Microsoft bosses reveal role of data and innovation in the race to net zero

Sandra Melki, Executive, Energy Transition & Sustainability, and Jeremy Rollison, Senior Director, EU Government Affairs at Microsoft, give insights on the company’s experiences and requirements for energy data.

In that role, Melki is in charge of strategy and innovation to support customers in their digital transformation as a key driver to foster innovation in the energy transition, while Rollison is responsible for data policy and EU data sharing, data governance and regulatory policy with a focus on getting the legal frameworks right to accommodate and foster greater data sharing, collaboration and reuse.

What is Microsoft’s offer to the energy sector?

SM: For us the energy sector includes four sub-segments, oil and gas, power and utilities, mining and water and waste. Our objective is to power energy innovation and support energy companies in their digital transformation and meet their net zero goals with technology solutions.

Utility companies are experiencing deep changes in their industry – infrastructure modernisation, clean energy integration at scale, managing threats and building a digital-first workforce. Digital transformation will be critical for the industry as it accelerates grid modernisation to meet its decarbonisation commitments and build resilience at scale.

Microsoft is working alongside a full ecosystem of partners and customers to support their digital transformation journeys and accelerate change through technology innovation, cloud, data and artificial intelligence, partnerships and collaboration.

JR: At a customer level the offer varies from one to the next but ultimately it is about capturing and making sense of all of the different data that's relevant to their consumption and efficiency metrics. Most of this is in the cloud computing technologies that we bring to bear that are helping customers get a better understanding of where their consumption is coming from and for developing solutions for them to bring down their footprints.

We have some out of box solutions, a toolbox of cloud tools, but more often than not they are being increasingly tailored to customers.

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What challenges/barriers have been experienced in managing and using data?

SM: One of our main uses of energy system data is to track progress against our clean energy commitments – what we call the ‘100-100-0’commitment – which is 100% of electricity consumption, 100% of the time, matched by zero carbon energy purchases by 2030. Microsoft has a strong commitment to be carbon negative by 2030.

For that, we need to match all our load with clean energy purchases on an hourly, regional basis and this requires data on the generation mix at an hourly, regional scale along with the emission data.

But it is often difficult to access the data at the granularity we would like, for example at the hourly level, or there is insufficient data in the energy attributes, as we also want guarantees of origin that the energy provided to our data centres is renewable.

There also is insufficient geographic granularity in emission rate data, which mostly is delivered at a national rather than a nodal level.

On the other side of the coin, we are also seeing the companies we are working with are using energy data in their digitalisation and energy transition journeys, both in decarbonising and optimising their assets, e.g. to enable predictive maintenance.

Regarding customer energy data, based on customer and regulation commission feedback, companies are not always enthusiastic to share data. Nevertheless, a few initiatives around open data have been launched in Europe over the last few years between European TSOs or DSOs and there is Danish TSO Energinet’s open data sourcing project. These are a first step, however, and there is a need to make regulations more flexible, open and even more prescriptive if we want to accelerate.

JR: As we tend to look at the issue more broadly than a research community or stakeholder community, a main challenge is around the lack of clarity in legal frameworks.

One topic that comes up a lot is collaboration across international borders, especially with the privacy concerns that can come up in this context and different jurisdictional requirements that might run companies or collaboration partners into conflict. So I think it's sometimes a lack of clarity and a lack of awareness of what tools are possible. I think there are fears from some customers about competitive implications as well.

The good news is that we are seeing a lot of new technology solutions really addressing those reservations and the learnings can be shared pretty effectively across borders.

How or who could take a lead in addressing these challenges at an international level?

JR: We would be fairly agnostic as to where the lead would come from. Europe took a lead on personal privacy protections with GDPR and that has almost become the de facto standard for others around the world and a recognition of the benefits that come from the more open approaches to data that are now possible because of the technologies that are there.

I think Europe and the US have an important opportunity to lead because of the similar ways of looking at and addressing these problems, but we're also seeing a lot of activity in Asia in that space. There are different legal systems in place so that there are not always apples to apples comparisons.

One thing to highlight in this context that is inherent to the opportunity is the enhanced collaboration and access to different tools and partners, and in a research context that becomes increasingly important. So regardless of who leads, I hope they're leading with an example of the openness extending to cross border cooperation as well.

How can data and digitalisation assist in meeting the Green Deal?

SM: Electrification is one of a key drivers towards the Green Deal and Fit for 55, but alone it is not enough and there is an urgency to change to low carbon electricity sources and decarbonise the grid, for which the TSOs and DSOs will have to gather and manage more and more data.

The re-industrialisation of Europe, electric vehicles and smart charging will be another key source of data.

The DSOs will need to be more agile and manage the grid differently than before and so they will need access to the data to enable them to do so.

We see that digitalisation and what is called Energy 4.0 really allows for open, real-time automated communication and operation of the system. The data from the IoT – smart devices, smart metering and smart sensors – will be a key driver for this transformation. It can be aggregated on a platform that should be open, so the data can be shared between the different stakeholders, not only the TSOs and DSOs but also the new stakeholders in the value chain, such as EV manufacturers and consumers, to benefit from new services.

For us, these trends supported by the new digital technology will be key to accelerate the energy transition.

What are expected key issues around data in the years ahead?

SM: One of the key issues, as just mentioned, is the volume of data that needs to be managed and that’s why we think open data and interoperability is essential to sharing the data, enabling real time data processing and fostering innovation.

The second issue is the reluctance from different actors to share data as they can use it to develop new business models or new services that will be new sources of revenue. In this sense data is the new ‘gold’.

The third topic is around trust and the importance of the need for awareness of how data is used. With the occurrences of cyber-attacks and threats to organisations not just in Europe but all over the world, trust and transparency with consumers and companies on how data is used and protected are key topics to tackle in the years ahead.

Technology plays an important role here, because protecting and building long-term value isn’t only about the volume of available data but its quality and the ease of converting it into business decisions.

JR: Legislation will be part of that but also there must be technical solutions and best practice examples. To some extent I think it will depend on the sector, e.g. if you compare energy and health the needs are different from a policy perspective.

At the same time, there' are also horizontal challenges to that. So it really is a joined-up effort that's needed.