This article originally appeared in GreenBiz.com
In this season of giving thanks and gathering families, I look forward with gratitude that world leaders and diplomats are gathering to discuss the climate at the UN Conference on Climate Change (COP21) beginning this week in Paris. Like other corporate sustainability leaders, Dassault Systèmes is attending COP21 to show the support of the private sector for the ongoing negotiations. Corporations hold many of the market levers for innovation along both technological capabilities and business models, which can change consumption patterns and – ultimately – economic systems and societal norms. More simply, we’re here for stories: to share some of our own, and learn from the experiences of others who share the road to a sustainable future.
For Dassault Systèmes, we believe our unique contribution to a sustainable society—what the French call développement durable—is to infuse sustainability into innovation through better use of 3D technology. Many of the world’s products and product systems are created using our 3D software platform, from the planes we fly and the cars we drive, to the medical devices in our hospitals, the lights in our buildings, and the devices that connect us to each other. Sustainable innovation is the centerpiece of our handprint on the world (more on that later).
Here are the four sets of stories we’ll be talking about at COP21:
The global energy transition
We’re proud to have sponsored Bertrand Piccard, André Borschberg and the rest of the Solar Impulse team to help them realize the audacious goal of inventing a completely solar-powered aircraft that can fly around the world day and night. Some of the groundbreaking technologies that were built into the aircraft include a device that accurately monitors pilot fatigue and vigilance, and ultra-thin, highly efficient solar cells designed specifically for this aerospace application. There are some great images and a virtual cockpit tour at our Solar Impulse microsite.
The fuel that powers our built environment needs to be revolutionized, just like the fuel for our transportation. We are co-presenting at COP21 with our partners HYDROCHINA Chengdu Engineering Corporation, the largest hydropower research and design company in China, on our joint efforts to promote renewables in the region. Although China operates a quarter of the world’s coal plants, the new US-China climate commitment necessitates replacing the roughly 1 metric ton of CO2-equivalent emissions per megawatt of energy produced from coal, with cleaner sources, such as China’s ample hydropower potential. See below the 3D simulation of a dam on the left, and the project as realized on the right.
The revolution in sustainable mobility
What does the burgeoning Internet of Things (IoT) have to do with sustainability mobility? As Lauren Hepler wrote about earlier this year, the potential of a smart, safe, and connected car has only begun to be tapped by the likes of Tesla and Ford. We partnered with innovative European company AKKA Research on the Link & Go 2.0, a connected, fully autonomous electric urban concept vehicle that communicates with a city’s smart infrastructure and via sensors and cloud-based apps. AKKA’s vision is a door-to-door service that brings you where you want to go without having to think about the details in-between—such as planning for traffic or finding parking, which are handled autonomously (the latter after it has dropped you off).
Smart and sustainable cities
The flip side of the Link & Go 2.0 is the smart infrastructure necessary to support it. This requires a huge amount of data from a variety of sources, as well as the ability to visualize these data and build apps to take advantage of them. For example, we’ll be showing the work of our 3DEXPERIENCity Lab, which created a digital twin of the French city of Rennes and has partnered with Singapore’s National Research Foundation to develop Virtual Singapore, an ambitious plan to digitize and simulate the entire city-state’s architecture and infrastructure and combine all these data onto one collaborative platform. Virtual Singapore, once completed in 2018, will allow city officials and businesses decision-making support for urban planning, security, and ecology, as well as provide citizens and businesses with a virtualized city platform on which to build real apps and services.
The NetPositive Economy
Of course, Dassault Systèmes has a footprint on the world—one that will slightly increase with my own flight from Boston to Paris. We operate on the simple belief that we can create more good than harm; in fact, a study that we’re about to release in collaboration with the Sustainability and Health Initiative for NetPositive Enterprise (SHINE) at Harvard’s Center for Global Health and the Environment (part of the Harvard School of Public Health) demonstrates that our potential to enable handprints—positive impacts—exceeds our footprint by a factor of 10,000 times in the automotive sector alone.
We’ll be releasing this case study at COP21, and we invite the critical review of our peers, particularly those involved in the burgeoning NetPositive movement. For those more interested in the wonky details of handprinting, you can read the just-released handprint methodology whitepaper authored by Dr. Greg Norris.
We’ll share the stories we’ve highlighted here—and listen to others’—at both the Tech Gallerie au Bourget, outside the Blue Zone at which the negotiations are taking place, as well as in a booth at the Solutions COP21 public exhibition at the Grand Palais. With a global climate accord, I hope such stories will become more viable and more frequent. What are you doing for COP21, and what are you hoping it achieves?
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