Energy data and software company Advanced Infrastructure has partnered with the global energy and emissions data management company, FlexiDAO, in a project that provides corporate energy buyers with more options for making impactful energy decisions. 

The C-Zero project funded by the European innovation program (Eurostars), part of the Eureka network and European Commission initiatives, is now halfway through its 18-month journey and on target to deliver a digital twin of European energy networks, comprising real and inferred network data.

FlexiDAO’s existing software, “CFE Inventory” (formerly called RESpring) acts as an “Enterprise Resource Planning” (ERP) system for renewable energy contracts, certificates and emissions. Users can keep all the information on their energy origin and its emissions in one place. Data can be refreshed monthly, or hourly, to ensure quick & accurate energy decisions and reports. The company currently services corporate energy buyers such as Microsoft and Vodafone ES. 

The software will be further developed as part of the C-Zero project by combining Advanced Infrastructure’s approach towards modelling electricity grid networks to provide marginal carbon intensity signals and give accurate insight into avoided emissions and through consequential carbon accounting metrics. 

Advanced Infrastructure, which provides carbon data and spatial analytics tools, currently provides the highest resolution carbon data in the UK market, granular marginal emission factors, and an approach to inferring missing data which supports global data coverage, otherwise impossible to calculate. 

Combining Advanced Infrastructure’s carbon data with existing data from FlexiDAO’s corporate users (location & time of energy consumption) will enable the creation of carbon impact assessments as an option for FlexiDAO customers. This makes it easy for users to calculate the emissions generated and avoided through their energy activities, and to make informed energy choices accordingly.

Organisations can use these new capabilities to optimise their energy strategy with a primary focus on achieving the highest possible carbon avoidance. This can translate into improved market performance as they gain access to data-backed insights to strategically pursue a more carbon-aware energy strategy, aligning themselves with sustainability goals and strengthening their position in the market.

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Dr Noah Miller, Head of Data at Advanced Infrastructure commented: 

“Whilst there are carbon accounting and sustainability reporting platforms on the market, the majority are generally simplistic - based only on annualised data which can be used in reporting but cannot inform day-to-day energy decisions. 

"Energy management platforms using hourly energy usage and carbon intensity data markedly increase the accuracy of this reporting and begin to allow for genuinely sustainable decision-making. This process is even further improved with access to marginal emission factors and consequential accounting facilities.“

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Simone Accornero, CEO and Founder of FlexiDAO commented: 

"Embedding Advanced Infrastructure's marginal emissions data into our software solutions will enhance our product offering functionalities by providing more options and data to our clients. 

This partnership is part of our mission to provide the most accurate, comprehensive, data-based, and auditable insights to support different carbon-aware decarbonization and electricity procurement strategies."

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Globally, corporations spend more on decarbonisation than national governments. However, corporate renewable procurement and carbon reductions fail to deliver maximum impact as it is currently difficult for corporations to quantify the carbon impact of different demand-side energy decisions. 

The lack of data makes it difficult for corporations to distinguish between impactful and non-impactful renewable energy certificates credibly and to prioritise carbon reduction in their day-to-day energy consumption practices.

The cost of the problem is:

1. Lost opportunity to cut carbon emissions by 34% (RockyMountain,2020)
2. Up to 50% mismatch between reported and actual emission savings (DeChalendar,2019)
3. Poor liquidity and high price volatility of carbon offsetting mechanisms (Hulshoff,2019)

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By the end of the 18-month project, the outcome of the C-Zero project will be a digital twin of European energy networks and sub-national average and marginal emission factors across Europe.

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