Since the end of February, energy price volatility has been seen across multiple fuels, including oil and gas. And, while this volatility is being felt across the board, SMEs – which represent 99.85% of total business population and £2.8Tn in turnover – are being disproportionately exposed, particularly to sharp rises in gas prices.

For many SMEs, energy costs represent a meaningful share of operating expenses, particularly in sectors such as accommodation, retail, and food production. This leaves them more exposed to sudden price volatility, especially when access to tools and finance might be limited.

As costs rise, margins tighten and cash flow becomes less predictable, leading to increased uncertainty for both SMEs and lenders. For financial service providers – with over £68bn in SME lending portfolios – this shapes how risk is assessed and how capital is allocated.

At the same time, SMEs remain difficult to assess due to limited and inconsistent data. Rising uncertainty could push banks to tighten credit conditions across their portfolios, resulting in a feedback loop where SMEs face higher costs and reduced access to finance, while lenders carry greater uncertainty and risk.

Perseus provides a more complete view of energy costs

By expanding to include gas data, Perseus directly addresses this problem. In March 2026, the Perseus scheme began incorporating gas data, supporting calculations of Greenhouse Gas Protocol Scope 1 (direct) emissions alongside the Scope 2 (indirect) electricity emissions.

Moving beyond electricity to provide a more complete view of SME energy consumption and emissions gives SMEs better control over their energy exposure, while enabling banks to assess risk, verify impact, and finance the transition with greater confidence.

With this expansion, Perseus is estimated to have potential reach of over 1 million UK SMEs and cover over 70% of use cases, reflecting the scale of energy data across organisations.

For more on Perseus gas emissions methodology: https://ib1.org/perseus/emissions-calculations/ 

For SMEs, this means:

• reduced time, cost, and complexity of reporting
• a more complete and credible picture of energy use and emissions
• better access to finance and incentives
• potential for lower cost of borrowing

For banks and lenders, it enables:

• more accurate assessment of SME energy exposure
• improved risk pricing and credit decisions
• comparable, standardised data across portfolios
• the ability to develop targeted financing products linked to energy performance

Renewables over reliance

Reliance on fossil fuels remains a key driver of energy market volatility. It’s not an imagined scenario either, with Reuters recently reporting that wind output in Q1 2026 increased significantly year-on-year, helping to drive a ~16% drop in gas-fired generation. This cushioned the UK from the impacts of the gas price spike and contributed to relatively lower wholesale power prices versus some European peers. 

As more low-cost renewable electricity comes online, reliance on gas, and exposure to its volatility, can be reduced. This means the shift towards a cleaner renewable energy future is more than an environmental move but a financial one too, creating new opportunities for both SMEs and Financial Service Providers. 

While renewables can reduce our reliance on gas, flexibility determines how much of that value can actually be captured. For more on the impact I&C Flexibility can have on renewables take-up and the wider energy market, read our latest blog.

We are pleased to announce that IB1 will be supporting The Retail Energy Code Company (RECCo) in the design and development of Ofgem’s  policy position to implement a Consumer Consent Solution (CCS). 

The CCS is a secure, digital solution that empowers energy consumers to control who can access their energy data. It enables people to easily grant, manage, review, and revoke consent. This supports transparency, consumer choice, and strong data protection across the retail energy market. 

IB1’s Role

IB1 will provide expert advisory support, assisting in the design of the Trust Framework that underpins the CCS. This framework will be central to ensuring that the service is reliable, transparent, trusted and usable by both consumers and market participants.

We will leverage our extensive experience in designing, developing, and advising on Trust Frameworks, Consent and Permission, and in cross-sector stakeholder engagement to deliver market-scale solutions. 

In particular we will bring learnings from the Perseus project, which enables SMEs to securely share emissions data with banks, calculated from their metered energy consumption, in a permission-based framework.

Sharing data with consumer or business consent is at the core of the smart data economy heralded by the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025. We are delighted to be working on a key initial focus of the Act, and intend for our learnings to be repurposed across sectors to help achieve legal, policy and technical alignment.

SME decarbonisation depends on better data

Accurate Scope 2 emissions data—the indirect emissions from purchased electricity—sit at the heart of SME decarbonisation and green financing decisions. But most Scope 2 calculations rely on crude annual accounting that masks the reality of how electricity grids actually work.

What’s more, electricity demand and renewable generation don’t align neatly across a calendar year – they shift hour by hour. An SME might be using an energy tariff that’s marketed as “100% renewable” on an annual basis while consuming fossil fuel power during winter evenings when solar isn’t generating. That gap matters for real decarbonisation, and it matters for lenders assessing genuine progress toward Net Zero.

Making clean power visible

Matched Energy is an independent, not-for-profit energy transparency initiative. It analyses publicly available data using a peer-reviewed methodology to calculate how well renewable supply aligns with consumption on a half-hourly basis—the finest granularity supported by UK electricity settlement systems.

Their groundbreaking Clean Power Index published on October 27th, puts vital information in the hands of consumers. The index underscores the need for regulatory reform of the existing opaque rules that allow suppliers to make misleading “100% renewable” marketing claims.

This level of precision transforms Scope 2 accounting from an annual figure into something actionable: SMEs can see when they’re actually getting clean power, and lenders can assess the physical reality behind carbon claims.

Open Energy & Perseus

Open Energy is creating a connected web of energy data while Perseus is automating sustainability reporting for UK SMEs in order to unlock access to green finance. At its core, Perseus makes it easy to share accurate, assurable emissions data that sits behind carbon calculations—enabling better analysis, action and impact.

Through this collaboration half-hourly renewable matching data will be integrated with carbon accounting platforms and other interested parties across the ecosystem. It will enable SMEs and their stakeholders to access more granular, assurable data about electricity consumption and its true carbon intensity.

By connecting Matched Energy’s temporal analysis to Perseus’s data infrastructure, we’re creating pathways for carbon accountants, lenders, and corporate energy buyers to make better-informed decisions based on the physical reality of the grid.

“The result of this collaboration is more reliable emissions reporting, better decarbonisation decisions, and stronger foundations for green finance. The data infrastructure already exists—what’s needed is the connection between the systems that hold it. Open Energy is building that connection and we’re pleased to have Matched Energy as part of that effort”. Gavin Starks, CEO, IB1

Will Goodhart, started his new role as Executive Director of the Future of Sustainable Data Alliance (FoSDA) towards the end of April this year, following 18 years as Chief Executive at the CFA Society of the UK.

We caught up with Will to hear his perspective on the next phase of sustainable finance – where sustainability is set to become embedded in every financial decision – and to discuss the role of data, the evolving regulatory landscape and what the recent Data Act means for businesses and consumers.  

Ross: Will, you spent nearly two decades at the CFA, much of it focusing on sustainability. What brought you to FoSDA?

Will: For the last 5 to 10 of those years at the CFA, we had a focus on sustainable investing and educating people on how to invest sustainably. So we developed the CFA certificate in ESG investing, now called the CFA Certificate Sustainable Investing. Following this, we developed a certificate in climate and investing and the certificate for impact investing at the beginning of 2024. 

I wanted to apply my experience more directly – helping people use their skills and knowledge to advance sustainable finance. So, joining FoSDA felt like a natural fit because of my understanding of the market, the connections I had and the potential FoSDA has as an organisation. It has an important role to play in empowering financial markets to tackle environmental and social challenges through the provision of high-quality, comprehensive data.

Ross: So, what are the barriers to making the market for sustainable data work?

Will: I think improving the consistency, comprehensiveness, and interoperability of data are key. As well as highlighting the value of data and demonstrating the importance of a competitive market in the provision of sustainable data and sustainable analytics.

Of course, FoSDA is not here to solve everything ourselves, but also to convene stakeholders and support the ecosystem. 

There are still data gaps out there to work on. For example, real estate data can be fragmented across markets. And even with nature and biodiversity data, which has grown significantly thanks to geospatial analysis and AI, we need to ensure the methodologies are transparent and robust.

Ross: That point on nature data is interesting – it feels like a fast-growing but complex space?

Will: Yes, someone recently called nature data a “jungle” and I think that’s a bit extreme but still apt. There’s tremendous innovation and growth in biodiversity and nature-related indicators, but understanding how that data is derived and making sure the market for nature data functions properly is crucial. 

Ross: I think it’s also finding that link to impact as well. 

Will: Yes, one of the problems with that nature and impact is knowing your baseline. Getting a baseline for nature is quite challenging. To know that you’re creating impact, you have to know what the situation was beforehand and then be able to measure it in the same way after to see if there has been any positive impact. 

Ross: Do you think, as sustainability becomes more embedded in finance, that FoSDA’s work will become easier?

Will: We’re entering a new phase where sustainability is becoming part of every financial decision and that naturally creates pushback from those invested in the old ways. But the integration of sustainability indicators into policy, regulation and standard-setting will intensify, because the challenges are no longer in the distance, they are here, now. That makes it critical to ensure regulations are targeted, proportional, and effective. 

Ross: I wanted to get your thoughts on the Data (Use and Access) Act and how this might influence FoSDA’s work?

One positive is that it may change how people think about data – not just as an asset for producers but as something that should benefit consumers more directly. Like with Open Banking, it could open up markets, give consumers more choice, and spark a wider conversation about governance and value sharing.

I think the more that it happens, now that there’s a common framework for it, the more people expect that they should be able to share their data with others in situations where it’s going to be beneficial to them. 

Ross: The Data Act also touches on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and how this is being used to analyse data and automate decision making. What are your thoughts on this?

Will: We see a lot of claims of AI-powered models analysing unstructured data to deliver sustainability insights. And while the technology is exciting, it needs to be used appropriately. Consumers of AI-generated data should question its provenance and understand the processes behind it.

Ross: And finally Will, what’s next for FoSDA?

Will: A key priority is making standardisation and machine-readability fundamental to financial reporting and systems, so data can flow seamlessly and effectively. We’re looking forward to working with others to frame that problem and drive progress.

The goal is to arrive at an integrated, robust and detailed set of recommendations and principles for nature data that will meet the future assessment and reporting needs of market participants.

TNFD has identified the need for a strategic, long-term approach that addresses distributed and decentralised data sharing with a Nature Data Public Facility (NDPF) for market participants. Rather than creating a central database, this will focus on the adoption of robust data sharing criteria (Principles) to enable markets to discover, access and use disclosures.

The government-backed initiative has developed a set of disclosure recommendations and guidance that encourage and enable businesses and financial institutions to report and act on their nature-related dependencies, impacts, risks and opportunities. TNFD’s integrated assessment approach, LEAP, aims to help organisations conduct the due diligence necessary to inform disclosure statements aligned with the TNFD recommendations.

By improving access to decision-useful, nature-related data for markets, TNFD aims to enable the widespread adoption, monitoring and implementation of its recommendations.. IB1 will employ its Icebreaking process, contributing to the delivery of a set of principles that address data sensitivity, verification and assurability. The collaboration will identify nature-related data providers and data layers that are of specific relevance to corporate and financial use cases of corporate reporting, science-based target setting and transition planning.

IB1 will help to establish the foundational principles and practices to support this, which can be adopted as best practice by nature-related data providers to meet the needs of the markets – financial institutions and corporates adopting frameworks such as TNFD’s. These recommendations will help to drive global reporting solutions that are interoperable, scalable, aligned with current data standards, and that enable data providers to retain control and ownership of their data. This will support the broader market-based nature data value chain to develop value-adding data solutions. 

If you (or someone in your network) would like to learn about opportunities  to contribute to this work, we will be conducting interviews and hosting insightful workshops: contact icebreaking@ib1.org  

The Act (which covers both consumer and business data) places significant emphasis on Smart Data Schemes. These schemes, which enable secure, user-authorised data sharing between organisations, stand out as a transformative step for the UK economy.  

The benefits are far-reaching, with the potential to unlock innovation, enhance competition, and improve user control and choice. Backed by the UK Industrial Strategy’s £36 million investment in new schemes across financial services, energy, and beyond, these changes promise real-world impact. Open Finance alone is estimated to boost UK GDP by £30.5 billion each year.

Done well, the Data Act will mean:

• Data portability and control of your data 
• Better access to useful data
• Clearer rules and stronger protections for safety and fairness
• Greater empowerment and control for users to enable data sharing
• Foundations for better data sharing governance to enable real-world benefits of apps, AI and related tech services, while better addressing rights, consent and permission

This includes: 

• A statutory code on automated decision-making

Meaning the government will create a legally-recognised code of practice to guide organisations that use automated systems to make decisions. 

• Greater enforcement of the rules

More power to enforce data protection laws, making sure compliance isn’t optional and bad actors are held accountable.

• Increased emphasis on DPIAs (Data Protection Impact Assessments)

DPIAs are risk assessments that organisations must carry out before starting projects that involve high-risk processing of personal data (e.g., large-scale surveillance, sensitive health data).

• What about this whole AI thing?

Advanced software (such as AI and machine learning) is now being used to analyse data and in some cases to automate decision making. These systems are joining data together, in new ways across our economy. If we are to build and maintain trust, both voluntary and regulatory frameworks are essential to ensure they operate not only within the law, but also transparently and in the public interest. You can contribute to our conversation on this here. 

Why Smart Data Schemes matter for a Net Zero future

Smart Data Schemes aren’t just good for the economy – they are essential for our Net Zero future, because decarbonisation requires faster, smarter decisions powered by better data.

Over the past five years, we’ve been turning this vision into impact across energy, water, transport, finance and beyond. Our key learning so far? Implementation matters.

Our data infrastructure is maturing to deliver real-world impact. Initiatives like Open Energy are open, networked and verifiable to enable faster, better decisions to be made across systems. To deliver a net zero future we need data to flow as efficiently as energy itself. 

Through Open Energy, we’re creating a connected web of energy data and have already shown how better access to data delivers tangible, net zero-aligned outcomes. 

For example: 

• Our work with Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks (SSEN), shows how improved data access can better align grid capacity with EV demand. 
• On the REACT project, we found that making data more accessible helps reduce delays in connecting green energy developers to the grid, enabling Transmission Owners to deliver critical infrastructure upgrades faster.

The Act also marks a major milestone for our work on Perseus, a national smart data initiative focused on enabling green finance for SMEs. Recently featured in the Willow Report, Perseus is a live example of how to operationalise Smart Data across sectors. Provisions in the Act (e.g. smart meter data infrastructure) directly strengthen our efforts to ensure every SME can access finance for the net-zero transition.

A decade in the making; the real work starts now

This moment is the culmination of more than a decade of work. In 2012, I was appointed founding CEO of the  Open Data Institute, as the UK became a global leader in open data policy. During my tenure, I initiated what became a founding paper asking Who owns our Data Infrastructure?. 

In 2015, I was appointed co-chair of the Open Banking Working Group that created the Open Banking Standard which proved that Smart Data Schemes could move from theory to practice, creating a blueprint for sectors like energy, telecoms, and transport. And, in 2023 I joined the UK Smart Data Council as its co-chair. 

It’s been over a decade since that initial work and the UK is once again setting the bar on data infrastructure. Legislation is just the starting line: to deliver real outcomes for our economy and our environment, we must now build on this foundation at pace, with the same ambition, urgency, and collaboration that brought us here.

Example:

The Perseus pilot – in which banks allow Perseus monthly emissions information to be used in the decision making process for one or more green loans – represents a huge step towards automating reporting for UK SMEs, bridging the gap between real-world energy data and financial decision making.

We’re speaking to those involved in Perseus – from Banks, Carbon Accounting Providers, non-profits and policymakers – to explore what the pilot means for their business, their customers, and the broader net-zero transition.

In this episode, we sat down with Zarina Banu from Tide, who outlines the company’s role as a digital CFO and business management platform supporting SMEs across the UK, India, and Germany. The conversation reinforced just how vital SMEs are to national and global sustainability targets and why they need continued support to succeed.

Zarina highlights how Perseus is ‘ahead of its time’, noting its potential impact and ability to decode sustainability and net zero practices for SMEs. She also spoke to the importance of cutting through the noise—reminding us that while business priorities may shift, the urgency of tackling climate change remains unchanged.

Timestamps:

00:00 – Introduction to Tide and Zarina’s role

01:00 – Key financial and sustainability challenges for SMEs: Discussion on how energy efficiency and cost-cutting are closely tied to emissions reduction and financial stability.

01:35 – Current product offerings and net zero plans: Zarina explains Tide’s current carbon insights product and outlines ambitions to deepen their net zero solutions for SMEs.

03:00 – The challenge of decoding information for SMEs: Insights on how the abundance of sustainability information causes friction, and the role communications and partnerships play in helping SMEs.

04:15 – Introduction to Perseus and Tide’s involvement: Zarina discusses how Tide got involved with Perseus through B4NZ and why it aligns with their SME-focused mission.

06:15 – Value points of Perseus & the pilot: Positioning SMEs as critical stakeholders, and the expected impact of the pilot program.

08:40 –Potential hurdles: staying committed to net zero and silencing the noise: Emphasis on staying committed to the climate mission despite distractions, and how Tide is doubling down on net zero with a dedicated lead.

10:55 – Integration of Perseus into Tide’s platform: Exploration of how Perseus might fit into Tide’s offerings depending on pilot outcomes and scalability.

11:45 – Uniqueness of Perseus in the market: Zarina reflects on how Perseus stands out due to its reach, potential impact, and early-adopter hurdles.

13:05 – Final thoughts on business case advocacy: A call to keep making the business case for Perseus repeatedly to keep it front of mind for decision-makers.

Transcript: 

Ross: So yeah, I think, can we just start really by you giving a brief overview of Tide and your and your role at tide?

Zarina: Yeah, sure. So Tide is a business management platform. We’re live in the UK, India and Germany, and we’re on a very proactive international expansion plan. We currently have over 1 million members. Those are customers in those three markets. And what we do is, we are their CFO. So we manage and receive payments. We manage business expenses in the app, create invoices. We do accounting. And this is all served by a number of services. So small businesses are very time poor. So tide acts as their fundamentally their finance function. And we are expanding into business management as well very actively.

Ross: Yeah, that’s great to hear. So the small businesses there, what do you see? You know, is their main challenge when it comes to their targets for sustainability and, you know, broader challenges, financially.

Zarina: Essentially, the reduction of emissions goes hand in hand with energy efficiency. So cutting waste, optimizing supply chains and lowering electricity and fuel costs, many of tides business owners are energy dependent. So that’s very key for them. And in the long run, of course, sustainability efforts can drive financial savings. So there’s a huge upside there.

Ross: Yeah that’s great. And with that knowledge what kind of products do you offer SMEs?

Zarina: At present we offer only carbon insights. But you know we’re very much in sort of deep dive mode at the moment. So what we’re doing is we’re looking at net zero for members. Tide is a net zero business itself via carbon removals. And as this year rolls out, we are looking at a much deeper product offering for our members because we do know that, you know, net zero. For example, in the UK it’s written into law that the UK is going to get to net zero by 2050 and there is no path to net zero in the UK and dare I say it, in other markets that Tide exists in, without this path to net zero cannot exist without SMEs. So the path to net zero is entirely dependent on the success of SMEs to get to this themselves. I think one of the challenges for SMEs is to really to decode this huge amount of information out there. For example, this is causing friction for SMEs. So we know from our insights, we know from our data that SMEs want to get to net zero. And they really do want to do this. The motivation is there, the desire is there, but this huge amount of information and how to decode it for them is currently a huge friction point for them. So I think one of the solutions, well, from a comms point of view is, you know, what are the steps it takes to get SMEs on the path to net zero? So people on my side of the fence in the comms industry, we can offer practical tips, advice, insights, one stop shops for SMEs to get to net zero, which is of course, you know, updated all the time because it’s an ever changing landscape, you know, which throws up different challenges all the time. And fundamentally, SMEs are very, very time poor. They’re busy. They’re focused on running their business. So, you know, let’s not forget that many of them are in sort of survival mode, or those that are in growth mode are still super, super busy. And so sustainability for them is a sort of an add on that they just don’t have the brain space all the time to, look into deeply. And so this is where Perseus can come in and where Tide, you know. And partnerships like this can play a key role in simplifying the journey for SMEs. 

Ross: That’s great. I’m glad you brought Perseus there. So I dont need to segue myself. 

Zarina: I’d be a bad PR person if I didn’t. Right?

Ross: Yeah. Can you talk about mainly how you started to get involved with Perseus? I know you’ve been on board for a while.

Zarina: So this goes back a couple of years when we were involved with Bankers for net zero, which is now B4NZ, and Perseus is obviously an offshoot of B4NZ, and, you know, it is entirely aligned with our business. Tide is entirely focused on small businesses. We serve small businesses with no finance function and about 0 to 9 employees. So we’re entirely aligned and fundamentally on the same mission right here to support SMEs to get to net zero. So from about two years ago we got involved with the Icebreaker team. They presented the proposition, it was very, very exciting. And, you know, if Perseus can scale this nationally, you know, who knows where this can go. And certainly I think the potential is huge. And also to get it on the map at the top table because currently the net zero and SME sort of alignment is not really being discussed at the top table of government. So I think it’s really important that you know, we jointly keep pushing this in front of the right stakeholders, both on the business side, you know, amongst Perseus’s various members and also at the governmental side, you know, this is kind of mission critical.

Ross: Yeah. No, that’s that’s really good that you brought that up the the government’s role because I know, there can be a lot of emphasis on bigger businesses, and I wonder whether they, not that they ignore it, but they don’t see the impact that smaller businesses can have given that they’re, you know, they make up the larger businesses, supply chains. Yeah, I think can we move mainly into obviously the Perseus pilots coming up, but I wanted to just get your overview on the key, you know, value points of Perseus.

Zarina: Well, I think, you know, number one is the decoding of international best practice and UK best practice. You know, what do SMEs, what do businesses adhere to and really how to decode the noise and make the path simple to net zero. So that’s one thing. The second thing is really to understand that SMEs are part of the solution, and it is how we get them on the journey, how we get external stakeholders on the journey. Business as well as government as well as, you know, public private to understand that, you know, in the UK, for example, SMEs form about 6 million businesses and they employ multiple amounts of people. So really it is really about how to push this conversation front and centre for SMEs and to understand that we need more representatives from this sector early on the discussion points. And then lastly, the impact of the pilot. I think the pilot is going to be a huge milestone for Icebreaker, for Perseus and also for this conversation, because once business fundamentally and SMEs – both time poor, really want to get to the end point very quickly – can see how it’s actually working. And to understand that this is a thing that is going to be real and especially for big business, if you like, internally how to scale this across our customer base. So I think there’s those three points there that I’ve outlined.

Ross: No. I definitely agree. Yeah. It will be a huge milestone. I’ve started to see some of the demos of what the pilot will actually look like. And I think that actually solidifies in your mind that, you know, it’s happening and it’s, you know, going to be quite easy for SMEs and banks to use. Where do you see the main challenges with Perseus coming? As we want to expand, as we want to get in front of people? What are the hurdles, really, that we could think about now and avoid in the future?

Zarina: I think it’s important to remain focused on the long term. You know, climate change is not going anywhere despite the noise out there. And it’s really, really important to focus on that. So you know the UK has got its 2050 target. But the fact is that there is a huge amount of noise distracting, for a lot of people. For others, perhaps it’s an excuse to take a detour. But at present, you know, unless the science proves otherwise, net zero is not going anywhere. I mean, for Tide, we will continue to be a net zero business, we’re working on offering net zero solutions to our small businesses across our markets. And so I think that is the challenge. You know, stay true to the mission. Stay true to the need to reduce climate change. And in amongst all the noise, do what people feel is principled and right.

Every business has its own imperative and its own challenges and its own strategy and its own stakeholder base. But definitely at Tide, you know, we are actually, funnily enough, doubling down on this. We’ve hired a net zero lead who’s come in and is doing a deep dive on net zero, not just for Tide as a business but also for our members, our customer base. So, yes. No, absolutely. For the long term, you know, we’re committed. And there’s no change there. What it will look like might be slightly different. But, yes you know, we’re a  committed business. And I think it’s really important to understand as well, as a finishing point, that many other businesses remain committed to net zero. It’s just if you look at it from a PR perspective, the news that creates the noise is the news that’s likely to be picked up. So those people who are just getting on and just getting on with the business aren’t likely to make the headlines.

Ross: I was thinking there, once the pilot is operational and we move forward. Will Perseus make up, you know, part of what you offer SMEs like on your site, they’ll be able to go to the site and use Perseus as a tool. I was going to ask how it fits in with Tide’s offerings?

Zarina: I think that’s a great question. It’s definitely something that we can bring back into the business and really at the moment, and I think what we’ve done really well with Perseus, Tide as a business, is to continue to keep the conversation open and to really fundamentally, we are here for our members and we’re here to make life easier for them. And, you know, if the Perseus pilot and the impact of that is going to be able to be scalable even if we start small, then that’s definitely something that Tide would certainly be interested in having a conversation. And, you know, Perseus is best placed to do this at at present. I can’t see anyone else doing it, so we absolutely have to keep the conversation open.

Ross: Yeah. No. Amazing. Are you part of any of the projects like Perseus or is it quite unique?

Zarina: I actually don’t know what’s out there, to be honest Ross, call me ignorant, but I can’t see anything else out there that has the reach, the scalability and the involvement from the right people. Personally, I think it’s way ahead of its time, which is potentially sometimes what’s the challenge with adoption of both of the membership and potentially of the pilot? Because it is way ahead of its time, people are potentially finding it a challenge to understand its potential impact right? So its early adopter phase, people don’t quite know what it is. They don’t know how it’s going to affect them. They don’t know how it’s going to drive up or drive up in the right places and drive down in the right places, revenue, both on the business side and on the member side.So, you know, I think it’s genuinely a trailblazing product.

Ross: Yeah, that’s great to hear. That’s actually that’s actually most of my questions. But if you wanted to there’s anything more you wanted to add then feel free. 

Zarina: I think I’ve said this before. I think it’s really important that, you know, the business case is made continually and strongly. Just because the business case was made, say, 18 months ago, doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t be made again repetitively. So at the end of the day, people who are making the decisions on the membership side are very, very busy executives. So I think it’s always of value to continue to put that forward, to make the case, to provide clarity and to always, always demonstrate the business case.

Ross: Yeah, absolutely. That’s hopefully where work like this comes in as well.

Zarina: Yeah, absolutely. If you don’t put it down, how are people going to know about it?

In this episode, we speak with Andrew Myers, Lead Architect, Northumbrian Water Group (NWG). Our conversation covers the water sector’s ambitious net-zero goals, flexible energy allocation, NWG’s work with Icebreaker One on the Stream open data project and the evolving public perception of water companies in the media.

“We’re always keen to innovate and lead. So, we moved fast, and engaged with the stakeholders that we thought would be the biggest users of our data. This approach really helps to tease out the data sets, maps and dashboards that people might want.” Yiu-Shing Pang, Open Data Manager at UK Power Networks tells Icebreaker One.

Not only this, but the company set about publishing historical data and allowing organisations to request the data they wanted to see. They then simplified access to this data by creating an easy-to-navigate portal with clear, understandable terms and conditions for use because as Yiu-Shing highlights “Many people aren’t sure what they can do with data, or whether they can use it.”

Mapping out open data

One of the practical applications of UK Power Networks’ open data can be seen in the form of a comprehensive map – their Network Infrastructure and Usage Map – it contains multiple layers of the company’s substations, poles and towers, overhead lines, with information on what these assets are doing.

These kinds of initiatives have also been instrumental in helping developers connect clean energy projects to the grid. Connecting to the network is a lengthy process but UK Power Networks’ maps and dashboards allow developers to see, in near real-time, where they can potentially connect to the grid. Equally, the maps are helping energy companies better understand grid constraints and curtailment.

“Open data is there to enhance the quality of insights and reduce the time it takes to obtain them. In this case, open data can satisfy that initial bit of homework that everyone has to do in order to connect to the grid. This saves developers time and money”.

A more recent example of open data in action can be seen in the company’s IRENES datasets, which is helping onshore wind and ground-based solar developers find land suitable for projects. The tool, developed in collaboration with the University of East Anglia, examines the potential energy density of over 3.5 million individual areas for both solar and wind installations using wind speed and solar irradiance data. Given the new government’s recent lifting of the onshore wind ban, this tool now seems particularly timely.

A delicate balance

As UK Power Networks continues to push forward with their work on open and shared data, they’ve found the demand for increasingly granular data is growing. “We’ve moved from data on large substations, to smaller ones and then on to power cables. Knowing what the power cable is doing and what’s happening upstream at the substation can save significant time and money in the application process”, Yiu-Shing explains.

And while this detailed information provides clear benefits for those looking to connect to an EV charge point, the DNO is grappling with opening up data within the constraints posed by legacy legislation such as the Utilities Act. Legislation that is not necessarily compatible with contemporary needs.

“If I’m trying to show people what the power cable outside your home is doing and there’s only two of you on that street. There’s potential to provide insight into individual household activity and behaviours, which could encroach on personal privacy or commercial sensitivity. But, if it’s 100 customers connected to that power cable, the risk is reduced because there’s enough aggregation that you can’t spot what an individual is doing.”

It’s clear that as UK Power Networks continues to push for greater transparency through open data, the DNO will have to navigate the delicate balance between providing granular, useful data and protecting individual privacy.

The bill promises to accelerate data sharing and unlock innovative uses of data, while ensuring protections are in place to protect consumers, citizens and businesses, across the economy. This is supported by the work of the Smart Data Council.

According to the government, the bill will “enable new innovative uses of data to be safely developed and deployed and will improve people’s lives by making public services work better by reforming data sharing and standards; help scientists and researchers make more life enhancing discoveries by improving data laws; and ensure data is well protected by giving the regulator (the ICO) new, stronger powers and a more modern structure”

Looking beyond Open Banking

One of the more notable areas of the bill is its reference to ‘Smart Data Schemes’, which would make it easier to securely move data between organisations. In a similar vein to Open Banking, these schemes will allow customers to share their account information with third parties. This could shape how customer data is shared and unlock innovation in fields beyond Open Banking: “by empowering consumers to share their data with sectors we also hope to encourage the economic growth we’ve seen from Open Banking, across the economy”.

“As we accelerate into a data-enabled future, Smart Data Schemes will become integral to economic growth and we must address data rights at their foundation. Schemes in areas such as Finance, Energy, Transport and beyond will enable interoperability between our real and financial economies while protecting both businesses and consumers.”, Gavin Starks, CEO, IB1

For instance, with a smart data scheme in place, a consumer might decide to share detailed data on their energy usage patterns with a third party provider. The potential benefits of this might manifest in tailored energy plans, energy demand response systems, improved efficiencies and to support reductions in carbon footprint. What’s more, with a robust and cohesive legislative backing, smart data schemes will have the comprehensive foundations they need to create real impact.

Regulatory foundations to build confidence

A clear regulatory framework for data sharing, coupled with a desire to minimise the amount of data collected or shared, could help build confidence in sharing data. Data minimisation means organisations must only share, store and use the data that they need to help make recommendations and/or decisions that create positive outcomes. It also means reducing the risk of oversharing, or holding onto sensitive information that could have unintended consequences.

“We have entered an era whereby data rights are central to unlocking value and protecting everyone. The same data may be used for many different purposes and by different actors, with different consequences and liabilities.”, Emily Judson, Head of Research, IB1

Led by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT), the bill has been endorsed by the likes of the Centre for Finance, Innovation and Technology (CFIT) and Open Banking. Top of its list of recommendations for improving SME lending to drive economic growth, CFIT has expressed a willingness to ‘Prioritise the Digital Information and Smart Data Bill’.

At IB1, we strongly support the development of Smart Data in the UK. It is highly aligned with our work on Open Energy, STREAM, Perseus, SERI, and other areas.

“There’s two ways to tackle this issue; either through supply options like reservoirs or through demand management. And, with a 5 billion litres per day gap to 2050 across the UK, regulators are saying half of this will be achieved through demand management.” Lina Nieto, Water Net Zero Manager, at Affinity Water

Water Neutrality 

Water neutrality, which involves reducing the water footprint from activities as much as  possible, is an example of demand management. Water companies and developers can, together, ensure that new developments are built as efficiently as possible, for example, by installing fittings to prevent leakage. But this is only one part of a multifaceted problem. A lot of the issues surrounding water use can be boiled down to behaviour and our perception of water. 

“Lots of water is being wasted because no one really looks at a water bill in the same way they look at an energy bill or a mobile phone bill. The challenge really comes down to the way that people perceive water.” 

Project Zero

Lina and her team recognised the behavioural element that comes into play with water usage, leveraging this in their water neutrality campaign, Project Zero. Using a combination of customer behavioural change, technology installation and offsetting, Project Zero’s goal was to bring down water consumption across three sites covering around 1,000 homes each in ‘Bidwell West’ in Houghton Regis, Bedfordshire. 

“In our supply area, new properties are expected to use an extra 83.03 million litres of water a day by 2032, on top of what is already being used. By working with behavioural change specialists, we created pledges for people to commit to and found that almost 100% of people stuck to their pledge and successfully changed their behaviour in relation to water usage”. 

These pledges helped people to quantify the amount of water they use and ultimately the amount of water they could save through small, everyday changes. One example is turning the tap off while brushing your teeth, which can save 20 litres of water. And, while the project found that behaviour change alone could reduce water use by an average of 24.9 litres per household, people still need to use water. To achieve water neutrality, the project also set about offsetting water consumption in non-households like schools and businesses. 

“Water offsetting is in its infancy with different geographical approaches being trialled to achieve offsetting targets, and buildings of social value are being prioritised. This first, very localised approach, ensured that the water used by new homes and its offsetting, is linked to the same water source.”

Government attitudes

Government attitudes to the water sector have also played their part in the industry’s apparent lack of progress: “We’re ten years behind the energy sector. Water is cheap, people take it for granted and so it hasn’t had the same focus that the energy sector has. We weren’t even part of the government’s net zero roadmap, which is surprising because water is a very energy intensive industry”. 

But, with a parliamentary refresh in the shape of a new Labour government, there have been some more positive signs. A new Water (Special Measures) Bill was laid out in the King’s Speech, part of which referenced a requirement to install ‘real-time monitors at every sewage outlet, with data independently scrutinised by the water regulators’.

A smart move

As the project pushes to the next phase, it plans to move away from the time-consuming process of manual meter readings, instead choosing to install smart meters. Smart meters provide a more granular and timely view of water usage, as well as saving time and money when compared to manual readings:

“While costly, installing smart meters has proved worth the outlay, as taking manual readings is time-consuming and costs money. The data quality of smart meters is more reliable with a granular level of data, which supports the understanding of the impact of the campaign.” 

The firms will work together to design the rules and processes that make automated emissions reporting possible. In turn, these rules will enable other products and services, like emissions calculators, databases and reporting software.

Research from the British Business Bank shows that SME businesses account for around half (43-53%) of UK business greenhouse gas emissions, but just 3% have both measured their carbon footprint and set targets for reduction.

Other new members include Ordnance Survey, FDATA, Smarter Contracts, VoltView, OnGen and tilt, forming a 40-strong group of members.

Less hassle for smaller businesses, better risk management for banks

For SMEs, Perseus will revolutionise emissions reporting, allowing them to choose to automatically share their electricity data with the platforms they use to calculate their emissions with one click. It will ease the challenge they face in finding and sharing data for sustainability reports, while allowing them to stay in control of how it can be used.

Terri Gunn, quality and sustainability officer at Ulrick & Short, a Pontefract-based food manufacturer, told The Times that the first time she calculated her business’s electricity use “it took hours and hours”. She said Perseus could be “massive” for smaller companies. “It would save a lot of man hours and manpower’s the one thing that SME businesses don’t have.”

For accounting platforms, Perseus will enable an improved offering for their SME customers, who will be able to more easily produce sustainability reports and be incentivised to do so. Platforms will also be able to offer personalised recommendations based on higher quality emissions data.

And for banks, Perseus enables access to assurable data to help them manage risk and offer better products and services to their SME customers. In turn, banks could offer incentives for SMEs to report and reduce their emissions.

Just 11% of SMEs have accessed external finance to support net zero actions, but 22% say they are prepared to do so – showing a growing need for green finance for smaller businesses.

The first phase of Perseus will cover electricity data. Future phases aim to include gas, water and beyond.

A growing group of forward-thinking organisations

Perseus is a collaborative programme driven by commercial partners from key sectors, is supported by government, and was included in the 2023 Green Finance Strategy.

It is overseen by over a dozen trade associations, including the British Business Bank, UK Finance, the Institute of Directors, ICAEW, Innovate Finance, the Federation of Small Businesses, and Energy UK. Its implementation is being led by Icebreaker One and it is governed by an independent Delivery Oversight Committee.

Speeding up our journey to net zero

Gavin Starks, CEO and Founder of Icebreaker One, said: “A host of new members for Perseus accelerates our journey to automated and assurable emissions reporting for every UK SME. As the financial sector increases its demands on the real economy for trusted smart data, Perseus will help derisk investment, save time and money on the race to zero.”

Elyn Corfield, CEO, Business & Commercial Banking, Lloyds Bank said: “We’re delighted to partner with Perseus to help support the UK’s nearly 6 million SMEs with one of their biggest opportunities and challenges – the transition to net zero emissions. Every day we talk to small, growing businesses across all sectors throughout the country and it’s clear that simplified and standardised emissions measuring and reporting is a critical step on their transition journey.

“Greater collaboration between the private and public sector to share more accurate data could also help businesses make more informed investment decisions when looking to decarbonise, and that can help them to reduce costs.”

Amy Robinson, Corporate Projects Manager at Triodos Bank UK, said: “It is essential for finance institutions and businesses to measure and manage their carbon emissions. Whether for the banks, or the individual SMEs, the scale of the challenge to capture accurate data is huge. Project Perseus has the potential to not only provide high quality data that facilitates more effective interventions, but also to free up time and resources – creating capacity to focus on the practical challenges of reducing emissions.”

Tamara Somers, GM, Sustainability & Impact at Xero, said: “Xero is delighted to support Project Perseus’ goal of simplifying and democratising ESG reporting for small and medium businesses, which are the engine of the global economy. We’re all about making life better for small businesses and their advisors and this is a step in the right direction“

Join Perseus to be part of the constellation working together to automate sustainability reporting.

“Legislation is a really powerful tool, as it removes the argument on whether the data should or can be collected, replacing it with the fact that the law says this is how it’s going to be’’. Nic Granger, Director of Corporate, North Sea Transition Authority.

You might expect a radical change in a sector’s approach to data could be met with some resistance, but this was not the case. Instead, organisations now had a legal requirement to fulfil, including the need for a named individual to hold these responsibilities, meaning data management teams were given the budget and attention they’d been asking for. And now, the regulatory foresight shown by the NSTA has led to far-reaching benefits in sectors such as carbon capture and storage (CCS), hydrogen, offshore wind and oil & gas. 

Carbon Capture and Storage

The NSTA’s mission is to accelerate the energy transition, support emissions reduction and ensure the UK maintains a secure supply of energy. This involves regulating and influencing industries spanning oil & gas, offshore hydrogen and carbon capture and storage (CCS). 

CCS (the process of capturing and storing carbon dioxide emissions and storing them, often underground or within rock formations) is seen by many as a critical component of the UK’s net zero strategy:

“We see carbon capture and storage having a significant impact on the energy transition. The 21 licences that we issued in September, could capture ten percent of UK carbon emissions,” says Granger, “and the six licences which were in place before that could add even greater capacity.”.  

The previous government set a target to store 20-30 million tonnes of CO2 by 2030. And, while the plans of the newly-elected Government remain to be seen, the first round of CCS projects critical to meeting these targets are due for a final investment decision in the near future.

Seismic Data

One type of data, previously used for oil and gas projects, is now proving its worth in CCS. By helping to identify geological formations and assess storage capacity, seismic data is immensely valuable in CCS, highlighted by the fact that the NSTA’s data downloads increased 20-fold on the day the CCS licensing round opened. 

Now, following an announcement in the 2023 Energy Act, the NSTA has the power to collect carbon storage data from industry. Again, demonstrating its proactive approach to data governance as the CCS industry begins to pick up speed.

The value of seismic data stretches beyond the confines of the CCS sector however, it includes the top 100 metres of geological data, making it ideal for siting offshore wind farms:

“In 2015, the government funded two large chunks of seismic data. That data was intended to be used for oil and gas but what we’re now seeing is the data being reprocessed and used for offshore wind, another crucial pillar for energy transition in the UK.”

Democratising Data

Another type of data showing promising benefits across industries is GIS (geographic information system) data. Primarily generated through regulatory transactions, and made openly available by the NSTA, GIS data is helping to identify existing oil and gas infrastructure such as pipelines. These pipelines then have the potential to be repurposed for use in hydrogen or carbon dioxide transportation.

“This data is available on the equivalent of an open government licence, so it’s an open NSTA licence. We’ve now had over 500 million spatial server requests, roughly 2 million hits a week. The data is great from a spatial planning point of view, and it really helps to explain the importance of data when you can see it visually.”

By opening up datasets like these, the NSTA is also helping to democratise data and reduce costs. This allows academics to access datasets that were previously too expensive for their research budgets. Armed with these datasets, academics can then research ways to phase out fossil fuels and achieve net zero, faster. But, having large quantities of data is one thing, in order to truly reap the benefits of open data, it must be high quality.  

“Our approach is to open up as much data as we can. There’s a huge volume of industry data available under the NSTA’s NDR user agreement but the ownership is retained by industry. We have over a petabyte of data and we’re now ensuring new data loaded is high quality and machine readable.”

Aligned with our ethos of collaboration: ‘to go far, we go together’, they contribute to our mission of making data work harder to reach net zero. Now we want to highlight some of the important work they do for both people and the planet.

Icebreaker One employees make up the foundation of our constellation and in this week’s Q&A, I speak with our very own Chris Pointon, Product Manager, Data Services. We delve into the world of Open Net Zero, before gaining a deeper understanding of assurance and its impact in securing confidence and trust along the net zero value chain.

Ross: Hi Chris, thanks for taking the time to do this.  It would be great to start by talking about Open Net Zero. Could you explain what it is and how it’s developed over the last year?

Chris: Of course. So Open Net Zero is an index. You could think of it like Google in the sense that Google doesn’t contain all of the content of all of the websites. It simply turns them into an index so you can find them. And that’s exactly what Open Net Zero does. It doesn’t store any data, it just finds it and points to it.

Last year, the IB1 data services team spent a lot of time on Open Net Zero, dramatically increasing the number of organisations and datasets that it can cover. This was because we added some capabilities to our indexing that allowed us to harvest the data catalogues of other people’s data portals and add them to our index, so you can find them all in one place. This meant that we went from a few hundred datasets at the beginning of 2023 to about 55,000 data sets, currently. Now one of the transitions we’re focused on is looking at how we join up these 55,000 datasets. One dataset is not usually the answer to a question. It usually takes several datasets that are connected together, for instance, because they’re in the same geography or they’re related to the same theme. 

Ross: Why is it so important to have these datasets in a machine readable format?

Chris: We’ve still got a backlog of dozens of really good data websites that we can’t index using standard mechanisms. The reason we can’t index them is because they’ve built a website with data on rather than building a data portal. So when it comes to best practice in publishing data, organisations should provide a machine readable catalogue, meaning a file that a computer can parse which describes the data in their data portal or on their website. Typical formats for this file include DCAT, INSPIRE and GEMINI, but there are other options. When they publish that, we have the simple job of including the URL of the catalogue in the index and keeping up to date with it over time. We’ve been prioritising finding websites that publish data relevant to people who want to get to net zero, but also have this well-structured publishing technique. 

Ross: You also launched ‘assurance’ last year, can you explain exactly what this is and why it’s important?

Chris: Assurance gives confidence to people inside companies that they’re allowed to share data externally. It also gives confidence to external users, as they know that they have permission to access what is being supplied, and can rely on the data management practices of the publisher. There are two types of assurance. First, we assure organisations. As a minimum, we ask, does this organisation meet some basic identity requirements and have they signed an agreement that means people can rely on the assurance they provide? Basically, it means that they’ve got some skin in the game.

The second level of organisational assurance is about entering into a secure data publishing environment. Level three and four are about indicating greater certainty of the identity of who’s involved. So instead of them self-asserting who they are and providing their own assurance measures, you bring in third-party auditors to provide additional assurance about how the organisation is managing its data. 

Ross: What about assurance on the data side?

Chris: This is the other type of assurance. Again we have multiple levels. At level one, the data’s got to have a licence. The metadata has to be machine readable, publicly on the web, with no personal data and for open data there needs to be a clear open data licence. Level two starts to bring in tighter requirements on the licensing. The licensing has to have certain features that outline what people’s rights to reuse are. Level two also requires additional metadata to cover the timeframe and geographical aspects of the datasets, and the publication of documentation for them. 

Level three builds on the above by requiring documentation on the data provenance and processing, open standards for data formats and machine-readable definitions of the fields in the data. Finally, at level four, we require that all of the information above  – licences, provenance, quality parameters – are provided in machine-readable formats, so they can be passed along a chain.

We had been consulting about assurance over the summer last year and came up with these definitions. Then in September we launched an update to Open Net Zero that showed the assurance level of assured datasets. At roughly the same time, SSE launched their open data portal, showing assurance on their site. And so when we index their data portal, it shows their organisational assurance and their dataset assurance. From a technical perspective this is just a little data field, but from an organisational and internal processes point of view, it’s really an important step.

There will be a new version of these assurance levels coming soon. We’ve had some feedback and we’ll incorporate that before putting it out for another public consultation. It’s important to note that the purpose of assurance is not ‘we’ve got assurance and everyone has to put up with it’. It’s that we’ve got assurance and we want to know whether it works for people, whether it actually helps them feel more confident, have a greater trust in data and to what extent can it be improved. We’re all ears to hear ideas for making it better and better over time.

Ross: So how does assurance tie into the wider goal of net zero?

Chris: One of the fundamental things we talk about is the data value chain. And, the data value chains we want to bolster are the ones where the data becomes more and more valuable to getting to net zero. The way the data value chain works is data gets generated from all sorts of activities and sources and once it’s published, it’s then available for people to process and turn into information. 

Take our Perseus project for instance. It covers the data governance needed to access half hourly electricity readings, and turn them into the carbon footprint of your electricity consumption using grid factors. So in that journey from electrical consumption to carbon emissions, you’re moving along the value chain. Next up in the chain the banks say ‘we’re going to use this information to prioritise lending to organisations that take steps to reduce their carbon footprint’ and that data has become more valuable because it’s been aggregated by a lending institution. Then finally the banks use all of that and another level of aggregation to say to the government – ‘we’re on track as a public limited company in the UK to meet the UK’s net zero requirements’. 

Now going back to the question of assurance, you need to have confidence at each step of the value chain that the data is being handled properly and that the organisations are reputable, and by reputable it also means they are part of a legal framework that allows you to hold them to account. You can audit them too, which gives everybody confidence along the value chain. Compare this to the current reality, in which the government asks the banks ‘what are you doing to reduce the carbon in your lending portfolio’ and they can only talk in sectoral language, such as we’ve got 50,000 small office-based businesses on our books. The average footprint for an office-based business based on ONS is this and so they provide a rough estimate. 

Aligned with our ethos of collaboration: ‘to go far, we go together’, they contribute to our mission of making data work harder to reach net zero. Now we want to highlight some of the important work they do for both people and the planet.

This week, I speak with Melissa Tallack, Managing Director of C2Life and co-lead on the Stream initiative. The conversation covers our ever-changing relationship with water as well as looking at the water sector’s journey into open data. We also discuss the important decision to value encouragement over mandates and to champion collaboration over siloed work.

Ross: Hi Mellisa, thanks so much for taking the time to speak to me. Could you start by giving me an idea of your background in the water sector and your journey so far?

Melissa: I joined the water industry off the back of its privatisation. Privatisation was in 1989 and I joined in 1993. I first joined Anglian Water, only planning to stay for a couple of years, but I discovered that there’s a lot to do in the water sector. I’ve been fortunate enough to have a variety of roles from frontline operations to scientific to asset management.

The last third of my time at Anglian Water was spent in the world of data and information. The reason I stepped into that role was because, in 2014, a regulation change came into place that required us to make different investment decisions. It meant not just looking at capital expenditure (CAPEX) and operating expenditure (OPEX) but now also total cost of expenditure (TOTEX). Data became critical here, as you need more and more reliable information to make these decisions. 

There was also a strong feeling in the sector that the data we had wasn’t up to standard, everybody felt it was either bad or simply not good enough. And yet, no one was really prepared to step forward and do anything about it. Myself and a couple of colleagues then started leading a piece of work around enterprise information management to solve that challenge. That sort of began my career in data and my interest in data as a fundamental resource in the company.

Following this, I went on to stand up an alliance of partners to work alongside Anglian Water in tackling the challenges of enterprise information management. I ended up running the data service and digital service within Anglian Water which modernised big data analytics platforms as well as modernising a lot of technology and practices within Anglian Water. 

During that time we were increasingly thinking, if we only use our own company data to answer these questions, we’re going to end up with a very siloed view of the world. We wanted to bring in external data sets and open data sets, but we also believed that by publishing our own data sets, we could get more eyes on the problem. Getting that diversity of thought was key and we were already used to being challenged from the outside in, so it kind of felt like a natural progression.

At the same time Northumbrian Water were gathering like-minded people together to talk about open data. They shared our view that this was the way forward but agreed it would be better if we all did it together. We got enough indication to suggest it was valuable and we then set our eyes on securing some funding to enable us to build out this thing which would enable open data for the sector. This marked the beginning of ‘Stream’. 

Ross: It’s fascinating to hear the journey that the water sector has been on and your place in it! Could you help me understand the Stream initiative better?

Melissa: What we’re trying to do with Stream is lower the barrier to publication as much as possible. It doesn’t matter how rough and ready it is or if you can’t connect to it programmatically, we will get there and we’ll build that capability together within the consortium of water companies. What’s important is getting data out there. I understand that people are reluctant to release data because they might be worried about it being the right format. But some data is better than none. That is definitely the philosophy we’re adopting. We’ll learn through doing, we’ll learn what people value and we’ll improve our own capability as a sector by doing this. But you have to start somewhere. It’s about building a two-way conversation with your community of users. You have to encourage, you can’t mandate.

In terms of datasets it’s very early days and so far, we’ve only released three datasets. One of those is a very foundational dataset that focuses on the boundaries between water companies. The other one that’s been published is drinking water quality. Traditionally, people would have to go to a company website and enter in a postcode to get a value for that postcode, which is useful if you want to look at one data point, but actually not very useful if you want to look at this compared to elsewhere in the region or in another water company. Now, by publishing historical drinking water quality data, you are able to do that comparison. Having said that, it’s a downloadable data set and not one that you can connect to programmatically. So I think that will probably limit the use of that data.

Ross: So it seems like there needs to be transparency not only of the data but also transparency and honesty in the ways we approach it? Where do you envision the key benefits coming from in the Stream initiative?  

Melissa: I think the environment is probably going to be a key beneficiary because that’s where a lot of the focus is. And, I hope it is, because the fundamental hypothesis behind opening water company data is to encourage transparency and trust and to drive innovation. By helping the environment, these benefits should trickle down to helping people and societies because whether we like it or not, we’re all intrinsically linked to the water environment because we rely on clean water to survive. But water companies are just one of the players in the natural environment. We can’t solve that problem alone and we need to rely on other people to work with us. A key ingredient to all of this is people’s willingness to collaborate. 

What’s promising is that we first started talking about this in April 2020. It shows you the level of commitment from the water companies to do this because we’re all still here and we’ve grown in number. In fact, we’ve now got all but two of the UK water companies as members of Stream so it’s great to see an industry actually pulled together like this. Don’t get me wrong, there is a varying spectrum across the water companies but there is certainly a strong willingness to collaborate and do this together because we know the benefits are greater if we’re working as one.

Ross: Do you think our relationship to water and the water sector has changed?

Melissa: Our relationship to water has changed, especially over the last few years. During Covid more people were spending time outside, taking up wild swimming. In fact, I think our relationship to water is always shifting. Water scarcity is certainly an increasing problem in the face of climate change and changing weather patterns, certainly for the vast majority of the UK but in the South especially. It’s here that water consumption and unaccounted for water leakage are key issues to address because we’ve got to have enough water to go around. 

If we’re able to make the operational data more transparent, people can be better informed and make different decisions about what they do with water. As an example, if you knew how you as an individual compared to people who live in the same type of property or have the same demographics and were able to see that information, would you make different decisions? And it’s not only the individuals, but what products and services can be built off the back of that data to help. 

But as I mentioned, there are many other factors and stakeholders involved. We operate in a system of systems. Take energy and water, for example, they have a strong reliance on each other. And while, historically, water has been more reliant on the energy sector, this relationship is beginning to invert. When people think of water, they think about drinking water but people rely on water for a multitude of reasons. And now, you’ve got a large number of hydrogen projects coming up where water is, of course, fundamental. 

Below is a high level summary of the responses to this question:

• Data quality plays a critical role in infrastructure projects. Lack of accurate and reliable data can lead to inefficiencies.
• Given that historical weather data is a key driver behind the NIMBUS project, a crucial barrier is that weather isn’t collected at the same granularity as asset level data. Asset data is accurate to the metre but the same cannot be said for weather data.
• Standardisation is crucial to streamline data exchange. Without it, complexities can arise from varying data formats.
• When it comes to the criticality of assets and the risks associated with national infrastructure it can be hard to strike a balance between security and transparency. More specifically, if the wrong actor has visibility of where national infrastructure is, this could lead to serious consequences.
• There remains a lingering scepticism amongst stakeholders in the energy sector when it comes to embracing data sharing. This underscores the need for a cultural shift and ongoing advocacy efforts that demonstrate the value of data sharing and data governance.

You can catch up on our previous advisory group meetings below:

• NIMBUS: Takeaways from our January advisory group meeting
• NIMBUS December Advisory Group meeting summary

The REACT tool is a geographical planning tool, providing users with an interactive visualisation map to view electricity grid requests in real time. Its purpose is to provide support for early stage project development, with features such as land sensitivities helping developers select optimal sites and ultimately helping them connect to the grid. 

During the meeting, a demo of the REACT tool was presented to members and a collective recognition began to form around the value that the tool could provide to the hydrogen market. ‘We have a number of businesses interested from a grid and planning point of view’ one member noted. The potential value of the tool reaches far beyond the hydrogen sector however, and looking forward, it aims to bring in environmental agencies, transmission operators, wind power developers, water companies and more. 

Data sensitivity & Trust Frameworks

Concerns were raised regarding the access and use of sensitive data, particularly in the case of data on critical national infrastructure. One AG member asked ‘how do we make sure the data is not used by the wrong people, for the wrong reasons’. Trust Frameworks offer an answer to these warranted concerns and are particularly important in the case of the REACT project, where secure and reliable data exchange is critical. Trust Frameworks ensure that all parties involved can trust the confidentiality of the data exchanged and the authenticity of the identities involved. What’s more, as the project extends its scope, looking to other sectors, use cases, and datasets, Trust Frameworks offer a powerful solution, joining stakeholders from different ecosystems. 

Recommendations 

We presented our five recommendations on how to transform the data network to our advisory group members: 

1. Embracing market-scale solutions: To ensure REACT’s solution has the widest possible applicability across the market, REACT’s Advisory Group(s) should work closely with Open Energy’s Steering Group to promote accessibility, agree common rules, processes and legal compliance and encourage a common rights-based approach to data access.

2. Reducing friction: To improve data assurance, reduce friction across data silos and provide forward compatibility with the Virtual Energy System, the REACT project should embrace a ‘Trust Framework’ methodology throughout its work.

3. Improving data accessibility: To improve the discoverability of datasets and encourage process innovation, Transmission Owners are advised to publish internal process diagrams that describe the workings of complicated internal processes – such as the Network Connection Request process.

4. Improving prediction: To improve long-term planning – both for Transmission Owners and for other stakeholders – a statistical model of projects should be embraced that tracks a project’s estimated probability of success according to the best available data.

5. Embracing innovation: To radically embrace innovation around processes – such as the Network Connection Request process – virtual ‘sandbox’ representations of these processes with representative data should be created. This will enable innovators to safely experiment with innovative solutions without affecting Business as Usual.

Feedback on recommendations

With reforms in the connection process slated for January 2025, stakeholders in the energy industry are facing mounting challenges. In light of this, concerns were raised regarding the feasibility of implementing a virtual sandbox (recommendation 5), given the workload of Transmission Network Operators (TNOs) and Distribution Network Operators (DNOs). Icebreaker One’s technical analyst, Stefan Haselwimmer, acknowledged this challenge, emphasising the need for maximum innovation with minimal workload.

In fact, the recommendations presented above have been put together with the pressures facing stakeholders in mind. In a landscape where approximately 420GW of generation projects await grid connection, timely connectivity remains a bottleneck in our net zero transition. We believe the REACT project could be the catalyst required to unlock these grid connections making for a smoother and faster transition. Now, as we look ahead to the next phase of REACT, the potential avenues for exploration are vast, with data centres, storage projects and direct air capture all cited as potential future use cases. 

*The REACT project is funded by the Ofgem Strategic Innovation Fund (SIF), the SIF is delivered in partnership with Innovate UK.”

Aligned with our ethos of collaboration: ‘to go far, we go together’, they contribute to our mission of making data work harder to reach net zero. Now we want to highlight some of the important work they do for both people and the planet. 

In this conversation, I speak to Gerrit Sinderman, who has recently taken on the role of Executive Director at Green Digital Finance Alliance (GDFA). Our discussion looks into GDFA’s initiatives on developing novel business models and financing approaches for sustainable circular cities and helping the financial sector to integrate biodiversity risks for oceans into investment decisions.

Ross: Congratulations on moving into your new role as Executive Director at Green Digital Finance Alliance (GDFA), can you give an idea of how the role’s going and your background that led to this point? 

Gerrit: Thank you! I transitioned into the climate space around three years ago, after more than 20 years in Banking and Fintech. I was raised in an environmentally conscious household and having followed climate and environmental debate closely for a longer time, this felt like an overdue and relieving move. I had long wondered how I could leverage my financial sector and entrepreneurial experiences to be more impactful. There had been a few touch-points with environmental topics during my earlier career. For instance, as an equity analyst, I got the opportunity to initiate our bank’s renewable energy coverage. Or working for a Telco, I had investigated potential energy efficiency offerings for the retail customer segment. Over the years, my sustainability-related values and concerns started to influence the way I evaluated personal and professional choices.

The real shift started happening shortly after I had assumed the country manager role for a Fintech and Insurtech accelerator. At the same time, the Swiss government had announced its ambition to make sustainable finance a core pillar of the Swiss financial centre. It was here that things suddenly fell into place. We entered a collaboration with a US renewable energy accelerator and started recruiting Climate Fintechs in preparation for a fully dedicated Climate Fintech programme. At that time, team and corporate partners got less excited about the prospect of dedicating a significant share of our time to a climate-focused program. That was when I made the full-hearted decision to ‘change sides’ and shift from a fintech-focused entrepreneurial career to a climate-focused one, in the wider sustainable finance space.

My new responsibility of leading GDFA hasn’t been a sudden change but rather a slowly evolving and now formalised change. During my two years with GDFA, I led our foundation early on, ad interim, when my boss decided to leave a couple of months after I joined. When my new boss joined a few months later, I worked closely with her, jointly managing the operations of our organisation. And so, when my boss decided to transition into an advisory role for GDFA, I was relatively well prepared to continue the transformation of our organisation. Of course, on some matters, I still needed to craft, formulate and convey to our board my own vision and plan of approach.

Ross: Can you describe the kind of work that GDFA does? 

Gerrit: GDFA acts as a catalyst for green and blue digital finance innovations. We design and test the ways in which digital data and digitally enabled business models can facilitate the green transition of the financial sector. Equally, we explore how to support the financial sector and more effectively fund the mitigation of climate change. Thematically, we focus on how digital finance and data-driven business models can accelerate the development of sustainable circular cities and of a sustainable blue economy. We have worked globally over the last seven years, but currently have a strong focus on Europe and Southeast Asia.

Ross: Can you tell me more about your work on Oceans?

Gerrit: Leading a consortium with WWF, HUB Ocean and Copenhagen Business School, we investigated how ocean biodiversity risks could be made accessible and actionable to investors of the so-called blue economy in the Nordics. Prioritising industries according to their relevance in terms of investor and asset manager portfolio exposure and impact on ocean biodiversity, we chose the shipping industry as a first research object. We developed a prototype of a geospatial risk metric that leveraged the geolocation data of shipping assets (i.e. vessels), linking those to mapping data of marine protected areas, to determine the degree to which shipping companies were adhering to such protection areas. We also involved major ESG data providers to validate our work, and identify their needs to maximise chances of a broad industry adoption.

In the next phase of this research we will further deepen our work on the shipping industry, and expand to further blue economy industries, as well as intensify the engagement with ESG data providers and financial institutions. Beyond that, I would like to explore other ways we could accelerate investments in a sustainable blue economy, such as through blue digital bonds.

Ross: You participated in our Impact Investing & ESG advisory group last year, have you seen any recent developments in standards and regulations that might impact your business?

Gerrit: Less in standards and regulations themselves, more in the resulting challenges of the different stakeholders dealing with them. In the last few years, regulation has started catching up more and more with climate and nature-related matters. Intergovernmental agreements and commitments were followed by voluntary pledges that struggled to build the momentum required to tackle global human and economic challenges – the much quoted tragedy of horizons and tragedy of commons. The markets, however, have failed to address these challenges. Now, industries are being shaken by a still growing regulatory tsunami, and struggling to keep up with the pace of expanding obligations.

Businesses, for a long time, have been built with predominantly economic ambitions. Now they need to catch up on their accountability and responsibility towards society, as well as being re-designed, re-built and operated in a very different manner. Businesses will need to collaborate with different stakeholder groups and leverage technology-induced sustainability leaps. And they will need large amounts of funding to do this.

Our work in initiating and driving collaboration on digitally enabled green finance, across industries, disciplines and regions, will hopefully be an essential contribution to address these challenges in a scarily shortening time window.

Ross: What’s coming up in 2024 for GDFA?

Gerrit: In 2024, we will be concentrating our efforts on expanding and intensifying our work especially within our thematic focus on sustainable circular cities and the blue economy, always leveraging insights on data-driven digital financial solutions and business models in very different contexts. Furthermore, we will aim to expand some of our recent work, started in Europe, to Southeast Asia, building on strong and ambitious partners we have there.

In January 2024, we convened the second REACT Advisory Group meeting, co-chaired by SSEN-Transmission and Icebreaker One. In partnership with SSEN Transmission, Olsights, MapStand, National Grid Electricity Transmission and SGN, IB1 is part of the Alpha phase of REACT, which aims to create a geographical planning tool providing users with the ability to view electricity grid connection requests in real-time, using an interactive visualisation map.

The purpose of this meeting was to gain a collective understanding of progress on sprints, and to discuss what datasets developers would like to have access to and what would be possible if they could access these datasets. Advisory Group members also discussed what the risks are to share this data, and how to improve interoperability of data going into and out of REACT. 

Key insights

• REACT Tool Progress Update from Olsights & Mapstand:
  • Sprints 1 & 2 have been completed and include “negative” land use layers, ie. areas where projects cannot be sited.
  • Sprint 3 is underway and is focused on specific Hydrogen project site requirements, such as available water supply.
  • Future sprints will focus on curtailment, future scenarios, and “positive” land use, i.e. where Hydrogen projects are actively encouraged.
• There are a large number of potentially shareable datasets within the network connection request process. Prioritising which to share should be based on user needs and how they solve business problems.
• Making datasets shareable does not necessarily mean publishing them openly but may mean sharing them within a safe and secure Trust Framework.
• REACT must embrace interoperability both into and out of the tool to ensure the tool can be used by the greatest number of potential stakeholders.
• With regard to accessing datasets, it was discussed that:
  • Accessing gas infrastructure data requires shared not open data since it is critical infrastructure; the REACT team have discussed creating different access levels for different target users to mitigate against such data sensitivity issues.
  • The Stream project, centred on publishing water data, could be highly relevant to REACT.
  • There are data sensitivity issues around mapping data e.g. address data, street geometries, though the situation has evolved rapidly in recent years.
  • Council planners would welcome early access to information about projects that are applying for network connections.
  • More affordable/accessible network connection process could benefit community energy projects, though this raises issues of data sensitivity, e.g. what criteria determines access to shared, non-open data?
  • More effective data sharing between electricity companies and other area-focused stakeholders, such as councils, water companies, via REACT could provide more effective, joined-up thinking to achieve Net Zero e.g. helping councils co-create decarbonisation plans could encourage councils to invest in network upgrades.
  • Technology innovators could potentially assist with complex and time-critical elements of the network connection process through safe and secure data sharing within a Trust Framework.

Diagram showing possible datasets created prior to and during the Network Connection Request pipeline of a Transmission Owner; created using information from ESO Connections Offers Process

• With regard to interoperability and standards, it was discussed that:
  • For publicly funded projects like REACT, better data reliability and consistency within datasets, and better interoperability across datasets would deliver better value-for-money for taxpayers.
  • Regulatory bodies and trade organisations could provide an invaluable role in defining standards, though this could take time – are there faster ways to get there?
  • Within the local government, there has been useful work trying to achieve standards in underground infrastructure data (MUDDI/VAULT).

REACT & NIMBUS: Our first advisory group meeting of the year comes from the REACT project, tomorrow January 16th closely followed by NIMBUS on the 24th. Both projects are set to support SSEN-Transmission’s net-zero transition. 

Perseus: Following the delivery of a 100-page report at COP28 and with over 130 partners behind us, project Perseus picks up where we left off, looking forward to our in-person event at the end of January. Get in touch with our team if you want to get involved or find out more.

Stream: As the Stream project progresses, we look forward to seeing a growing list of datasets become available. This should act as a driving force for innovation, helping the industry to decarbonise while also providing benefits for customers and wider society. The next advisory group meeting takes place on January 29th. 

If you have any questions about any of our projects, feel free to reach out via: community@ib1.org

Highlights from our constellation:

• David Carlin highlights the new standards coming into effect this year, recognising a trend toward greater collaboration between standard setters.
• Chris Stark has been appointed as CEO at climate change consultancy, Carbon Trust, after leading the Climate Committee for 6 years. Carbon Trust has also recently announced that it is a founding member of the Carbon Accounting Alliance. 
• Andrew Griffiths looks ahead at this year’s sustainability trends in PlanetMark’s upcoming webinar. 

In the news:

• Fossil fuel use lowest since 1957: Electricity generated by fossil fuels fell by 20% in 2023, while renewable energy provided the single largest source of power to the grid at a record 42%.
• Government misses EV charge point target: The Department for Transport was unable to meet its 2023 target to install six rapid or ultra-rapid EV charge points in every motorway service station. 
• COP29: Azerbaijan appoints former oil executive as climate conference president: Azerbaijan has appointed Ecology Minister Mukhtar Babayev as the President-Designate to oversee the COP29 climate conference later this year in Baku.