Quantifying the Big Smoke: How data will help companies meet net-zero emissions goals
Despite the many efforts to get cities around the world to become cleaner in order to tackle global warming, the often dubbed ‘floating cities’ of the cruise industry are often overlooked, guilty of producing far worse environmental damage to the world’s city harbours than the cities themselves. With the monumental goal of cutting to net-zero emissions in the near future, the cruise and ferry industry must look at big data as the crucial tool to their journey to a cleaner future.
Pollution
The $117 million cruise industry takes a significant slice of tourism, but what goes un-noticed is the significant environmental and health damage caused by the cruise-liners. By travelling by cruise, the individual triples their carbon footprint, contributing to not only toxic sulphur oxide pollution, but to the dumping of tons of trash, fuel and sewage into un-regulated parts of the ocean.
British towns of Southampton, Grimsby and Liverpool are particularly affected, causing as many as 40–100,000 yearly premature deaths as a result of the increased pollution, in the UK alone. 10% of total air pollution in French city Marseille is directly from the shipping industry. Large cruise ships like those from Carnival Corporation can emit as much heavy sulphur oxide as all 260 million cars in Europe. Marseille plans to tackle this with more electrical connections for ships, and reduced speed restrictions. As will be explored later, using data will help target funds to the ports most in need of emission reductions, increasing spend efficiency and reducing environmental impact where most needed.
London
Mayor of London Sadiq Khan introduced the clean air campaign to reduce the toxic emissions in the city. Under scrutiny, it has been criticised for focusing solely on road transport, such as introducing electric buses, but ignoring the ferry’s and boats that travel along the Thames and docking at Tower Bridge. These larger boats emit as much Nitrogen oxide as 700 lorries, and will continue to attribute a larger portion of the overall air pollution as road engines get cleaner and river traffic rises as predicted.
Using data to tackle pollution
Factories can become more efficient by using data to better manage energy use, reducing costs as well as pollution. Satellites like Planet Labs can detect the sources of climate pollutants, and work with others like MethaneSAT to quantify emissions from oil and gas.
Using satellite data can help flag areas of high emission, including those related to transport paths or ports for shipping and cruising, and allow for targeted action to be taken in those problem areas, and therefore allowing data to assist with reaching net-zero goals.
Data from supply chains will allow businesses to identify exactly which areas are having the highest impact on the environment, and therefore focusing resources on those areas. This will reduce costs and increase company efficiency overall.
Large data sets are the reason we know about the extent of climate change in the first place, identifying that statistics like tree loss annually being the equivalent of 40 football fields per minute. Data will be the 4th Industrial Revolution, as said by the World Economic Forum, and companies and charities alike are working with it to improve the future.
A platform called Trase work towards what they’re hoping will be a ‘deforestation-free economy’ by combining supply chain data to connect broken dots between deforestation and unethical companies working with palm products, that would otherwise be untraceable. This allows companies to hold themselves accountable to their own sustainability goals by being able to access their own supply chain in clarity.
A cleaner, more sustainable future can begin to look more positive with the assistance of big data, making environmental impacts and their precise causes more transparent and targetable than before.
This was written by a researcher at a specialist data company. The Digital Bucket Company operates in the UK and works with clients in overcoming data challenges including privacy concerns.
