could fuel the zeroemission ships of the future AUTHOR: Beatriz Valero de Urquía

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SAILING INTO THE FUTURE

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year ago, a ship got stuck in the Suez Canal, and the world stopped.

Although it may seem that ships are a thing from the past, the global economy is still incredibly dependent on this mode of transportation. It is estimated that 90% of the world’s goods are transported by the international shipping industry, including food, raw materials, and manufactured goods. This comes at a cost: Overall, the shipping sector is considered to be responsible for 3% of all global greenhouse emissions, almost double the impact of the aviation industry.

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The environmental impact of shipping also has severe consequences for global health. The fine particulate matter, sulphur oxides and nitrogen oxides that this industry produces are a fundamental contributor to around 400,000 premature deaths and 14 million cases of childhood asthma every year.

But despite the massive global dependency on this industry and its huge impact on the health of humans and the planet, there hasn’t been a large demand to decarbonise ships in the same way that there has been for cars or planes. Steven Lua, CEO of Unitrove, wants to change this.

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“The global maritime sector is one of the most polluting in the world,” he says. “It’s estimated that just a handful of the worst-polluting mega-ships on our oceans today produce more pollution than all the world’s cars put together.

That’s a staggering statistic, and one we simply cannot ignore. My personal mission is to create a virtuous world for the next thousand generations.”

Lua created Unitrove in order to provide clean, affordable energy solutions. Although the company was initially focused on decarbonising the heavy-duty transport industry, it turned to ships after building the UK’s first natural gas-fuelled facility in the Teesside area, in the north-east of England. It was then that Lua realised the massive carbon footprint of megaships and the industry’s dire need for decarbonising solutions.

However, natural gas is still a fossil fuel, and although it presented a great start, it wasn’t an ideal solution longterm. Enter liquid hydrogen.

Last year, during COP26, Unitrove presented the world’s first liquid hydrogen bunkering unit, which can be used to fuel zero-emission ships.

The project was a collaboration with Maritime UK - the industry body for the £46bn UK maritime sector - and it was presented at the Riverside College of the University of Glasgow as having

It’s estimated that just a handful of the worst-polluting mega-ships on our oceans today produce more pollution than all the world’s cars put together” Steven Lua

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We’re ultimately using technologies that have already been existing for the past 60 years or so, and we are just putting them into a brand-new context”

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enormous potential for many uses, including bridging the gap where electric and compressed hydrogen cannot reach: large vessels.

“A lot of the shipping industry at the moment that is looking at hydrogen are using what they call ‘compressed hydrogen’, which is good for small boats and things like that,” Lua says. “What we’ve decided to do is to take hydrogen but liquefy it, so it ends up being a gas at -253°C. “Ultimately, we take road tankers full of this stuff, and we connect it to our facility - think of it as a black box - and we then connect our facility to a ship.

Then the ship will be able to take the contents of the fuel from the road tanker or the container into the fuel tank. By doing that, we’re able to deliver a lot more fuel in a compact space relative to other fuels.”

From a volumetric energy density point of view, hydrogen is very large, which is a big problem for shipowners who are used to managing fuels that are heavy and dense and can be stored in small containers. Liquifying hydrogen, therefore, can change the rules of the game.

Although liquid hydrogen might sound incredibly futuristic, it isn’t. It has been used for decades as the propulsion fuel of choice for launching rockets and satellites into space. Lua compares it to electricity: it has been around for

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centuries, but we only started using electric cars a few years ago.

“Actually, some of the technologies that we are using in our unit will be coming from the space programmes,” he explains. “For example, the building connector that we need to connect between the road tanker and our unit is using what they call the Air Force company, presumably from the American Air Force standards, which was coming from NASA. We’re ultimately using technologies that have already been existing for the past 60 years or so, and we are just putting them into a brand-new context.

“So, for those people that are worried and saying that this is a new technology, we’re saying: ‘No, this is not

new technology. It’s a new market for existing technology.’”

However, decarbonising the shipping industry goes beyond individual ships.

In order for these ships to function there has to be a network and infrastructure that supports clean fuels. This is why the creation of a liquid hydrogen bunkering unit is so vital to the industry.

Despite Lua’s excitement about the impact that liquid hydrogen bunkering units will have on the world, and the environmental footprint of the global economy, he recognises it isn’t something that initially excites many people or that is often discussed in conversations about the net-zero goals.

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of everything else. From the governance perspective, they focus a lot on decarbonising cars, vans, trains, planes, buses, etc - things that the public can see. If you look at where the excitement is, people look at the Tesla car and say ‘This is the future of transport.’

And when you mention ‘We’ve just reinvented the petrol station’, it doesn’t quite have the same ring to it.”

The UK government has recently promised to introduce the first generation of zero-emissions ships in four years’ time to support its goal of achieving net-zero by 2050. In April 2021, the UK decided to include its share of international shipping and aviation emissions in its sixth Carbon Budget after decades of only counting 62

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emissions that were produced within its borders, a decision that had drawn criticism from green groups.

However, in Lua’s view these plans, although exciting, are leaving a fundamental part out: the infrastructure needed to support those ships, from bunkering units to the laws around the import and export of hydrogen.

“I am a bit concerned that the governments are not looking close enough to the fueling infrastructure side of things,” he says. “If they don’t decide to put their money in the infrastructure side of things, and they spend all their money in the downstream technologies, then you’re not going to be able to grow that because then there’s no way for the ecosystem to flourish.

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Without the infrastructure, we’re not going to have these vehicles.”

“One of the interesting questions I asked the ICS [International Chamber of Shipping] was: ‘What is the thinking and strategy around the import and export of hydrogen?’ And they said: ‘We’ve not really thought about that.’ I think we’d better because let’s say you’re located in Scotland, you’re building a wind turbine and you’re producing green hydrogen. If you produce green hydrogen quite often, what you’ll get out of the end of that process is a very low-pressure potion, which is great, but it’s not very good for just transporting in that mode.”

If the whole shipping industry is to run on hydrogen in a few decades, it is vital to devise effective ways to transport and commercialise the element. With this goal in mind, Unitrove is looking at options including ammonia, liquid organic hydrogen carriers and solid hydrogen in the form of sodium borohydride, some of which have already started to be used in countries such as Qatar.

The importance of regulating the import and export of hydrogen is not the only topic in which Lua disagrees with the ICS. The other one is its timelines.

At the moment, the ICS has pledged to make 50% of its industry zero emissions by 2050, a much less ambitious goal

than many other countries and industries and one that is not compatible with the Paris Agreement, which has called for fully zero-emissions by 2050.

Moreover, a factor that many of these timelines often forget is the lasting duration of the infrastructure. A large commercial ship, for example, can last up to 40 years, and so the ships that are being built today would still be functioning in 2060. Therefore, the need for zero-emission ships is more urgent than ever.

“We have to at least start at the minimum, and then work our way backwards,” Lua says. “Now that we’ve made the statement that the technology exists, we’ve got the next 15 years left to make decisions around our shipping fleet and to renew that.

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“It is sensible to align with that because the longer they [the international shipping industry] take to decide to align with that, the more the spotlight will shine on them. And the shipping industry definitely doesn’t want the spotlight shining on them.

Because that is the thing that is going to unravel the whole industry, which has been operating for a very long time under the guise of the lack of transparency, even more so than probably a lot of the other industries.”

The regulations of the shipping industry are often murky waters. Many companies are private and their ships 64

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operate under different territories from the country the company belongs to, making accountability much more difficult to establish.

However, some private companies are filling regulatory gaps and taking responsibility for reducing the emissions of the international shipping industry.

For example, in June 2018, the main actors from the financial sector and the shipping industry signed the Poseidon Principles to ensure that ship finance portfolios are aligned with the targets set out in the International Maritime Organization’s Initial Greenhouse Gas Strategy. Moreover, last October, nine

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Now that we’ve made the statement that the technology exists, we’ve got the next 15 years left to make decisions around our shipping fleet” big companies including Amazon, Ikea, and Unilever signed up to a pledge to only move cargo on ships using zerocarbon fuel by 2040.

By making access to financing conditional upon compliance with these targets, the finance industry has issued a wake-up call to the shipping sector, one they cannot sail away from.

“That’s a market-led signal, from within the industry,” Lua says. “This is not being forced upon them. But I feel that this has come from the transparency pressures that they’re under as big companies that the public interface with.

“By these organisations coming out and making statements of intention, it is quite clear that the shipping industry will have to adapt to these needs. That will clearly change the narrative around whether they are able to continue business as usual.”

Unitrove is already answering that market demand for greener shipping solutions and collaborating with companies that are looking to build lasting green ships. The bunkering unit is Lua’s starting point, but he has much greater ambitions for liquid hydrogen infrastructure, which could include artificial intelligence technology and smart solutions.

“If I were to give a hint as to where we see ourselves going, I’d say: ‘If Apple had reinvented the petrol station, what would it look like?’ That’s kind of where we see ourselves going,” Lua says.

“Could we be seeing autonomous infrastructures? Very possibly.”

The shipping industry needs to be a protagonist of efforts to decarbonise the global economy, as it constitutes one of its key players. Liquid hydrogen could become the green fuel of the future, and help a very traditional sector take vital steps towards net-zero. However, in order to see zero-emission ships sailing the seas, the behind-the-scenes infrastructure needs to be put in place and regulated. It may not be as glamorous as autonomous cars, but it will protect the Earth from becoming a sinking ship.

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