Are we serious?

During this week it occurred to that the question ”Are we Serious” is the pivotal question of 2021. Last year we had 10 years to stop the CO2 emission, this year we have 9.

Net zero roundtable

In my participitation in this weeks Net Zero Roundtable together with Pete Vale of Severn Trent, Andew Thornton of Hach, Mikkel Holmen Andersen of Unisense, Stephen Palmer of Stantec, Mehdi Khoury of University of Exeter and Oliver Grievson of WIPAC Water Industry Process Automation and Control (and Z Tech Control systems) who was the organizer of the roundtable discussion we discussed the theme of how to get to Net Zero climate gas emission.

I would love to talk in all manners of details about the interesting points and ideas exchanged during the session. Pete speaking of innovation, Andrew of sensors, Mikkel of Nitrous Oxide, Stephen of Exergy, Mehdi of Serious gaming and Oliver of the state of the sector ... and myself on water and planet stewardship. The discussion started with a round, where we were all eager to share our pre-prepared talking points, but then the magic happened – we connected the dots between our different perspectives and something new emerged.

At the end, we shared our key insights and what we were going to do when leaving the round table. For me it was clear, from what I heard and saw at the round table that we are all carrying different pieces of the puzzle for the solution. But we are stuck in old patterns which makes it difficult to make this ’moon landing’ of going to net zero.

Apollo 13

It was like the change that happens in the Apollo 13 movie after they received the dire message from the astronauts ”Houston we have a problem”. To get the astronauts home alive a square peg needs to go into a round hole for avoiding the astronauts to die from too high CO2 levels (!) Different contractors hesitate to cooperate and take risk keeping to their roles. But we need to move into a different kind mode of working with this problem.

So the take home messages were:

”Are we serious?” is the question we need to ask all the time, when we are ’playing’ the conventional games that are being played in utilities. We have to look at what we have and make it work to get our astronauts down to Earth alive.

”Look broadly”, i.e. we have to understand the different scopes and not get too preoccupied with scope 1 to have some kind of clear conscience. We must do our system analysis. If it saves more CO2 to harvest metals from wastewater to avoid mining somewhere else, or if we need to help our water consumers consume water in a different way – then e.g. energy efficiency might need to wait. We have to address the problems where we can have the highest impact.

”Collaborate!” is the rallying call. Clever people in utilities, in companies, in policy-making: we have to collaborate to make this work. And the rigid ways of working we are using today are not going to cut it.

”Personal impact” was another ’aha’. Each individual needs to see what he/she can do practically and from his or her current position. We may easy fall into thinking ’if only someone else did …”. But maybe somebody is thinking the same about you and me. So what can we do?

”Citizens, business and policymakers” – we need to help orchestrate the cooperation between these key actors.

”Decouple ROI” may be the only way to truly move forward. The water industry is killing innovation by requiring upfront return on investment (ROI) on all innovations. This is the case for example for sensors, where there seems to be a withholding of sensing until it has been made clear that each sensor has its own positive business case. This is not a reliable strategy to build truly intelligent systems.

”Ask serious questions” is important to jolt each other out of complacent thinking and acting.

”We have little time, so let’s start running”. The picture is that we are at the bus stop, but the bus is moving and we need to catch up to get on board. We are behind in spite of knowing about climate change for decades. There has been many chances to get on the bus. It is still there, but we need to run.

In conclusion, let's start collaborating, innovating and ensuring we have maximum personal impact by looking broadly, decoupling ROI from our thinking, working with citizens, businesses and policy makers – lets be serious.

?Don’t remember the scene from Apollo 13, watch it here: Apollo 13 movie clip

The Net Zero Roundtable was hosted by WWEM (Water, Wastewater & Environmental Monitoring) on Thursday October 14 2021.

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