Empowering sustainable decision making through data

Every year, The Business of a Better World, an NGO with members such as Facebook, Nissan and Unilever holds a survey focused on the state of sustainable business. The 2019 version of this survey included the question how companies valued prevention of climate change as part of their sustainability goals. 52% of the respondents said climate change was a ‘very significant’ sustainability focus, an increase of 14% compared to 2018. Although recognizing the significance of climate change is an important first step, taking actions to reduce your organization's effect on climate change can be less straightforward. This article will set out which Google products can be helpful to effectively use data in this process.

The Global Energy Perspective of McKinsey pointed out that even though the rise of carbon emissions is decreasing, the goal to limit the rise of global temperature to 2 degrees in 2050 still remains distant. To contribute to this goal it is important to embrace all possible actions that can reduce your organization's carbon footprint. Data can be a major help in recognizing which areas have the biggest potential for reducing carbon emissions.

The rise of digitization causes an increase in the availability of data. Google's Cloud SQL makes sure you can store this data in a scalable, secure and reliable database. Even though data availability is becoming less of a problem, this does not mean the data itself is ready for analysis. The use of Google's BigQuery creates a serverless cost-effective data warehouse enabling you to analyze petabytes of data with a very high speed.

A great example of the use of those tools can be found in E-ON's Optimum program. This software was initially designed to enable E-ON employees to understand their customers’ energy behaviour and to tailor programs to their customers' needs. After enthusiastic reactions of customers, E-ON made quick steps and researched the possibilities to offer this program to the customers themselves. To make this work, the Optimum program needed to be converted into a highly scalable cloud-based solution. 

To achieve this, the choice was made to partner with Google, whose Kubernetes Engine service allowed the automation of the application’s management, monitoring and deployment. With the help of Google Kubernetes Engine, E-ON was able to roll out the Optimum program at a fast pace, without compromising the safety of the data used. 

The use of Cloud SQL allowed the E-ON development team to rely on a fully managed database which automatically takes care of updates, scaling and other infrastructural concerns. This allows the developers to focus on developing more interesting functions. An example of such a function is an automated anomaly detection functionality that flags to users whenever their site’s energy consumption deviates from their set expectations or usual pattern. These kinds of functions make the product a great supporting tool, allowing managers to continually improve their sustainability and budget goals by using their own data.

By using Google Cloud solutions products you can analyze your carbon emissions and thereby reduce your organization's impact on climate change.  The user case of E-ON Optimum is a great example of how this can be done.