Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Welcome to the Healthy Spaces podcast, where we explore how climate technology and innovation are transforming the spaces where we live, work, learn and play. Join us for conversations with sustainability leaders, startups and scientists about what’s next and how we are making a positive impact on people and the planet. Listen in…
AUDIO PROMPT - MUSIC FADE IN
Dominique: We live in a time where artificial intelligence and digital technology have the ability to transform the way we approach spaces and systems. And as more analog streams become digitized, the legacy mindsets and systems we've become so used to are being challenged, but if we can reconcile these different generations of technology, we might just hold the key to a more sustainable future. So, how are these innovations being made? What systems need to be brought into the AI era and how will these advancements shape our future and solve the biggest challenges we face today?
Ryan: Most of the legacy systems are operated by folks that aren't necessarily thinking about this from a digital standpoint and those systems and those teams behind that data are difficult to change behavior.
Bob: We're at another inflection point where we have a lot of growth. There's a lot of opportunities to work together across the value chain, and I do believe that the schools, and the universities, and the government programs from the department of energy, and the venture folks see the problem and are actively recruiting and backing research to solve, you know, mega problems to meet this net zero goal.
Riaz: We are working on some really cool capability where we take a physical object, and we create a digital twin of that machine. So, you're actually trying to compare how the machine is operating in real time versus the ideal operating conditions of the machine, and you can see how data rich that that process is, but you can also see the power of how much value we can add through that by finding out in great detail where there's gaps between what the performance should be and what the performance is.
Dominique: You just heard from Ryan Rutledge, VP of Strategy and Innovation at Jules Accelerator, Bob Irvin, Executive Director at Joules Accelerator, and Riaz Raihan, Chief Digital Officer at Trane Technologies. And I’m Dominique Silva and you're listening to Healthy Spaces, the podcast exploring how technology and innovation are transforming the spaces where we live, learn, work, and play. In today's episode, we will learn how combining digital technology and innovation is improving sustainability, efficiency, and environmental impact across several industries. We'll explore how enhanced connectivity, AI driven efficiency, and energy saving technologies are benefiting the built environment. And we'll also discuss how startups and innovation are tackling climate technology challenges, shaping our future and addressing today's biggest issues. And first, my co-host Oakley Roberts, VP of Innovation, talks with Riaz about how digital innovation is transforming the built environment and cold chain sectors
Riaz: I've seen a lot of change over the past two decades. The big change that I've seen is the ability to run software close to the device but also in the cloud. And that ability to do things both on the edge, as it's now called, and also in the cloud, has unleashed a whole host of possibilities. Let me give you a couple of examples. First and foremost, it's made it very easy, inexpensive, and secure to connect any kind of device to a digital fabric. So, today we talk about a digital fabric being a global common fabric, a common layer, if you will, and you can connect different kinds of devices very easily to that fabric in a very secure fashion, so for me, that's super exciting to be able to do that at scale. The second element, which is exciting, is the ability to retrofit existing devices that maybe did not have that capability when they were shipped. The third thing, what you can do with that connection. So as an example, in the residential space, we can monitor a machine and we can tell the customer, the homeowner that something is going to go wrong with the machine before it goes wrong. Likewise in commercial, the big value prop and the big use case of course is maintenance, preventive maintenance, and then, of course, breakdown maintenance and the ability to connect that back through the supply chain using data into parts management. Food transportation, it's all about the cold chain these days, you know, the amount of energy spent in precooling containers and precooling trailers is massive just by cutting that down by 25 percent or 30 percent results in a massive savings for companies, and it's also good for the environment. So, there's a massive amount of goodness that comes out of this. It's not just about cost, but it's also about greenhouse emissions. It's also about unnecessary heat, and it's about the reduction in the use of fossil fuels. So, there's lots of benefits that come from this, and digital technology can play a really vital role and a very tangible role, and you can see how it connects back to our vision of challenging what's possible for a sustainable world.
Oakley: It's really insightful. Your point on the edge in the cloud and seeing how it's also bringing access in a more broader sense to the users of the equipment, especially in the built environment, and being able to see exactly how buildings are operating and bringing that information right to the point of impact. And it's a lot of data, Riaz. So, how much data are we recording every day from our customers?
Riaz: Now, first of all, I must say that we record it very securely, and we store it very securely, but it's about five billion data points per day, and as we look ahead, Oakley, we think this number will grow to about 15 or 16 billion by the end of this decade. So, it's a massive amount of data that we gather, but we do it in a very secure way. We do it in a way that is in complete compliance and in agreement with the customers, and it actually helps them because it allows us to have a digital eye on how their building is performing, how the HVAC system is working, and if you think about the economics behind this, the average building about 29 percent of the operating costs relates in some way, shape or form to their heating, ventilation, air conditioning. That's a big number, and if we can help shave a few percentage points or many percentage points off that, and we can bring the cost down that's not only good for the owner of the building because it saves money, it's also good for the environment.
Oakley: It's just an incredible amount of data. It's hard to get your head around, and the ever increasing compute power capability that we have at our disposal is allowing us to unlock the potential of this data in new ways. What are some of the challenges and opportunities you see to unlock the power of the data?
Riaz: Number one, I think it's really insightful these days how collaborative customers are in giving us access to this kind of data because they see the massive potential as well. They have seen reductions in energy consumption through, for example, Trane autonomous controls that allows them to use the energy consumption by 27 percent in some cases, right? Number two, I see a lot of benefit in the cold chain. The cold chain were only scratching the surface at this stage by helping reduce precool. The cold chain can save literally hundreds of millions of tons of food wastage. It can help us reduce energy consumption on the road. It can help us drive decongestion. It can help us with lots of other benefits. Again, huge environmental impact. And then finally, I also believe that as ESG becomes more important and decarbonization becomes, you know, it's a mega trend that we see, companies are getting more and more interested in how they can harness this data to drive awareness and to drive reporting. And as some of this reporting becomes non-optional and becomes something that they have to do for compliance reasons, we can help with that too, so we play many roles now. It's not just about the machine. It's also about the data around the machine and around the context of the machine, whether it's a building or transportation.
Dominique: Buildings represent about 30 percent of the world's energy demand. Additionally, over 10 percent of greenhouse gas emissions come from food loss and waste. So, reducing energy consumption in buildings and preventing food loss are a significant opportunity to reduce carbon emissions. But how can we utilize technology and foundational AI to achieve this kind of sustainable impact, as well as unlock value for customers?
Riaz: So, we are working on some really cool capability where we take a physical object, a chiller, as an example, which is a large machine, roughly the size of a school bus, and we create a digital twin of that machine. This allows us to use the power of data to remotely access the machine. To visualize that machine sitting tens of miles away or hundreds of miles away, and for our engineers to look at that machine and to track it and to actually compare the performance of that machine to its birth certificate. So, you're actually trying to compare how the machine is operating in real time versus the ideal operating conditions of the machine, and you can see how data rich that process is, but you can also see the power of how much value we can add through that by finding out in great detail where there's gaps between what the performance should be and what the performance is. The other example I would offer is around Trane autonomous controls. Now I talked about the machine, let me talk about a building because the building has a lot of data around it. The shape of the building, the size of the building, the sun position, the existing weather conditions around the building, the forecasted weather conditions, the haystack mapping. There's a myriad of data, millions of data points that can be then fed into a deep learning model that uses algorithms, and the power of artificial intelligence to really figure out how best to manage the temperature settings in that building. So, you're not sacrificing comfort, but you're reducing the expense on energy. And this is classic artificial intelligence applied to HVAC. And I'm very excited about this because I think we're just scratching the surface here.
Oakley: So, it's hard to talk about technology and innovation these days without discussing generative AI. And, you know, AI has been around for a long time. Humans have been trying to replicate human thinking since the invention of the computer. But it's been only recently, you know, with Moore's Law that we're at that point on the compute curve where GPUs and CPUs can replicate human thinking. And what do you think is the role where artificial intelligence plays in our digital transformation of the built environment. And how do we leverage it to do good for buildings to keep them healthy and safe and more comfortable for the humans that occupy them every day?
Riaz: In one of my prior companies, I ran a company where we built software using AI that was used by 176 million humans. And we were able to mine that data using generative AI. It was very powerful, and it allowed a lot of great companies to get insight. So, I'm a big fan of generative AI. I think it has great potential, and I like to talk about tangible examples. So, let me give you two. The first example I'll give you is how we serve our customers. Think about the millions of emails that transpire in any given year between our folks in the field and our customer base and any one human can only remember so much. Using the power of Gen AI, we can create excellent and workable summaries that can be shared by a lot of different people, right? It's kind of applying the idea that when you go to Wikipedia or you go to one of those sites, you may not know everything, but you can definitely find what you're looking for and Gen AI can make a nice summary for you. That's the basic idea but applied now to a very specific customer company kind of interaction. So, that can save thousands of hours, hundreds of hours of productivity and make people far more productive without missing out on any important details. Number two is imagine how much easier it would be for crews that are actually working on customer sites to find specific information about specific procedures or find specific parts that are needed to make that installation successful. One of the things we are experimenting with right now, it's very much a concept stage, is to use visual search. So, you talk about generative AI, imagine picking up your phone taking a picture of a specific part that might be a legacy part, and the AI then searches for it, matches based on a multipoint match, and gives you suggestions on what the part might look like. Oh, by the way, it also tells you where it's located and how soon it can be shipped to you. So, these are the kinds of things that Gen AI can help us with, and that productivity will allow us to serve our customers better and eventually work towards our goal of being a sustainability leader.
Oakley: So, looking forward into the future, Riaz, you know, what's next? What do you thinks out the front windshield with innovation and technology and in our industry that's going to be reducing the environmental impact of HVAC equipment, transfer refrigeration equipment and improving the lives of people.
Riaz: I genuinely believe, and I've seen this that Trane Technologies is at the forefront of digitizing the HVAC industry, and we will lead not with words, but with deeds. We have a lot of great innovations in the hopper, in the pipeline. A simple example would be the Connected Mechanical Service Agreement, the CMSA, that monitors a machine in real time. The analogy someone used the other day, which I love, is like, people with diabetes they used to just prick themselves twice a day, but now you have monitors that monitor the blood sugar level throughout the day. Guess which is more effective? Well, the latter. The same idea applied to heavy equipment is what the CMSA is. So, we lead with action and not just with words. We have a lot of other innovations coming. I talked about the digital twin, but equally, I think there's a lot of things we're doing on artificial intelligence. We're doing things around autonomous controls. There's a lot of work coming on that. There's a lot of work coming for the residential user. We're working on things that will help monitor home equipment. Exactly what you said, especially in the shoulder seasons, it's always complicated for the homeowner to figure out exactly how to set it, and I think this will help. And then, of course, in transportation. So, all of our businesses, including life sciences and supply are humming on all cylinders as far as digitalization is concerned. The other big frontier, Oakley, is connecting the front end, the customer facing digitalization with our supply chain that's going to unleash on the wave of opportunity in the future. So, I see huge amounts of opportunity to create value, to harvest value, and as you said, to drive towards our mission of driving greater sustainability for the planet.
Dominique: As we delve deeper into the impact of digital transformation, it's clear that this transition holds the potential to really drive sustainability. Riaz also highlighted the crucial role of digitization across various sectors and its potential to revolutionize our approach to environmental challenges. Building on this vision, we now turn to Bob and Ryan from the Joules Accelerator to find out how startups and innovation play a pivotal role in addressing modern sustainability challenges and drive growth in the clean tech space.
Bob: I'm Bob Irvin. I'm an executive director of Joules Accelerator. We've been around for about eight years now. We're a nonprofit and we are a clean tech, climate tech accelerator. We try to identify across the world interesting startups that can work with our community. Our community could be cities, they can be corporations, they can be universities, and what we try to do is bring the newest and latest early-stage technologies to our marketplace to get them some kind of business development opportunity.
Ryan: I'm Ryan Rutledge. I'm the VP of strategy and innovation with Joules here. Bob and I joined roughly around the same time at the end of 2015, early 2016, and my job primarily is to go out and scout startups, engage with them and advise them through this process of engagement with the corporates. We end up looking at about 1500 startups every cycle at a very high level. And then, we narrow that down ultimately to a top 25 which we share with our partners.
Oakley: When I think about our world's big challenges around how do we create a more sustainable world and address some of the big issues around decarbonization and emissions reductions, it can be daunting. But the one thing that keeps me super optimistic about our future and that we will find solutions to solve these challenges is when I engage with the startup community and programs like Joules Accelerator, and I know in your accelerator, you've seen many startups come through that are leveraging what's available to us today in terms of digital technology to make a difference. I'd love to hear from you about how you think about digital technology having an impact on emissions reduction, decarbonization, or other climate technology challenges that are trying to be solved and how's it different today than maybe what it was back when you started at Jules. So what's your perspective on that?
Bob: There's a huge amount of growth going on right now, and it's weighed against doing it in a sustainable, environmentally friendly way. I've mentioned, I know in the past that if you go back 60, 70 years ago, we had this big need to upgrade the grid, upgrade infrastructure, double the capacity, triple the capacity of power to meet air conditioning load. It was a pretty daunting task, and nobody thought we could do it. And it was like a 10- or 15-year period we had to triple the utility infrastructure needs, and we did it. Now, we've got this huge AI need, data center need, and you got this grid that's part physical infrastructure with, you know, transformers and poles and wires and then there's also the digital layer where, you know, it's making sure it takes on the market signals, and it delivers the energy and these are two forces that are becoming more aligned. You know, you keep hearing people say the four D's about decentralized, distributed, digitalized. There's another D in there. I can't remember off the top of my head, but all these forces now are kind of creating this need to make change faster than ever before to meet the growth demands, and you probably recently saw where folks like Google are saying we need this energy now, so we're willing to build it ourselves. We don't have to go through a utility rate hearing. We can work with Duke, but we can also work with a startup or a new innovator and also a tech provider to make it happen to meet the needs. So, I think the big thing is we're at another inflection point where we have a lot of growth. There's a lot of opportunities to work together across the value chain, so I just see huge growth. I don't know where the infrastructure and the skill sets are necessarily going to come from, but I do believe in market forces. And I do believe that the schools, and the universities and the government programs from the department of energy and the venture folks see the problem and are actively recruiting and backing research to solve, you know, mega problems to meet this net zero goal.
Ryan: Over the last almost 10 years now, we've seen like three waves, almost of different types of technologies, come up through this process. When we first started, IOT was just becoming a thing and we started to see this distributed data collection opportunity. And we worked with a couple of IOT companies very early on working on solving that initial primary problem. Within the next two to three years, we started to see kind of these secondary technologies come out of that. So, the software layer was built on top of the IOT solving some pretty basic challenges, but I mean, you know, real savings it was the low hanging fruit on the industrial side of efficiency along with the utilities and as that transformation happened, we also started to see a little bit of pull from the social, and the policy side of things in the capital is just starting to catch up also. So, like these four things have to come together and converge at the same time. So, we got those platforms. We got the software layers, and the corporate started to get socialized to the idea of working with startups at that level, and then over the last 2 to 3 years with AI, I mean, that's like this, tertiary layer sitting on top of all of this combining data that we've been collecting for ages, but also especially over this last 10 years and providing actionable insights to those sensors and the hardware behind it. So, that's what we've seen. I think, you know, at this point we're working with a lot of startups that are filling those gaps between the key corporate players, their vendors, and the end users and solving some of those problems that unify this system of technologies and machinery.
Oakley: Yeah, that layer, that technology stack is really evolving with these startup companies trying to solve the problems, and the interoperability and the communication that I think Bob was mentioning. Ryan, what are you seeing within the technology and startup community that's helping to make that information flow better from the demand to the consumption side. What are some of the problems that are being solved?
Ryan: One of the big things is organizing unstructured data, and we see a lot of companies all of a sudden they're collecting legacy paperwork and putting it together and saying to pipe and foundry types of operations that have this data going back 60 years, you know, if you turn your pumps on at this certain time you'll save, you know, 15 percent on your energy bills. It's taking all of these analog data streams putting them into the digital system and then using that to kind of like take this next step forward and that's been a real challenge actually. So, we go to the social side of things. Most of the legacy systems are operated by folks that aren't necessarily thinking about this from a digital standpoint and those systems and those teams behind that data are difficult to change behavior. So, it's taking that information and making it actionable in such a way that they're then willing to make those changes.
Bob: Yeah, another example, Oakley, is when we had a company work with one of our local utilities here on preventive maintenance when they should shut a wind turbine down to improve any type of safety issue or reliability issue. That was able to save the company a million to a million and a half dollars. And it was a startup and a lot of these corporations and utilities, in particular, don't like working with early-stage stuff. They want a little more credibility. So, when we get them to work together on a pilot, that's a first step at least in terms of kind of creating that trust.
Oakley: Bob, you've spent most of your career in the utility industry, and we were talking about how the grid is seeing unprecedented demand because of things like data centers and the electrification of many things, right? And as you've seen that in that industry over the decades go through different cycles, what's unique about this cycle and how is technology going to solve the challenge in front of us to match the demand and the supply side?
Bob: The growth is pretty significant. The consequences of managing it properly are pretty significant. In the old days, you know, the grid was just sort of a one-way transaction from generation, transmission, distribution of the customer. And now, the grid kind of operates bi directionally, you know, it's going two ways now. Information is flowing a couple of different ways. It's real time. You need it now, you know, it's that FedEx mentality. We need it right away. 24/7 firm needs to be available. But the strains that renewables bring, you know, with intermittency issues, without enough batteries, with not enough nuclear and maybe geothermal capabilities, and it's putting a strain on a priceless asset that needs to transform faster and quicker than it ever has before. But I think the pace of change is greater. I think there's a greater sense of urgency. Utilities to me are very valuable, but the problem is, and I’ve worked with a lot of utilities, I still think the average age is over 55 but that's okay. If we hunker down on operational excellence, and we're willing to partner and not do it ourselves, because a lot of the utilities, I think, always felt like they can do it better and they don't need to respond as fast. They would sit down and do these 30-year integrated resource plans, and they weren't really too worried, but they always underestimated innovation. So, it's just more worldly. There's supply chain issues. There's more data. There's more knowledge. There's aging workforces. So, it just puts a strain a little bit on everything to find solutions. And that's why this innovation piece that so many of us accelerators and incubators are working on are doing well. Ampli was a company that was out of San Francisco that had an idea that everybody was going to electrify their fleet. So, how was FedEx going to do that? How was UPS going to do that? How was Hertz going to do that? Well, they started a model called charging as a service. So, they build, own, operate, and maintain that asset for the federal express folks that needed to electrify their fleet so that they didn't have to get in the business of optimizing when to buy power or when to do some kind of maintenance on a charging station and what charger to use. So, they came up with that idea, and they quickly enabled I think a number of climate goals that needed to be met by these big corporations.
Oakley: When you think about that change in the grid from being a one way street to be in this two way street, within your cohorts of technologies that you've seen, is there an example or two that you see that's helping address that interoperability challenge?
Ryan: We've seen a handful of these over the years, and it's funny just to kind of piggyback on Bob's points there, it wasn't that long ago that the utility was rolling out smart meters, you know, like that was five years ago. They were trying to get total coverage across their jurisdiction just to know when power outages were happening. We've seen an early case of this sort of control between the utility and the end customer. We worked with a company called Weave Grid as part of our cohort four and Weave Grid came in and said, “Hey, we wanna figure out how to intelligently charge vehicles,” and this was still a very kind of early days for all of this. I think it was 2018 that we were working with them, but they could see that this challenge was on the horizon. And so, working with the utilities, working with Duke Energy, they helped build this product in this platform that now is adopted widely to help utilities charge vehicles on a schedule that meets the supply side of this. And so, that was a not insignificant challenge that they went after. But what we're seeing now at this, you know, kind of third layer of technology development is we need more handshakes between all of the digital assets across the platform here, across the grid, and to make that happen. So, we've got these companies popping up with these APIs where they broker the contracts between all of the players, they're kind of the biz dev handshake between all of these players, and they're a trusted layer that then sits on top of that second layer. So, we're seeing a lot more of that. And it's making the pace of innovation faster for everybody involved. If you can trust that all of a sudden you're working with the actual companies in a verified manner on the other side, you can make things happen a lot faster.
Dominique: As technology continues to evolve rapidly, it impacts not only the energy grid but also other critical areas. Food loss and waste is one example contributing to 10 percent of global emissions. So how is the Joules Accelerator supporting companies that focus on innovations that combat waste?
Bob: It's a big issue for North Carolina, you know, we have a lot of farms. And so, when we pick a sector to go after, so for each cohort, we kind of identify a theme. This theme happens to be grid for cohort 14. But we did have some other themes. We never had a full one called indoor agriculture. But if our customers, which are our sponsors, wanted us to do that, we'd be more than happy to because there is NC State or up in Raleigh, there's a nice little accelerator in this space that we talk to. EPRI, Electric Power Research Institute also has a group. But we have brought a company in, yes, where we've worked with indoor agriculture. And what's interesting, if you think about it, is we're all focused on say the grid and new generation opportunities and energy efficiency opportunities but what happened is the demand for electricity is significant, so the load is a good load for economic development. It's not a data center. So, you're seeing this data center load lead to the building of fossil plants again, gas fire generation, but the load is significant. And utilities like Dominion and Duke and Georgia Power they're interested in bringing that load to their region for economic purposes, and especially in Eastern Carolina, which is a region that could use more business development and growth. And so, that when we enticed, when we brought this company over here, Duke was willing to give them a lower rate and incentive to grow their crops and vegetables and it turned out, from a technology standpoint, the problem with the indoor agriculture was to make it economical, and one of the solutions to make it economical was just to locate the shipping containers that were producing the lettuce and the cabbage and these new products in the parking lot of these distribution centers from Walmart. So, that made the economics look a little more attractive. So, I can speak to it more from a utility standpoint. From a technical standpoint, we do rely on EPRI and the accelerator in Raleigh, but, Ryan, did you have anything to add.
Ryan: Well, I was going to say, kind of from the food standpoint, there's definitely a trend right now in the climate space, in the energy space. We've seen with the geopolitical challenges that the world's facing on food security as well as energy security and supply chains, there's been a real change of heart about how we go about making things like ammonia, and so we don't, you know, this is one of those unloved materials that's been around forever. The Haber Bosch process has been around for 120 years, but it's central to the world's food supply, and it's responsible for about 3 percent of greenhouse gas emissions globally. And so, we've seen a lot of startups all of a sudden that are taking green hydrogen, which has been promoted by the federal government through credits and other programs over the last few years and combining that with nitrogen, and we have these electrified chemical supplies for agriculture. And so, that's where we see kind of the most play right now in the food side of things. Like Bob mentioned, we worked a little bit with indoor ag but one of the things that we learned over the 2017 to 2019 frame is it's really inexpensive to grow lettuce outside in the dirt with the sun. So, there's been this pullback from indoor ag just kind of generally, but what we see, like I said, now is two things. The chemical supply for the fertilizers is a central piece of this larger climate and digital electrification theme, and then the digitization of crop management. One of the companies we worked with early on the founder exited from this company called Roadbotics, and where they took cameras and they looked at managing road wear and tear, and he took that knowledge and turned it into a new company, which is working with agriculture. So, they have cameras that go down the roads of crops, and they tell you when your food is blighted and that sort of thing. So, that's where we've seen the most digital transformation taking place in the food supply.
Dominique: A big thank you to Riaz, Bob and Ryan for joining us on today's episode, where we discuss the transformative impact of digital technology across industries. At Trane Technologies, we believe that every job is a sustainability job, and every role provides an opportunity for impact. That's why each week on the podcast we'll feature how someone is building healthy spaces in their organization or community. This week we’re sharing a submission from Praharshitha Gyanam, manufacturing engineer in Bangalore. Praharshitha is creating healthy spaces in her community by participating in community volunteerism and promoting sustainability practices. Every quarter, she and her community plan activities such as planting trees, organizing clean ups, and converting waste into compost. They also refurbish items for reuse and have even replaced local streetlights with solar powered LEDs. Praharshitha, thank you for everything you and your team are doing to make your community a more sustainable place to live. Would you like to share how you're building healthy spaces too? Well, visit us and share your story at Trane technologies.com/healthyspacespodcast. Thank you for listening in to the Healthy Spaces podcast, where we explore how climate technology and innovation are transforming the spaces where we live, work, learn, and play. If you want to find out more about our conversation today, make sure you check out the show notes and remember to rate and review us in your favorite podcast app. That's it for today's episode. We'll see you next time.