Tokenisation is the process of converting an asset (this could be physical, like art, or non-physical, like money transfers or electricity generation) to a token on blockchain.

It’s a new technology that offers immense value to businesses by enabling them to offset their electricity usage with specific, traceable renewable energy generation.

To understand how, we first need to understand how blockchain tokenisation works.

What is blockchain?

Blockchain is essentially a type of database, however the way blockchain stores data differs from traditional databases.

Where traditional databases store data in a table format, blockchain stores data in groups, or blocks, that are linked together.

As new data is added to the blockchain “database”, it’s added to a new block which, when filled (groups have data capacity limits), is added onto the end of the previous block. This means the data is always chained together in chronological order. This is known as the “blockchain”.

Think of blockchain like a railway. Each block is like a section of train track that is clipped together to make the overall railway – the blockchain.

What is tokenisation?

Tokenisation is the process by which a physical or non-physical asset is converted into a digital token that can be transferred, stored or recorded on blockchain.

So, in our analogy above, the tokens are like the trains that run on the blockchain railway.

Almost anything can be tokenised on blockchain, from real estate to art to energy.

One of the great things about the blockchain format is that it creates a permanent, uneditable timeline of data. When added, each block is given a timestamp and is set in stone. This means, when tokenised, you can easily and transparently trace token ownership.

The benefits of blockchain tokenisation to your business

As a business, you have a responsibility to perform your business activities ethically and sustainability. Many businesses have CSR and ESG commitments and using renewable energy is a big part of fulfilling your environmental obligations.

But traditionally, complicated energy procurement processes have prevented many companies from buying locally produced, sustainable energy.

Now, using tokensied blockchain, we can match renewable energy generation to your business’ energy usage.

Through our Mojo Marketplace platform, we can link your company’s energy consumption to the renewable generation projects of your choice. The electricity generated by these projects is tokenised so we can prove how much renewable energy each project sends to the grid and match this to your business’ energy usage.

So you get genuine, matched renewable energy at competitive prices that is easily traceable and auditable.

Click here to find out more.

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How does a PPA work?

A PPA can take on two general forms. In a physical PPA, energy is physically supplied and sold directly to the purchaser. The power generator is usually not connected to the wholesale National Energy Market (NEM). A virtual or synthetic PPA involves two distinct agreements which operate in parallel.

Unlike a physical PPA, the energy is not physically supplied and sold directly from the generator to the purchaser. Instead, the generator must connect to the NEM, where the purchaser is supplied energy through a contract with an authorised market retailer. At the same time a separate agreement, often taking the form of a ‘contract-for-differences’ is agreed between the generator and the purchaser to guard against fluctuations in the spot price for electricity which will be reflected in the retail contract. This means that, in effect, the energy and relevant renewable energy certificates are provided to the purchaser at a ‘fixed price’.

A behind the meter PPA is a physical PPA with the solar generation units installed behind a customer’s meter. Behind the meter PPAs are advantageous as they allow for the sale of electricity without the need for the use of the grid.

There are three parties to consider; your business, the PPA provider and your electricity retailer.

1. 1. PPA provider is the installer, owner, operator and maintainer of the solar PV on your premises. The PPA provider sells you the electricity generated from solar for an agreed price and duration, typically ten years. At that time there may be options for you to purchase the panels, for the PPA provider to remove them, to extend the agreement, or to renew a PPA agreement with a new system.
2. 2. Your business (purchaser, or off-taker) is the buyer of electricity from the solar panels on your premises. You buy this electricity for an agreed price, lower than your grid electricity price.
3. 3. Your electricity retailer continues to supply electricity from the grid, likely to cover most of your demand, and you will continue to receive a bill from them. Your retailer may agree to purchase excess solar energy generation for a feed-in-tariff. As a result, there will be two electricity bills, one from your PPA provider and one from your electricity retailer.

What are solar PPA benefits?

There are many advantages to procuring an onsite solar PPA, which include:

• No upfront cost – the PPA provider bears the costs associated with the purchase and installation of the solar panels.
• No on-going operation and maintenance costs – the PPA provider is responsible for operation and maintenance of the solar panels.
• Helps achieve environmental goals – you can use the electricity generated from the solar panels to reduce your carbon emissions or to meet your renewable energy targets.
• Lower cost of electricity – the solar PPA price should be lower than the cost of grid electricity and may include a process to confirm that this is the case and adjust over time.
• Monitoring of and guaranteed performance – the PPA provider monitors and may guarantee the performance of the solar panels as part of the agreement.
• Potential for expansion and battery storage – a PPA could potentially be expanded to include new solar panels and battery storage. Thus, savings from solar could grow over time with no capital outlay and continued cost savings compared with grid power prices.
• Wholesale price uncertainty – A PPA allows the organisation to lock in a price for electricity over an extended period. The purchaser can benefit from not being subject to the price fluctuations of the wholesale energy market. On the other hand, this may lock the organisation into a price higher than it would otherwise pay.

What are solar PPA risks?

There are also potential risks associated with onsite solar PPAs, which include:

• More expensive over the life of the agreement – although there is minimal upfront cost for a solar PPA, the total cost over the life of the agreement will be higher than simply purchasing the system at the start.
• Duration of solar PPA – many PPAs are for 7 to 15 years, which may be longer than your business can commit unless there is long-term certainty of remaining at the same location.
• Expansion or change – future development adjacent to or on your facility, or to fixtures attached to your roof may alter the performance of or weaken the case for a solar PPA.
• Costs to make your property solar-ready – You may incur additional costs such as electrical works, cabling and roof repairs when installing solar panels.
• Quality of panels – you may have less choice in solar panel and inverter technologies under a PPA.

How do I compare the value of onsite versus offsite renewables for my business?

Fluctuating electricity prices, falling costs for renewable energy technologies and an elevated focus on satisfying ESG criteria have led many businesses to look at ways they can reduce their energy costs by installing solar panels ‘onsite’, or sourcing renewable energy ‘offsite’ by building offsite solar farms or buying renewable energy via purchase power agreements (PPA). So what approach offers the best value for money?

Onsite or ‘behind-the-meter’ solar installations

For many businesses installing solar panels is an excellent fit, as operating hours and sunshine hours are often the same. That means that the energy generated by solar panels can be used instantly instead of buying electricity from the grid.

The electricity supply chain is made up of energy generation, transmission & distribution, electricity market and environmental costs. When you generate solar energy on your own site, this offsets all of these costs. In essence, you are replacing the whole electricity supply chain with every kWh of energy your solar installation generates, so the value of each kWh saved is high. For a small business the value of each kWh of solar energy generated may be 25¢/kWh, and for large businesses, it is typically 12-15¢/kWh. This is illustrated on the left-hand side of Figure 1 below.

When batteries become cheaper, businesses with more roof space, intermittent energy demand and/or operations outside of sunshine hours will be able to install more solar panels with batteries and achieve this same value for their savings.

Offsite renewable energy

Some businesses are considering building their own renewable energy generation system – typically a solar farm – or want to buy renewable energy from their retailer at the same or lower cost than current rates. In either case, the renewable energy generator that you source electricity from is ‘offsite’, and the electricity generated is delivered to the grid first. From the grid, the renewable power is distributed to your business premises in the same way regular power is delivered.

Because the energy still goes through the grid, you will still pay all the distribution and electricity market costs, as well as some or all of the environmental charges. Savings will be achieved where:

• The cost of buying the renewable energy generated is less than the cost of buying ‘regular’ power from fossil-fuel generators, and where
• The cost of Large-Scale Generation Certificates (LGCs) from the offsite plant is less than these costs when passed through on your electricity bill by your retailer.

This is illustrated on the right-hand side of Figure 1 above.

So which approach offers better value?

Onsite and offsite renewable energy strategies are complementary and can both be pursued by business.

Offsite renewable energy generation can deliver small cost savings compared with buying ‘standard’ electricity from your electricity retailer. However, you may be able to source most or all of your electricity from renewables. This will provide tangible benefits to satisfying corporate ESG requirements which in turn effects many parts of the business in this new world of elevated focus on climate change.

Onsite solar, and in future batteries, will deliver a much better return on investment because savings are across the whole electricity supply chain, but for most businesses the percentage of electricity that can be generated in this way is small, usually from 5-30% of total consumption.

By 2050, we believe renewables will power the grid, and that all businesses will run on 100% clean energy. However, reducing costs will be an ongoing focus for businesses. Maximising the use of onsite roof and land space for solar arrays and battery storage will improve your bottom line and provide clean energy at the lowest cost.

Each solar project is different, and each project needs to be evaluated on its own merit.

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The difference between your energy and carbon footprint

Your energy footprint relates to your business’ energy consumption. For most organisations, ‘energy’ encompasses not only electricity but also stationary energy and transport fuels. Examples of stationary fuels are natural gas, diesel for generators, and LPG for forklifts. Examples of transport fuels include diesel, petrol, and LPG that power your fleet.

A carbon footprint is the sum of your emission sources, a big part of which is your energy consumption. You can develop a narrow carbon footprint of emissions that happen at your place of business (Scope 1) and the emissions associated with electricity consumption (Scope 2). Alternatively, you can develop a wide carbon footprint which also includes emissions in your supply chain, upstream and downstream, (Scope 3).

A carbon footprint is usually broader than your energy footprint. You can see in Figure 1 that an energy footprint is a subset of a carbon footprint. From a carbon accounting perspective, your energy footprint relates to your Scope 2 emissions and to some of your Scope 1 emissions.

Figure 1: The difference between your energy footprint and carbon footprint and claims for 100% renewable energy and carbon neutrality

What is carbon neutrality?

Carbon neutrality (or zero net emissions) is reached when all emission sources in your defined boundary are zero. This is demonstrated in Figure 1 in the bottom line. Ideally, your defined carbon footprint boundary encompasses as many emission sources as possible so that your claim for carbon neutrality is credible.

You can reach carbon neutrality by:

1. Reducing your emissions onsite through energy efficiency or by installing solar PV
2. Building or purchasing renewables offsite, and by
3. Offsetting the rest of your emissions through the purchase of carbon offsets

What is 100% renewable energy?

You are 100% renewable when the amount of renewable energy produced is equal to or more than what is consumed. In most cases, people associate only electricity with ‘100% renewable’. However, as you can see in Figure 1 ‘energy’ can encompass stationery and transport fuels as well. So, to be truly 100% renewable, you would have to include these fuels. While it is relatively straightforward to reach 100% renewable electricity, it is more difficult to achieve 100% renewable energy for stationery and transport fuels.

To avoid doubt if your real objective is to green your electricity supply, you can define your target to be ‘100% renewable electricity’. You can reach this goal by:

1. Implementing onsite solar PV
2. Building your own mid-scale solar farm or solar/wind farm in partnership with others
3. Buying renewables (e.g., through a corporate Power Purchase Agreement)
4. Utilise the latest technologies to procure green power via tokenisation

Conclusion

Carbon neutrality and 100% renewable energy are two different targets. Technology is speeding up the attainment of these goals and helping reduce the cost of achieving them, in many cases by applying the correct solutions organisations can save money and achieve carbon neutrality. To be a leader in climate change, your organisation should strive towards a renewable energy target as your impact will be much greater.

It is possible to reach 100% renewable energy AND carbon neutrality. Microsoft has been achieving both since 2014. You can also pursue both targets in a staged approach. As an example, you could aim for 100% renewable electricity in the first instance, followed by carbon neutrality in the medium term, followed by 100% renewable energy in the long run.

Obviously one of the major constraints is the costs involved to achieve these targets, however, technology is moving fast and making it more attainable with commercial returns. Innovative blockchain technology now makes it possible for businesses to match their electricity usage with locally-sourced renewable energy directly from specific generators.

Mojo Power have teamed up with blockchain-based green energy experts WePower to offer businesses access to this new technology and competitive energy prices. Because going renewable shouldn’t have to cost the earth.

The Mojo Marketplace platform can link your company’s energy consumption to the renewable generation projects of your choice. The electricity generated by these projects is tokenised so it can prove how much renewable energy each project sends to the grid and match this to your business’ energy usage.

The electricity is tokenised so you get genuine, matched renewable energy at competitive prices that is easily traceable and auditable.

The post Are ‘carbon neutral’ and ‘100% renewable’ the same? first appeared on AdOPT AI.

ESG includes:

• Environmental – climate change, carbon emissions, waste and pollution management, renewable energy and clean technology, and consideration of the rights of First Nations peoples to their land
• Social – employee wellbeing and development, health and safety, human rights, ethical supply chain standards, privacy and data security, and community impact and engagement
• Governance – board diversity, executive pay, corruption, business practices and ethics, risk mitigation and management, transparency, and ESG reporting

As stakeholder expectations shift, ESG is more important than ever. Customers want to support socially responsible brands, employees want to feel that their work is having a broader social impact and investors are increasingly prioritising ethical investing.

By integrating ESG, you stand to benefit from better brand reputation, increased employee satisfaction, a more stable consumer following and higher levels of investment.

In fact, ESG has become such a common practise that it’s no longer about getting ahead. It’s about not being left behind.

Simon O’Connor, CEO of the Responsible Investment Association of Australia, told the Australian Financial Review that “we are nearly at a point globally where really traditional investment is dead.”

“Investing without a consideration of environmental, social and governance (ESG) is almost no longer tenable in Australia or globally because fundamentally this is being driven by compliance, by competitive performance and by client interest.”

How to integrate ESG into your business

Address each of the three ESG pillars (environmental, social and governance) and work through strategies to incorporate these into your business. You may need to appoint more resources and dedicated personnel to ensure your business achieves it’s ESG objectives.

Environmental ESG compliance is often a top priority for businesses, with many committing to net zero emissions by 2025. Innovative blockchain technology now makes it possible for businesses to match their electricity usage with locally-sourced renewable energy directly from specific generators.

The post What is ESG and why is it so important for your business? first appeared on AdOPT AI.

In the built environment, Building and construction are responsible for 39% of all carbon emissions in the world, with operational emissions (from energy used to heat, cool and light buildings) accounting for 28%. the remaining 11% comes from embodied carbon emissions. Heating, cooling and hot water makes up 60% of energy usage.

Is technology the answer to our sift in habits and consumption to mitigate the climate change risks?

To retain a focus on the built environment, we will explore what we think the future holds for this sector and how technology will dramatically change the way buildings are managed and operated.

There are 3 important horizontals to consider when looking at the future ecosystem that will exist in our buildings.

• Hardware IoT devices

These are incredibly important because this provides valuable data. IoT (Internet of Things) is a new term, it basically means using sensors and hardware devices to gather data from physical ‘things’ and put it on the internet, ie digitize it. What’s important is that this ‘data enabler’ is easy to deploy, affordable, secure and provides reliable real time data to a cloud source. Centralising data is paramount so that you can optimise it in the most commercial way.

• Middleware

With the advances in hardware and edge computing, the next key link between the IoT data which is all wireless (easy to deploy, scale, affordable), is the transmission of this data to a cloud source. What’s important here is that it is reliable, real time, affordable, flexible, secure and interoperable. There is huge progression in this space using lots of protocols like Bluetooth, Wifi, cellular, lorawan and Sigfox to name a few.

• Software

This will be the critical management piece for large volumes of data because it will enhance productivity, get teams working better together, improve accuracy and efficiency and provide end users a digital tool to leverage in their everyday roles. What’s important here is that it is flexible, customisable, easy to use, real time, future proofed, incorporates artificial intelligence and machine learning, provides commercial outcomes to end users.

Artificial intelligence will have a profound impact on how we make decisions in every aspect of our lives. Computerized decision making will guide us nearly as much as our brains do now. The concept of AI is not new, it was introduced in 1956, at a conference at Dartmouth college in the US and while a lot has changed since then, the concepts remain the same. Right now whether you like it or not it is easy for anyone to access your digital data to learn a tremendous amount about what you’re like and this data can be fed into computers that do everything from predict what you want to buy to what you value in life. While this may be scary to many, it produces remarkable results.

Figure 1. Data can be enabled more flexibly and commercially now so that an ecosystem of assets can produce real time data enabling AI and machine learning to provide prioritise insights to various layers of management.

The beauty of this revolutionary technology is that it takes in data all day every day, detects anomalies and patterns based on the relevant criteria and then recommends an action. This allows us to make more informed and less emotional decisions much faster than we could on our own. We will use machine assistance as much for decision making as we do for information gathering today. Humans and AI are far better to work together because it produces the best results.

There is a high probability that a computer can never replicate many of the things the brain can do, things like imagination, synthesis and creativity, because the brain comes genetically programmed with millions of years of abilities honed through evolution. The science of decision making that underlies many computer systems remains much less valuable than the art. People still make the most important decisions better than computers do. Look no further than those who are uniquely successful, its not the software engineers or mathematicians game theory modellers but those people with the most common sense, imagination and determination.

Most important of all they are independent and immune to the biases of crowds, they do not care if what they see or do is unpopular and they don’t panic.

As technology costs have fallen and the sophistication of IoT devices have increased, it is easier to generate data on the performance of buildings, assets and the systems of systems within them at a more granular level.

At its core, IoT enables different components to communicate with each other with little to no intelligence. This lack of intelligence means that a building may generate a deluge of data that needs to be manually sifted through to glean operational insights, proficiencies, and advantages.  It is these characteristics that underscore how commercial buildings benefit from disruptive technologies like AI – turning data into actionable information to aid facility operations and personnel. Without data, IoT, and AI, the combining of data to generate actionable intelligence is either time-consuming, involves humans and therefore laden with inconsistency, costly, or (often) deemed useless.

Figure 2. Data can be distilled to benefit many across an organisation leading to improved productivity and data backed decision making

This crisis may further change the way tenants utilise their space, with more hot desks, new norm social distancing and variable space. Understanding these patterns will become more important in the future, both for landlords and tenants, and how this translates to operations and energy management, revenue and costs.

A data driven operation will be essential to maintain high performance at competitive prices. The use of AI to assist managers to run such facilities will be vital as the amount of data that comes online in the next few years will become overwhelming. To have a platform that can ingest huge amounts of data and deliver prioritised commercial insights, will be key to the successful delivery of facilities and will benefit many within the organisation.

The post Big Data – The future ecosystem of building management first appeared on AdOPT AI.

Energy efficiency and maintenance are a great starting spot. I like to use a conveyor belt as an example – hundreds of motors in a food conveyor-belt system moving goods around. Do all those motors have variable speed drives or sensors that talk to each other, why is that one drawing more power than the other?

What can the power distribution system with meters, circuit-breakers, power-conditioning and the like supplying my critical assets tell me about how and where I use power, or whether I am running the equipment in a way that affects its longevity? You collect all these little insights from one conveyor belt or sub-system and apply that on a grander scale and all of a sudden, you see where you can gain energy efficiencies.

AI and learning algorithms revolutionises maintenance. Rather than time-based preventive or run-to-failure maintenance, sensors collect data which algorithms interpret to produce predictive analytics. AI gives us the capability to operate with condition-based or predictive maintenance, which improves uptime and savings two ways: avoiding unexpected shutdowns and planned shutdowns for maintenance that isn’t needed yet.

Another key area for AI in HVAC or any large industrial equipment is improving productivity – I get a better product outcome, I can tweak things on the run. We’ve had monitoring and then acting on simple things such as energy spikes and anomalies for a long time, all retrospective – that’s pretty primitive compared to what AI can do. It’s so much more nuanced: Quality checks on complex systems using AI enabled real-time monitoring means anomalies are identified as soon as they occur, and changes made immediately rather than at the end of a cycle, vastly reducing waste, and saving money.

There are multiple ways for the property Industry to use AI and harness the huge datasets collected from their automated systems, analysing historical data and ingredient parameters. With the support of the right control system, the possibilities become endless: It can affect everyone from CEO/CFO right down to the contractors fixing problems on site. Transparency, efficiency and productivity improves simply with a data driven strategy and AI and machine learning providing insights from the every growing data sets available. so you can do more with the same number of people, and do it better. This technology helps you to make better decisions, faster. Australian industry needs to embrace these new technologies or we risk becoming laggards in the sectors that are essential to our sovereign security. The conditions are particularly ripe for value-add niche manufacturing – which I see as the sweet spot for us in Australia. It’s really exciting.

The post Ease to connect and Internet of Things. What do these mean and what does the future look like for your business? first appeared on AdOPT AI.

Technology, automation, and innovation are redefining how we acquire, manage, and operate space in the commercial real estate sector. All while a global pandemic is changing how (and where) we work and share space. It has never been more challenging to be a CRE or facilities professional. Yet even the worst crises can create opportunities. We spoke to leading CRE experts to understand how they see technology can help your organization:

• Build flexibility and resilience into your corporate real estate strategy

• Automate work order management to keep employees safer and more comfortable

• Improve availability of data and transparency across your real estate portfolio

• Adopt agile space planning and hardware innovations to increase employee productivity and collaboration while adhering to (and enforcing) changes in physical distancing guidelines

• Get to conclusions faster to inform commercial decisions which have a material effect on profitability

If you need to integrate a technology overlay into your operations or a genuine data strategy to future proof your business, feel free to get in touch for an initial chat.

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• Collecting large amounts of reliable data
• Improved computer processing power
• Relevant and valuable use cases
• There is an appetite for investment in AI and machine learning (ML)

AI leads to Predictive maintenance

Predictive maintenance can help the property sector to greatly improve labour productivity, avoid unexpected down time of large equipment, reduce maintenance costs, increase sustainability scores and enhance returns for investors.

Human Performance management

Improve the performance of your RE portfolio with less human intervention and interpretation.Leaders of industry are constantly looking for ways to enhance productivity and performance. The human work force should be focused on more suitable tasks, naturally this gets better results.Are you getting the best out of your workforce? Contact us for more information.

The post Is it time for AI in the real estate market? first appeared on AdOPT AI.

Below simply describes how AI can be used and the sequence of events that take place to utilise data.

It starts with the infrastructure or hardware which produces the data,

THEN it is sent to a cloud source so that models or algorithms which integrate AI and machine learning can be deployed,

THEN insights and directives are pushed via the internet to a dashboard, APP, email or other message channel and customised to enable a productive operations team process.

Therefore, does this create more potential for your portfolio?

The post Do AI applications create more potential for your portfolio? first appeared on AdOPT AI.

So increase PRODUCTIVITY.

AI is a complimentary tool to aid, instead of replace, humans.

It takes care of repetitive and menial tasks and improves efficiency. In some cases, it can produce beneficial insights from data that was not previously possible due to the complexity of the task or a lack of available resources.

AI enterprise platforms are enabling data-driven decision making to optimise operational costs, enhance customer experience and create value for investors.

Smarter, faster and more accurate operations.

Do more with LESS

The post How does AI work for you? first appeared on AdOPT AI.