Event overview
Join us for our hybrid event with great talks looking at open source initiatives driving change in the green tech sector, Oliver Cronk and David Rees, Scott Logic and Ben Watts, Kilowatts.io.
Openly and consistently assessing the impacts of tech
The open source licensed proposed Technology Carbon Standard (TCS) provides a standardized framework for assessing and mitigating the environmental impact of enterprise technology estates.
Drawing from the well-established Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Protocol, the TCS categorizes technology according to it’s lifecycle stages, enabling organizations to consistently map, measure, and prioritize their technology’s carbon footprint. By integrating with existing open-source initiatives and fostering collaboration among sustainability stakeholders, technology leaders, and practitioners, the TCS fills a critical gap in the industry.
This talk will cover more details of the Upstream, Operational and Downstream aspects of the standard and how this approach could also be used to assess water and e-waste impacts as well.
About Oliver
Oliver began his career in local e-government. Later working for UK and EU government clients at an energy and environmental consultancy, building carbon calculators, air quality databases and industrial emissions reporting systems. More recently Oliver has worked as an Enterprise Architect at a European Energy company, and is now Technology Director at Scott Logic.
Outside of work you can generally find Oliver with a camera in hand or on a bicycle – having cycled the length of the UK twice! With a love of nature and the outdoors that he likes to share with his wife and kids.
Oliver’s slides
The-TCS-and-Carbon-Estimator-minKilowatts Grid – Open source real time GB grid visualisation
Kilowatts grid is an open-source mobile and web app showing the live output of hundreds of generators and inter-connectors around GB, spanning from the largest thermal generators to the newest batteries and wind-farms. It also shows live balancing information, highlighting wind curtailment and ESO real-time responses.
In this talk Ben will take us through what the app can do and how it can be helpful. He’ll also talk about some of the challenges in the UK energy grid and what the future holds for his app.
About Ben
Ben is a self-employed full stack energy developer, passionate about creating innovative and scalable solutions for the energy transition. With over 6 years of experience in energy modelling and forecasting, he’s developed tools and applications for solar, heating, investment analysis, and pricing, using CircleCI, Apollo GraphQL, AWS SageMaker, and other technologies.
His mission is to help clients and stakeholders make informed and strategic decisions in the evolving energy market.
Ben’s slides
kilowatts.io-grid-minWatch the event video
- 04:50 – Event starts with a welcome from organisers, Ellen, Hannah and Mike
- 07:12 – 60 second intros – a chance for in-person and online attendees to introduce themselves, ask for help or share something interesting
- 20:00 – Ollie’s and David’s talk
- 50:00 – Ben’s talk
- 01:09:00 – Questions
Resources and links
One of the perks of holding events online, and having such a wonderful and engaging community, is we share a huge amount of useful resources and information throughout the event. Here’s a summary of what we unearthed.
Links and resources
- Branch Magazine Issue #8
- Scott Logic blog
- Green Web Foundation
- PWC carbon impact report
- Electricity maps
- Kilowatts git hub repo
-Green Tech South West DIMPACT event
Community 60 second intros
An opportunity for you, our community, to (very quickly) share something with the rest of us. This can be anything from a green tech project or initiative you are working on, a request for help or guidance or even some knowledge/resource you’d like to share with others
Ed Garrett – MD and founder at the Discourse, proud sponsors of Green Tech South West! The Discourse is a design agency and certified B Crop on a mission to enable changemakers to have a positive impact on society and the planet. To achieve this they partner with businesses, predominately in Green Tech and consultancy, as well as charities and non-profits helping them to grow, to build visibility, to attract investment and to communicate their their message through brand, the web and content. They’re currently doing some research into green tech, specifically into challenges this sector is facing, the kind of barriers that the founders are experiencing in terms of growth and more generally the wider adoption of green technology. If anyone is interested in speaking to Ed about this research, or is interested in featuring in the content they produce off the back of it, please get in touch!
Martin Hare Robertson – Lead Software Developer at a InRange, a pre-seed start-up aiming to accelerate the generation of renewable energy by putting solar panels on top of commercial rooftops. As someone who is fairly new to the energy space, Martin is interested in talking to people with experience in solar energy, energy markets in the UK, and particularly around exporting energy from one site and selling it to another, PPA’s etc. If this is you, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with Martin! Further, they will be securing funding again in the near future, so if you would like to join InRange, pop Martin a message as they will be hiring soon.
Greg Southey – Head of Sales at re:cinq, a pre-seed start-up and cutting-edge SaaS platform dedicated measure, track, reduce, and report carbon emissions through Automation and AI. They are currently testing out an open source project called Aether which measures real-time, consumption based carbon emissions from bare-metal severs and are now looking to get feedback and ideally committers from the community. You can reach out to Greg via his LinkedIn!
Daniel Schien – Senior lecturer and researcher at University of Bristol researching the sustainability of digital media. Having previously worked with media companies such as the Guardian and the BBC to calculate how much carbon is released when you’re browsing or watching iPlayer content, they built a tool called DIMPACT which is now used by Netflix, Spotify and many other of the worlds’ largest media organisations. Daniel has recently started a new research project called CANDISE aiming to create the knowledge base which puts the decarbonisation of digital media on a more robust footing. They are partnered with Netflix, Sony, Meta, BT and Akamai as partners, and are now looking for researchers with a tech back ground to work on tis project. They can offer a 4 year, fully funded PhD studentship, so please get in touch with Daniel if interested! Email: daniel.schien@bristol.ac.uk.
Matt Bessey – Full stack Software Engineer with 10 years experience and Net-Zero enthusiast, Matt is hoping to co-found something in the Net-Zero space over the next year. He is now looking for someone with industry experience in energy management, or retrofitting etc. who is interested in co-founding something. If this is you, or you know someone in this space, get in touch with Matt via his LinkedIn!
(Hannah on behalf of) Chris Pointon – A long time supporter of Green Tech South West who runs his own meetup community called Working In Sustainable Technology which has a very similar format to GTSW, there’s an online presence with recorded talks as well as in-person events. He wanted us to share his meetup on June 6th about CO2 removals, so definitely check out his group!