Ory Zik's Greenometry presentation at Harvard 2_7_2017

1. HARVARD UNIVERSITY
February 7th, 2017
Dr. Ory Zik, CEO
ory@greenometry.org

2. Think that climate
change is a threat to
civilization
Can estimate their carbon
footprint or the carbon
footprint of “anything”
Northeastern 40/40 0/40
MIT 25/25 1/25
Boston
University
93/93 0/93
Harvard 20/20 0/20

3. • We must engage the market
• The market needs metrics
• We have to fix carbon footprinting

4. What is Greenometry
A social enterprise dedicated to enlisting the market in
mitigating climate change through a simple, quantitative,
open-source language that will enable everyone to know the
carbon footprint of everything

5. Agenda
• Background
• Enlisting the market
• Why is carbon footprint 1.0 broken?
• How does it work and how to fix it?
• The world with carbon footprint 2.0

6. Estimated historical atmospheric CO2 concentration

7. 16 of the last 17 years were the hottest on record

8. 8
Source: The Telegraph

9. Stopping a dump ship: Greenpeace’sfirst action in Israel(1994)

10. 5 years later the ship lost it’s ‘dumping’ licenseand was drowned

11. Solar thermal installationin InnerMongolia(2011)

12. Source: The Guardian
Hebei – China’sleadingsteel province

13. “Numbers, Not
Adjectives”
Sir David J. C. MacKay R.I.P (1967-2016)

14. Agenda
• Background
• Enlisting the market
• Why is carbon footprint 1.0 broken?
• How does it work and how to fix it?
• The world with carbon footprint 2.0

15. 15
PolicyReality
Policy is moving in the wrong direction
January 2017

16. We must enlist the most powerful force on the planet:
The global market
Source of original graphics: Jason Clay, WWF
Filmed July 2010 at TEDGlobal 2010
Jason Clay: How big brands can help save
biodiversity
6.9 billion consumers
300-500 brands
Control 70% of commodity trade
Suppliers
To hold companiesaccountable,the entire market needs
accessto simple, actionablemetrics
Investors

17. 17www.greenometry.org
Source: Nielsen
But don’t know what is “sustainable”?
The consumer

18. Sustainable and responsible investing in the U.S.
what is “sustainable and responsible”
How is it measured ?

19. Nearlyall companiesreport their “sustainabilityperformance”
Impossible to hold companies accountable without metrics
CDP formerly the Carbon Disclosure Project

20. Progress
and yet:

21. Agenda
• Background
• Enlisting the market
• Why is carbon footprint 1.0 broken?
• How does it work and how to fix it?
• The world with carbon footprint 2.0

22. Academic publications
Public inquiries
Growing gap between ‘knowledge’ and inquiries
Source: J. M. Turner; Global Environmental Politics; Vol. 14, No. 1, 2014.

23. What makes a good metric?
• Simplicity – estimations and
‘quantitative intuition’
Ø Consistency
Ø Practice
• Accuracy – enable a ‘race to the top’
– differentiating similar products -
hold companies accountable
Source: discussion with Prof. Daniel Kahneman

24. Successful metrics
How many calories? What is the temperature?

25. Successful metrics
How many calories? What is the temperature?
Estimation error <30%

26. What is the carbon footprint of using one
gallon of gasoline ?

27. 300 people estimated the carbon footprint of using
one gallon of gasoline
Source: A. Grinstein, E. Kodra, S. Sheldon and O. Zik (manuscript)

28. 300 people estimated the carbon footprint of using
one gallon of gasoline
Estimation error ~ X 100 to X 1,000
Source: A. Grinstein, E. Kodra, S. Sheldon and O. Zik (manuscript)

29. The same results with 1000 participants
CO2estimationratioinagallonofgas
Car weightestimation ratio
Source: S. Chen, A. Grinstein, E. Kodra, S. Sheldon and O. Zik (manuscript)
People cannotestimate carbonfootprint. Not even ‘roughly’

30. • 300% difference between carbon
footprint calculators using the same data
• Organizations target ~ 30% reductions
while the carbon footprint calculation
error may be as high as 300%
Source: Padgettet. al. Environmental ImpactAssessment
Review Vol 28, 2008
The consistency challenge

31. The result is a market led by anecdotes and disconnectednumbers
• Stop paper bank statements
• Buy from companies that have
sustainable practices
• Take short showers
29 kWh363 Wh/mi
0.3 gr CO2 per email

32. Even the best-intended organizations fail to
make progress
• Timberland: an award-winning sustainability leader
• Reduces 20% of 4% since supply chain was excluded
• Designed a label in kWh with no impact or comparison

33. www.greenometry.org
Solar PV is one of the prime examples of
Sensitivity analysis
The carbon footprint of solar panels
http://cdn.zmescience.com/wp-
content/uploads/2016/11/DJI_0159-1.jpg
Tesla converts an entire island of American Samoa from 100% diesel to 100% solar energy
source: ZME Science
• Not all placesare as simple asSamoa – where solar replacesdiesel
• In most places, the exiting grid, the grid and the manufacturing site, water
and land play a role in the carbon impact of renewable energy investments
• Investors have metrics to analyze financial return, but not social return

34. Agenda
• Background
• Enlisting the market
• Why is carbon footprint 1.0 broken?
• How does it work and how to fix it?
• The world with carbon footprint 2.0

35. How carbon footprinting work
A CO2 equivalent metric
e.g. kg CO2-e
Conversion factors from consumption
to a CO2 equivalent
e.g. kg CO2-e per kilowatt-hour
Consumption data
e.g. kilowatt-hour
On-site and fleet
(Scope 1)
Electricity
(Scope 2)
Supply chain
(Scope 3)
Water & land
(not included)

36. What needs fixing
A more relatable metric
than carbon that enable
estimations
Electricity conversion is static,
while generation is dynamic and
location-dependent
On-site and fleet
(Scope 1)
Electricity
(Scope 2)
Supply chain
(Scope 3)
Water & land
(not included)
Supply chain data
and allocation
Dynamic, geospatial
conversion factors for
water and land-use

37. Why is so difficult?
Image: Al Gore’s TED talk
• Need to solve the reverse problem: given consumption - calculate the inputs
• Insufficient incentives - “The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make
people click ads... That sucks” Data Scientist Jeff Hammerbacher

38. What did Weight Watchers do?
p=points; c=calories; f=fat in grams and
r=dietary fiber in grams.
Calories (c) Fat (f) Fiber (r)
Effective metric
Conversion factors
Consumption data:
• Effective metric – simple, consistent, practiced
• Simple analytics because ‘success’ can be measured

39. Key differences between diet and carbon footprint
• Collective consequences lead to weak incentives
• Cannot measure
• Can only calculate !

40. Carbon footprint 2.0: A universal metric and an
open source analytical platform
A simple universal metric: Energy
Points (EP) similar to
On-site and fleet
(Scope 1)
Electricity
(Scope 2)
Supply chain
(Scope 3)
Water & land
(not included)
EP = 10 kg CO2-e
~ gallon of gas inc. refining losses
Open source collaboration to build
science-based conversion factors
The ‘Linux’ of carbon
footprinting
Consumption data

41. How Greenometry improveselectricity(scope 2) GHG
conversionthrough network analysis
Source: E. Kodra, S. Sheldon, R. Dolan, O. Zik Environ. Sci. Technol., 2015, 49 (22), pp 13692–13698
The U.S. electricity grid as a supply network
Location, time and consumption (kWh) à
ß Technology mix and conversion to kg CO2 and EP
• Electricity generation is location-
dependent and changes in minutes
intervals
• The current scope 2 conversion factors
are static and updated on an annual
cadence (eGRID)
• Greenometry improves the temporal
resolution to monthly or hourly
(depending on location) and the spatial
resolution from 24 to 138 regions

42. Analyzingthe Carbon Footprint of Solar Photovoltaic
• The typical efficiency of the U.S. grid is 14 kilowatt-hour per EP or 0.7 kgCO2 per kilowatt-
hour. The low-end efficiency of solar panels is 75 kilowatt-hour per EP or 0.013 kgCO2 per
kilowatt-hour. Solar is ~ 5-10 times better than the grid
• The efficiency of solar depends on the electricity mix at the manufacturing site, solar
radiation, electricity mix at the installation site, technology etc
PV parameters (technology, location etc.) à
ß Conversion to kg CO2 and EP

43. • Water is a growing challenge in GHG accounting and in terms of the actual energy
consumption (carbon footprint) and the energy risk imposed by scarcity
• Developed a methodology to map to carbon intensity through the conversion of energy to
carbon (kgal per kWh X kWh per kg CO2)
Adding water to carbon footprint calculations
Source: S. Sheldonand O. Zik Water Scarcity – An energy Problem; ASME 2012
Location, time and consumption à
ß Conversion to kg CO2 and EP

44. Agenda
• Background
• Enlisting the market
• Why is carbon footprint 1.0 broken?
• How does it work and how to fix it?
• The world with carbon footprint 2.0

45. Dismiss numbers that do not move the dial
1 email ~ 0.3 gr CO2 per ~ 0.0003 EP

46. The MPG of Tesla (in miles per EP)
• MPG = miles per EP = miles per 10 kg of CO2-e
• Powered by Greenometry’s API and app

47. The carbon footprint of home energy control
• Home energy control provides kWh reading
• Greenometry provides the climate context through EP and its API
• 1EP= 10 kg CO2-e ~ 1 gallon of gasoline
Image source: sense
29 kWh
The carbon footprint of a sense device (in EP) @ 29 kWh

48. Every household, company, school or city can have a
simple carbon budget – similar model to OPower
Source: N. Kulatilaka and O. Zik The Sustainability Babelfish;
Sustainability Science Vol. 8 (2) pp 295–300 (2013)
105 EP
120 EP
200 EP
198 EP
A typical Monthly Budget in EP (1 EP = 10 kg CO2-e)
Source: grist

49. Better consumer choices
Source of life cycle data: NIKE
Flyknit
(if produced
in Portland)
2.1 EP
Flyknit Fly
Waste
Flyknit
Pegasus
Flyknit
Energy Water
3.2 EP
2.7 EP
• The values are estimated for demonstration, based on Nike’s LCA
• Requires not only simplicity, but also accuracy - better scope 3 data

50. The dependence of solar energy on technology and
location of manufacturingand installation
Carbon payback time

51. Sustainability reports
Source: Intel
• While the financial metrics are standardized, the environmental metrics are not – difficult to
hold companies accountable
• For example, the consumption of electricity and water increased, while GHG emissions
“decreased” due to counting renewable energy credits

52. Multiple projects addressdifferent bottlenecksin the corporate
carbonfootprint ‘data value chain’
Collects company’s
consumption data
Assigns financial values
to natural resources
Calculates company’s
carbon reduction share
Publish the GHG protocol
(conversion factors)
Use blockchain technology
to track supply chain data
Focus on three critical components:
1. Use open-source to improve the conversion factors of electricity, water and scope 3 (supply chain)
2. Role up the information to a simple unifying metric that encourage behavior change and competition
3. Ensure consistency across domains (consumers, financial, technology investments etc.)
Use open source and science to
build carbon footprint 2.0
30%
~ 70%
10 %

53. • We must engage the market
• The market needs metrics
• We have to fix carbon footprinting

54. Thank you!
ory@greenometry.org