Moving the needle for the green shift: immediate action and harnessing data

Need for incentives structure

For the industry to move, an incentive structure must be in place for companies like Maersk Tankers to invest in the green transition. By being first movers, they see that they also benefit from insurance towards future regulation. From Navid’s point of view, there is a willingness to pay for the green transition across the value chain. Still, it would increase significantly if there was a clearer legislative direction and significant subsidies for early movers.

Trial and error

The most efficient operating model in the green transition lies in the intersection between corporate and startup. With a background in the startup world, Navid knows the importance of learning from your mistakes. As important as it is to experiment with trial and error in the startup phase, the corporate world has strength in executing on the scale-up phase and has the muscle to implement effectively.

Profitability is key

Different segments of the value chain can decarbonize quicker than other segments. Currently, building dual-fuel engines is easier than producing carbon-neutral fuels, like methanol and ammonia, while maintaining high safety standards. Many companies want to lead in the green transition, but corporates are less likely to invest without seeing the potential profit on the horizon. Corporations need a deep understanding of the market, where customer validation is critical, assessing customers' willingness to pay for price premiums for green energy.

The importance of keeping end-users in mind

Kate Saunders, Lead Digital Designer with many years of experience working within the energy sector, approached this topic from a user-centric angle. She discussed the challenges when working with digital transformation to enable the green transition within the energy sector. There is also an overall challenge to streamline different types of data and assemble datasets that are useful and fit for purpose.

The case of Statnett

As an example, Kate took us through a project with Statnett, a project on which EGGS Design is still engaged in four years on. Working together with Cognite as a technical partner for Statnett, the project worked to build use cases to utilize data to inform decisions and ensure a stable, safe, and sustainable operation and development of Norway’s electricity grid. One part of the project was to develop an application for data analysts, empowering them to find, access, and use power system data for analysis. The project results are a 70% time reduction in finding data, improved data quality, and ease of use, as within a few clicks, you can compare more complex data than before. It means that every analyst can handle more cases, and with 150 users across 60+ areas in Statnett, the impact is tangible.

These results have been achieved by embedding agile training in design sprints, enabling and accelerating new working methods. And by focusing on understanding the user and data via regular user tests, regular demos, and in-depth interviews informed constant iterations and prototyping. Last but not least, to build a sense of trust between users and data through reliable access to support when needed.

Despite the untapped potential of utilizing data to enable the green shift, there is an inherent paradox in how companies make money from delivering products and services, while one of the most impactful ways to decarbonize is by reducing consumption overall. This a topic that is less highlighted in the debate within the industry for obvious reasons. This leads to one of the critical questions how do we focus on people and the planet while making a profit? One of EGGS Design's future-centric design principles is 'design to do less' without losing profit to respond to this inherent paradox.