Page 8 - Frontier technologies to protect the environment and tackle climate change - Executive Summary

Frontier technologies to protect the environment and tackle climate change

Clean energy technology for renewable electricity generation to help reduce fossil fuel
consumption

Clean energy technologies (often used synonymously with renewable energy technologies
that enable the creation of electricity, heat and fuel from renewable sources such as solar wind
or hydro) may have been around for some time, but their design and efficacy has evolved in
recent decades. According to the report – which cites International Renewable Energy Agency
(IRENA) Renewable Capacity Statistics 2019 – thanks to the growth in the use of solar and wind
energy, renewable energy now accounts for a third of global power capacity. Solar, wind and
clean battery technologies offer strong potential to address the challenges of climate change
by cutting reliance on fossil fuels.
Further research, prototyping,
development and deployment
of clean energy technologies is
needed for them to achieve their full
potential. One practical way to do
this would be to implement projects
at the city level, then scale up to
provincial, regional and national
levels. Innovation-driven, public-
private sector collaboration, on a
regional and national level is crucial
to help pilot and scale up clean
energy projects. Areas of potential
growth include offshore wind farming, which is explored in the report through a case study
from the 659 MW Walney Extension project in Cumbria, UK. At a pivotal stage of innovation,
and ripe for subsidies to help these innovations flourish, the offshore wind farming market
offers great potential in terms of new construction prospects – such as deep water floating
turbines – to create more cost-effective offshore energy.

Increasing environmental resilience and disaster risk planning with digital twin technology

A digital twin is a virtual model, replica or representation of a physical object, product, service,
process, system or geographic location. Essentially a bridge between virtual and physical
worlds, it helps analyse data, identifying and mitigating problems before they even occur as
well as spotting future opportunities. Digital twin technology has now been extended to include
entire systems such as large organizations or even cities.

Recreating an entire city digitally involves overlaying a digital ‘map’ of the city with data from
multiple sources – including buildings, infrastructure, flows, environment, and the way the city
is used. In terms of climate change and response, digital twinning offers an ideal solution for
cities that are growing rapidly in population, size and energy consumption terms and that
need efficient management and maintenance of all their systems. Real-time data generated
within a city feeds the relevant set of digital twin models to analyse the impacts of, for example,
weather-related events to develop and test a set of appropriate action plans.

According to the report, spurred by an extreme rainstorm in 2012, the city of Newcastle, UK
has become a frontrunner in the use of digital twin technology, recreating the city digitally to
help planners stress-test the city’s infrastructure. Sensors all over the city monitor indicators

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