The urgency, challenges, and opportunities of decarbonization

Net zero in 2050 year ESG, eco concept for environmental, social, sustainable and ethical,global warming, Human hand holding Green tree eco green energy system icon around on blue background.

One of the most important takeaways from the 2023 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28) is the urgency to accelerate our global decarbonization efforts.

Currently, the world is running behind on its progress toward net zero emissions. Between 2020 and 2023, the world produced a net of about 250 gigatons of carbon dioxide (CO2). Those emissions used up half of what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) calls the world’s remaining carbon budget, which is an estimate of how much carbon can be released into the atmosphere before the global temperature rises by more than 1.5°C.

Global energy sector CO2 emissions are still high too. Instead of decreasing in 2022, carbon emissions reached a new record of 37 gigatons. Fortunately, the adoption of clean energy technologies also increased at a faster rate than ever between 2021 and 2023.

The bottom line is that progress toward net zero emissions is steady but too slow—and we have to speed it up. We must slow the rate of carbon emissions to give ourselves a fighting chance of avoiding climate disasters. Not only does the energy sector face an environmental mandate, but also, energy demand is growing, and consumer expectations are shifting.

Global energy demand rose 2 percent in 2022, and demand is expected to accelerate by an average of 3 percent per year over the next 3 years. What’s more, customers are adopting clean energy technologies at a faster rate than anticipated—and a faster rate than most energy companies. That puts even more pressure on energy companies to keep pace with consumer behavior and decarbonize faster—and to continue working on decarbonization consistently, over time, to achieve lasting change on a global scale.

The optimal way to adapt to this growing demand and need for change is to use innovative cloud technologies like artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML), edge computing, and high performance computing (HPC). You can not only design, simulate, and plan but also use these technologies in your daily operations to support the optimization of energy systems. This helps you accelerate the rate at which you embrace more sustainable practices.

Beyond lowering your organization’s carbon emissions, these innovations yield several other tangible business benefits:

• increased product and service profitability through greater efficiency
• reduced costs and increased productivity through process optimization
• increased customer demand by catering to the growing market for sustainable products and services
• meeting customer expectations through increased environmental responsibility
• conforming with increasing regulatory requirements

So, what does the carbon-neutral energy system of the future look like? Amazon Web Services (AWS) customers are hard at work transforming their systems to achieve five core attributes: resiliency, responsiveness, resourcefulness, reliability, and renewability.

• Resilient energy systems handle critical events, including increasingly volatile weather, new consumption patterns and consumer expectations, regulatory evolution, supply chain disruptions, and economic volatility.
• Responsive energy systems sense and adapt in near real time to deal with unexpected changes in the operating environment or quickly respond to emergencies.
• Resourceful energy systems maximize existing assets, people, and information, which leads to improved operational excellence and financial performance.
• Reliable energy systems deliver safe, reliable energy to everyone who depends on it, without compromising the quality of life of future generations.
• Renewable energy systems use more and more renewable energy sources to foster measurable improvements in environmental impact and sustainability.

These attributes are the guiding principles shaping the future of the world’s energy systems. And optimizing at a systemic level rather than just on a transactional level is vital to creating real, lasting change rather than incremental improvements in “business as usual.”

But that kind of transformation doesn’t come without challenges. To achieve these outcomes for global decarbonization, we need to be able to use huge amounts of data. Data acquisition, data organization, and data reliability and transparency are key hurdles for organizations to consider.

Disparate sources and formats of carbon data from different business areas and suppliers make it difficult to combine and analyze holistically. This difficulty is compounded by varying data acquisition cycles due to carbon emissions information having varying levels of spatial and temporal granularity. Accurate measurement and reporting require unification of this data. Conquering the data acquisition challenge is crucial.

Equally important, data organization can make or break an organization’s decarbonization efforts. Many businesses find that carbon data is difficult to track, maintain, and audit. Other challenges include sourcing data across your supply chain, reconciling data of varying quality, and comparing carbon information at a centralized portfolio level with site-specific forms.

Companies also need to be able to trust their data. Effective and robust reporting means carbon data must be traceable, which can be particularly challenging when sourcing from across your supply chain. At the same time, inconsistent methods of data collection also impact reliability. This makes carbon accounting, which involves determining which emissions should be included and which should be excluded, a tough task because they can occur at different points in the supply chain, and it may be unclear which party is responsible for them.

That’s why AWS for Energy works with today’s energy leaders, listening closely to better understand the environmental, operational, and financial challenges they’re facing and helping them with data-driven innovations that provide meaningful change faster on a global scale.

Our customers tell us they need inclusive, interoperable, easy-to-use, and impactful solutions. Energy systems of the future must run on innovative new data-driven workflows. And breaking out of legacy data silos is critical, because what got us to where we are now won’t get us to where we need to go next.

Cloud technologies play a pivotal role in the journey toward decarbonization in the energy industry. With access to advanced data analytics and simulation tools on the cloud, energy companies are better equipped to strategize, monitor, and measure the effectiveness of carbon reduction initiatives. AWS is helping accelerate the energy transition and assisting organizations in meeting their decarbonization goals with technologies that monitor emissions, optimize energy usage, model alternative energy scenarios, and more.

Decarbonization is essential for the world’s energy future, and it’s just one piece of the puzzle. Stay tuned for our upcoming blog on another critical priority—grid modernization!