/// PROF. YAEL PARAG ELECTRIC

Vehicles

Israel announced that by 2030, all new vehicles will be electric which means hundreds of thousands of electric vehicles (EVs) on the roads. While EVs will contribute to reducing air pollution in the urban environment, and if charged by renewable energy, to reducing carbon emissions from the transport sector, the incorporation of so many EVs into the electricity grid presents several challenges.

One is the potential strain on the grid caused by the increased demand. Furthermore, the demand for charging stations will also increase, putting a strain on the existing infrastructure, and a need to develop thousands of charging stations. Another challenge is the need for more renewable energy sources to power EVs.

Charging management, charging EVs with locallygenerated electricity, and using the cars’ batteries as storage facilities to return electricity to the grid in times of need (aka vehicle-to-grid) are a few of the strategies to tackle some of these challenges. Prof. Yael Parag is investigating these and other strategies to support EVs in Israel and abroad.

Prof. Parag, in collaboration with Dr. Ghassan Zubi and Dr. Shlomo Wald, recently published a report that proposes how a blockchain-enabled platform could improve the grid management and the economic efficiency of EV charging by local PV generated electricity (“Blockchain-Enabled PV2EV Platform in Israel”).

In other research, “Grid Aware Mobility and Energy Sharing (GAMES)”, funded by ERA-Net, Prof. Parag with researchers from Switzerland and Austria, is investigating public perceptions of shared EV fleets and the various business models that could couple the benefits of shared EV fleets and PV generation.

New Actors In Highly Distributed Energy Systems

In response to climate change and the need to decarbonize our society, the electricity system is going through a transformation. Traditional electricity systems are highly regulated, characterized by large fossil fuel (or nuclear)-based power plants and managed by big utilities, while future systems will be renewable-rich, decentralized, more liberalized and less regulated energy systems, with multiple suppliers and stakeholders and new payment approaches.

A decarbonized and decentralized (DD) energy future will include companies with new and innovative payment approaches and business models, and new features such as prosumer markets, peer-to-peer electricity trading, gridconnected microgrids, virtual power plants (VPP), electric vehicles (EV) with vehicle-to-grid (V2G) connection, energy service companies (ESCOs), dynamic pricing, and real time demand response programs. Future DD energy systems are often perceived not only as cost-effective and efficient, but also “democratic”, “fair” and “just”, more resilient and secure, and environmentally sustainable.

However, trade-offs and contradictions between different clean and local energy generation goals are inherent to DD energy systems, such as conflicts between the use of land for renewable electricity generation vs. the provisioning of ecosystem services, or the trade-offs between low carbon electricity vs. high volume of PV waste and battery toxic waste. Furthermore, DD electricity systems and markets, allegedly, could be more equitable, fair and democratic in terms of the general publics’ ability to influence the markets, participate as generators and become prosumers. However, DD systems might also negatively impact equity and fairness if not goverend appropriately.

Prof. Yael Parag and Dr. Shiri Zemah Shamir, together with Dr. Naama Teschner from BenGurion University are investigating the various social, environmental, economic and security implications of DD systems. Their research is funded by the Israeli Science Foundation. In a paper recently published with their PhD student Elad Shaviv in the journal Energy Research and Social Science, they investigated the new actors likely to enter the DD electricity market, what drives them, and what business models would enable these actors to participate. In the paper, they also point at the potential threats to energy security posed by DD markets with numerous new actors.

/// DR. ASAF TZACHOR

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is on the cusp of driving an agricultural revolution, and helping confront the challenge of feeding our growing global population. But researchers warn that using new AI technologies at scale holds huge risks that are not being considered.

A comprehensive risk analysis, published in the journal Nature Machine Intelligence, warns that the future use of Artificial Intelligence in agriculture comes with substantial potential risks for farms, farmers and food security, that are poorly understood and under-appreciated.

“The idea of intelligent machines running farms is not science fiction. Large companies are already pioneering the next generation of autonomous ag-bots and decision support systems that will replace humans in the field,” says Dr. Asaf Tzachor, from Reichman University, lead author of the paper.

“But so far, insufficient attention has been given to the question ‘Are there any risks associated with a rapid deployment of agricultural AI?’” he adds.

Despite the huge promise of AI for improving crop management and agricultural productivity, potential risks must be addressed responsibly and new technologies properly tested in experimental settings to ensure they are safe, and secure against accidental failures, unintended consequences, and cyber-attacks, the authors say.

In their research, the authors have come up with a catalog of risks that must be considered in the responsible development of AI for agriculture – and ways to address them.

They also raise the alarm about cyber-attackers potentially causing disruption to commercial farms using AI, by poisoning datasets or shutting down sprayers, autonomous drones, and robotic harvesters. To guard against this, they suggest that “white hat hackers” help companies uncover any security failings during the development phase, so that systems can be safeguarded against real hackers.

In a scenario associated with accidental failure, the authors suggest that an AI system - programmed only to deliver the best crop yield in the short termmight ignore the environmental consequences of achieving this, leading to overuse of fertilizers and soil erosion in the long term. Over-application of pesticides in pursuit of high yields could poison ecosystems; over-application of nitrogen fertilizer would pollute the soil and surrounding waterways. The authors suggest involving applied ecologists in the technology design process to ensure these scenarios are avoided.

Autonomous machines could improve the working conditions of farmers, relieving them of manual labor. But without inclusive technology design, socioeconomic inequalities that are currently entrenched in global agriculture - including gender, class, and ethnic discriminations - will remain.

“AI is being hailed as the way to revolutionize agriculture. As we deploy this technology on a large scale, we should closely consider potential risks, and aim to mitigate those early on in the technology design,” says Dr. Tzachor.