Exploration of an Open ICT Platform for Energy Monitoring towards a Sustainable Economy

Abstract

There are two important perspectives in Green ICT (Green Information & Communication Technology). First, is the Primary Level Segment (PLS) which deals with minimizing the negative impact of ICT use on environment and greening the ICT infrastructure of an organization [4]. Second, is the High Level Segment (HLS) which uses ICT as an enabler to create a sustainable world (The term HLS in green ICT has been coined from the International Telecommunication Union conference in Paris, Sept 2012) [5]. Both perspectives aim at reducing the carbon footprint and solving complex environmental challenges. The present world is seething with excessive carbon emissions, heat production, chemical wastes, power wastage and abundant usage of natural resources which needs to be controlled. In a technology-driven era, most of these negative impacts are being caused by technologies themselves. PLS aims to manage the ICT infrastructure by introducing smart, intelligent, compact & sustainable trends so that the ICT environment of an organization can be made greener and environment friendly. The companies contribute to PLS through singular action where they perform sustainable practices within the company and the impact is felt in the company level. When an ICT trend is used as an enabler for achieving sustainability, it is termed as a green ICT trend (e.g. cloud computing, smart grids, e-governance) and contributes to the HLS through collective action where several actors participate together to create and exchange value in a network. In this research, PLS has been analyzed from an organizational or micro-perspective, whereas the HLS portrays the macro-perspective of an ecosystem or an economy and is dependent on the individual contributions of PLS in establishing a sustainable world. Organizations are increasingly incorporating sustainable practices in their business operations but they often miss out on where these practices are headed and what impact it can have on the macro-level. Channelizing the sustainability objectives of an organization towards that of the ecosystem is one of the major challenges, the world is facing today across various sectors and industries. Literature distinguishes a clear knowledge gap between PLS and HLS which needs to be bridged in order to align the micro and macro perspectives. If the perspectives are aligned, companies can get a better understanding of how they are contributing to the sustainability of the macro ecosystem; which are the fronts they should improve on and what the best method to do so is. The energy sector presents a case in the research and the smart grids technology is the green ICT trend which will be analyzed on the backdrop of PLS and HLS. Smart grids is a promising technology that has the potential to solve complex energy issues and green the energy sector and therefore it will be used to explain the coordination between PLS and HLS. The research will propose a mechanism to bridge the knowledge gap between PLS and HLS and analyze the value created, to support the possibility of the mechanism in contributing towards a sustainable economy (further discussed in 1.1). The proposed method will also be used to explore whether public good can be generated through the smart grid network as a value addition. The research approach is to propose a high level design of an open ICT platform for monitoring energy performance of companies through literature study and exploring the possibility of the platform solution by conducting interviews of experts from businesses, energy companies, and government and academic researchers. The determined platform design will provide insight into what the necessary conditions are for creating an open ICT platform for smart grids. Furthermore the value network analysis will delineate who the important actors are and what values they can exchange from using the platform. In the results, a risk and a positive attribute analysis will give a practical overview of the developments that need to be made in functional requirements of the platform. Additionally, whether initiatives like corporate social responsibility (CSR) can lead to value addition through the platform will also be analyzed in the research. This study can pave the way for future research on open platforms for smart grids and how they can be useful for controlling the energy trends in the economy. Especially, the financial perspective can be investigated in detail, as to who will fund the platform and what the return on investment will be. Apart from this, the conditions for implementing the platform that will be highlighted in this research, can be further investigated to validate if these conditions are sufficient or more considerations are needed to be addressed for implementation. The perspective of business as users of the platform is taken in this research, future direction can include the perspective of regulators and common households, in order to expand the usability and utility of the open platform in the field of sustainability. Future research can also make this study a base and formulate similar sustainability monitoring mechanisms in top sectors other than energy.