By Mathew Carr
Nov. 6, 2021 — GLASGOW: Cities are grappling with increasing climate threat. They desperately need better data to set more aggressive and focused policy … and infrastructure investment.
Google’s Environmental Insights Explorer is helping provide information to 20,000 cities and regions, potentially speeding the climate transition.
The data on buildings and transport / traffic is helping the likes of Mexico City and Melbourne in Australia understand the potential for solar deployment. In Los Angeles, it’s helping identify which communities are facing extreme heat. It’s also identifying where to plant more trees.
It does not yet include data on emissions from waste, but that’s under consideration for later, said Nicole Lombardo, Product Strategy & Go-to-Market, Google – Environmental Insights Explorer, speaking virtually at a climate event in Glasgow Nov. 5, alongside the UN climate talks.
Google’s initiative is making my mind run wild. Imagine the data available to governments if they also see real-time trends in what people are buying and selling via Google Pay, for instance. Companies are beginning to measure carbon data in their products. See story at bottom of this page.
(I’m not saying it’s necessarily on the cards, but governments could potentially get the ability to deploy much more refined climate policies — assuming privacy concerns can be overcome.)
For instance real-time gasoline sales would allow more accurate planning (and crude oil trading) as electric vehicles take over. (As would EV charging sales data.)
EIE, started in 2018, has grown rapidly. The website is cool – check this snip of Glasgow link in caption (It shows Glasgow’s transport emissions dropped 39% in 2020 – wow) It’s designed for policy makers, so there’s limited access:
Google is working with Miami, where some apartments are pancaking and killing residents — possibly a problem stoked by climate change, according to Rolling Stone magazine, which cited the fact that buildings that once had concrete substructures exposed to fresh groundwater are now potentially exposed to corrosive salt water.
Investigations are continuing. See link below.
“We’re dealing with pretty significant climatic events that are not theoretical, they are actual. I can’t even tell you how frustrating it is. We are a first-world country. We have resources,” said Francis Suarez, Miami’s mayor, physically at the event and the UN climate talks. Poorer cities are going to find climate change even more difficult to deal with, he said.
Residents of Miami are already buying and selling houses based on climate policy, so accurate data is crucial, he said. See flood map below.
The city is putting together an action plan to spend about $200 million to buttress its infrastructure — again — accurate data will help.
Suarez, at 44 part of a new generation of political leaders, urged governments to be more ambitious.
“We’ve really got to focus on how we reverse some of the damage we’ve done.” Slowing down the warming? “I just don’t think that’s enough.”
So the upshot is …the world needs to better use improved data to deploy more aggressive climate policy quickly to get to net zero — then start to remove additional heat-trapping gas from the atmosphere.
That might be Miami’s only hope.
NOTES
Link for Rolling Stone article: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/miami-beach-building-collapse-climate-change-1191989/
Miami flood zone map:
See also this EVENT NEXT WEEK: http://carrzee.org/2021/11/05/carbon-embedded-in-supply-chains-is-a-2-4-trillion-euro-opportunity-carbonsig/
Carbon Embedded in Supply Chains is a 2.4 Trillion Euro Opportunity: CarbonSig
There ‘s 2.4 trillion euro of carbon hidden in supply chains, according to Carbonsig.com, which is seeking to make it visible.
That’s 40 billion tons at 60 euros a ton.
Big companies are measuring the carbon in their supply chains in a bid to lower their impact on the climate.
The European Union’s plan for a carbon border adjustment around 2025 is making this urgent.
Nick Gogerty, managing director of Carbon Finance Labs at Oxy Low-Carbon Ventures asks:
Are you buying products that will sell with a carbon $ premium or remain unsellable due to legacy dirty technology? Need a #CBAM tool? Need to create new lower carbon products and services (shipping, electricity, energy, steel, hydrogen)?
Need to match your product with #carbon offsets or removals to reduce the net match to 0 or below?
Carbonsig is part of Carbon Finance Labs
Attend this event on Nov. 9:
From International Emissions Trading Association program:
DIGITAL CARBON DECLARATIONS FOR PRODUCTS AND SERVICES REVEALED:
FROM CONSUMERS TO Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanisms
40 billion tons of CO2e / yr ends up in the atmosphere
Most economic value-adding activity involves energy as Carbon-adding activity. economic activity has price tags, Digital Carbon tags are coming to reveal the hidden currency of product carbon.
In the near future, Digital carbon declarations will be required to win product RFPs, pass customs declarations, win consumer marketplaces and do business. Explore some tools and trends shaping these things.
Carbon Finance Labs will highlight a new tool for creating, tracking and managing carbon declarations across supply chains for all products and services. A new open source initiative CARML (carbon markup language) will also be shared for putting the carbon context using existing systems and actors.
In addition, a leading attorney and carbon thinker will highlight the state of legal Carbon declarations in the consumer and commercial speech arenas. Lisa De Marco https://resilientllp.com/professionals/lisademarco/
A leading specialist in consumer brands and supply chains will highlight how declarations for reduced, zero and even negative carbon declarations may shape the winners and losers in the “clean” carbon economy. Katherine Foster, Open Earth https://www.linkedin.com/in/katherinefoster/
Planned moderator? me, Mathew Carr
The program listing from IETA, page 29: https://www.ieta.org/resources/COP26/COP26%20IETA%20BusinessHub%20Program%20Guide.pdf