Transcript 0:00 [gentle music] And if we want to create a truly circular economy, we need all the tools at our disposal, and that's what tracking and tracing is all about. 0:13 And this includes all the sensors, the nanosensors, and this includes the digital twin, which is doing so many incredible things that we've just discussed. We need to create the connectivity to make real change happen. 0:28 [upbeat music] Welcome to The Peggy Smedley Show, the podcasting voice of IoT and digital transformation with your host, Peggy Smedley. 0:47 Hello, listeners, and welcome to today's edition of The Peggy Smedley Show. I'm your host, Peggy Smedley. This month on The Peggy Smedley Show, I can't help but really talk about the circular economy. 0:59 We are right in the middle of the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference, also known as the COP26, because this is the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference held in Glasgow, Scotland last week and this week. 1:18 This summit aims to accelerate action to the goals of the Paris Agreement and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. 1:28 Now, I know a lot of you already hear a lot about this, but here is what I find really exciting. We are seeing technologies like nanosensors and digital twins and the fore- all of these things at the forefront of COP26. 1:45 Now, this is all exciting things. This will fundamentally change how we deliver a circular economy, and I'm excited for what will come next. 1:57 But let's really talk about all of these things on this first segment, and I will share what technologies we are seeing come together for sustainability. 2:09 We will look at specific examples in both rural and urban areas, and I will share my thoughts on what needs to happen next to kind of reverse all these things that have happened to climate change. 2:23 But as always, before we get going in all of these exciting things, I'm gonna tell you about the guests I'm gonna have on the show today. 2:29 I'm gonna be talking to Yossisef Sheffi, who is the professor at MIT, and then I'm gonna wrap up the show with Varsha Bhave, president and CTO of Systemate. Now, let's get started. 2:43 Currently, cities are generating roughly 70%, get this, 70% of the world's emissions. 2:52 The Paris Agreement aims to change this by strengthening the resolve of countries across the world to reduce the rise in global temperature, and actually the global temperature rise during this century. 3:08 Now, the goal is to keep it from rising two degrees from pre-industrial levels. Now, you've heard me say this, it's in my book, but technology has an opportunity to help in both urban and rural areas. 3:24 Now, let me explain what all this means. We have an opportunity to deploy billions of highly accurate and secure nanosensors. 3:33 At the same time, we can leverage a digital twin network to reduce emissions within urban and architectural environments. 3:45 Together, the technologies will enable organizations to track and even manage emissions to reverse climate change. If we all kind of come together in both these rural and urban areas, we can actually make a difference. 4:03 Now, I know some of you n- might not believe this, but here's how it works. Sensors can be positioned in every urban and rural space. This includes major rainforests and cities, just as a few examples. 4:20 This enables global carbon emission tracing, then digital twin is en- able to kind of calculate the carbon emission data gathered by those sensors. Now, think about this. 4:33 We weren't able to do this in the past, but the result is a shareable and accurate representation of how countries, companies, households, and all of us individuals manage emissions. 4:49 While this particular model for a circular economy is still evolving, technologies as th- this, as all of these that we're talking about, are vital to holding governments, cities, industries, people, just people, accountable for emissions. 5:09 Now, implementing this in cities is key, but we also see opportunities for the technology literally everywhere, in both, again, rural and urban areas, in industry, and in agriculture. 5:26 Now, let's look at a few examples of how all of this works today, because I wanna share this with you because I found it exciting when we were doing all the research. 5:34 But for our first example, let's, let's travel to the forest, because I think this is exciting to talk about. A former Brazilian ambassador diplomat and a Harvard scholar, uh, Arnold Sh- I... 5:48 If I get his name right, Arnaldo Sh- Schlutz is his name, if I have this right, and this is how I'm, uh, pr- probably pronouncing it wrong, I hope he apologizes, has been developing a project based on this new model.This project will use nanosensors to track deforestation and pollution. 6:07 The object is to help accurately manage carbon credits and offsets. This will enable the reduction of emissions and to accurately tracking of data and deforestation. 6:22 Now, I can't stress this enough because it's so kind of cool when you think about it. This is vital in all of these rural um, m- areas that we've been talking about, and it's also essential in our cities. 6:36 So if we think about everything we can track and trace here. Now let's talk about one other example here, and I'm gonna look at what it might l- actually look like in a city. 6:47 In cities, digital twin technology can decarbonize the built environment. Now we've talked about the built en- environment in the past, but let me give you this example for you to consider about. 7:00 Cityzenith's International Clean Cities Clean City Future Initiative is an interesting example here because major cities have joined the program to use digital twins to reduce carbon emissions in buildings by anywhere from fifty to a hundred percent. 7:19 Now overall, if you think about that, it's pretty remarkable. So digital twin will also reduce operating costs by as much as thirty-five percent and increase productivity by twenty percent. 7:34 Las Vegas and New York were the first two cities to sign up. Projects in Phoenix and other cities are expected to follow in the next few months. 7:43 So we're seeing a lot of improvement, or at least a lot of hope for improvement. 7:48 Now, now let's look at one more example in the UK, which I think is interesting as well because it is bringing a national digital twin program to COP26. 8:01 Now the England Water, BT, and UK Power Networks have partnered to foster better outcomes for the built environment as well. 8:11 This project aims to deliver information management framework overall, and so this can kind of ensure, you can basically say like, um, resilient data sharing and even an effective, uh, I would call information management. 8:28 The program allows, uh, it to identify a range of benefits for society, even business, the overall environment, and if you look at the broader economy. Now here's the bottom line that I see for this. 8:43 Nanotechnology and the digital twin are both some of the top technologies for this year and even beyond. 8:52 Each are forecast to quadruple in the next five years, and each is predicted to experience a combined growth of somewhere around four hundred percent during that period. Now just think about that. 9:06 That growth is huge, and I think it's pretty significant when we look at where technology has been and where it's projected to grow. 9:15 And there is a very real opportunity to leverage technology to better manage our carbon emissions and to reverse the impact overall on cl- climate change. 9:26 But we need to start, in my opinion, today, as we are trying to do, as we're talking about at the COP26. We need to make progress to reducing carbon emissions, and we need to make that move to the circular economy. 9:41 And I think it's all very important, and I think it now the way we are going to make this real progress is with technology, and we talk about it all the time, the importance of technology. 9:53 And if the ultimate goal is to keep the global temperatures from rising two degrees and even above pre-industrial levels, we need to implement technology in order to achieve those goals. 10:05 We need technology to track and manage emissions because if you can't m- manage it, you can't track it, you're not gonna achieve those goals. 10:15 We need it to hold people, countries, industries accountable, as we've talked about during this segment. We need to transform our urban and rural areas, which is so exciting to see that we have those capabilities. 10:29 And if we want to create a truly circular economy, we need all the tools at our disposal, and that's what tracking and tracing is all about. 10:40 And this includes all the sensors, the nanosensors, and this includes the digital twin, which is doing so many incredible things that we've just discussed. 10:50 We need to create the connectivity to make real change happen and to fight climate change. We-- The things to improve our ecosystem, to improve the planet. So overall, here's what I say. So here's my tip for today. 11:05 Consider what you can track. What are we able to track? Is it your electricity? Is it your carbon emissions that we wanna track? What is it in your home that you can track? Is it at your work that you're able to track? 11:22 Is it in your city? Opportunities exist literally everywhere when we think about it. That's the key, though. What is it that we wanna track? That's the first thing we have to consider. 11:34 The first step is to consider what can you track. That's what I want you all to think about as, as I give you this tip. Then once you do, can you take that next step to manage those carbon emissions? 11:48 We can all make a difference, but only if we kinda do it together, and that, I think, is the big thing that we're all forgetting. We can't do it alone. 11:57 We have to consider these options of what we wanna track, how we wanna track it. We have to manage. 12:03 We need the data, but we have to do it collectiv- collectively.collaboratively and we have to look at how we're tracking all these things. 12:13 And I think sometimes we get lost in it all in saying, "Well, we're not gonna be able to do it. We're not gonna hit these targets." You know, w- we've, we've discovered we're this make, take, waste society. 12:24 We all know that, but in order to change that, we have to look at the tools and the technology to achieve the goals we want to move forward, and that's what I think all of this is about is we're seeing that we have the technology, the ability to give us the information to improve upon what we've been doing up to this point. 12:44 So we're looking at everything saying we can make a difference by tracking and tracing all of this information, and I think that's what we're seeing with the sensors, that's where... 12:54 what we're seeing with the visibility and the transparency of all of this information. And I think that's where we're right now. 13:01 We have this time in our life right now to say we have the ability to track, to trace, and to actually advance the circular economy in ways that we never thought possible, and to see this green building, a sustainable design, and to actually improve design practices that we didn't have the capabilities before. 13:24 So I think that's what we need to think about. What are the current projects we have in both rural and urban areas? And that's where we're changing things a little bit differently. All right. 13:33 Well, I'm out of time, and I would love to know what you think, so if you have thoughts on what I've talked about on this segment, you know, please share with me. Send me a tweet at, on social media at connectedwmag. 13:46 I always love your thoughts. I want you to engage. Lately, we've been getting a lot of engagement on Twitter and on LinkedIn. I love it. I love when you share your thoughts and I can engage with you. 13:56 The more we do that, the more we improve things and the more we understand what all this means to climate change, what it means and what it doesn't mean. That's why we want to engage in a conversation. 14:07 So check out our website at connectedworld.com or our show website at thepeggySmedleyShow.com. And again, you know, go up there, put your thoughts up there at connectedwmag and, and engage in that conversation. 14:19 All right. We're gonna take a quick commercial break, but, uh, I want you to come back because we've got some great guests on the show today. All right. 14:26 This is The Peggy Smedley Show, the podcasting voice of IoT and digital transformation. And remember, with great technology comes great responsibility. We'll be right back after this commercial break. [upbeat music]
