Harnessing the Fourth Industrial Revolution

The world today is at the anvil of the fourth industrial revolution where the idea of innovation is not just about breakthrough technological discoveries but rather about redesigning technologies in such a way that logistics and global supply chains are efficient, transportation costs are reduced,  and the cost of trade is lower. Market disruptions today are thus huge process innovations that have found better ways to engage with the customers, made possible by the proliferation of information and communication technologies. This implies that the relationship between the consumer and the manufacturer is now closer than ever. What this means for climate change is that, where 19^th century industrial revolution could prosper without accounting for environmental costs, it is going to be difficult to replicate the same today. The Paris Climate agreement is thus a blessing in disguise for manufacturers who have the opportunity to not only accommodate environmental costs in their business models but also accrue both short term and long term gains out of it.

A study by economists Burke, Hsiang and Miguel, published by Nature, highlights the relationship between economic production and climate change, by pointing out that overall productivity declines as temperatures rise. Long run macroeconomic growth in an economy is therefore largely dependent on its efforts at curbing climate change, thus giving policy makers a strong reason to tighten environmental norms and manufacturers an incentive to follow these regulations and enhance their productive capacity. The call for accommodating environmental friendly alternatives in manufacturing processes are plenty and show that global markets are ready for changes mandated by the Paris Agreement.

The information and communication technology boom bought with itself the need to store large amounts of data such that small server or control rooms turned into big data centers. Every large company or government institutions now have such data centers, creating a huge colocation and data center market. In recent years, rising demand for more efficient servers at lower costs has made available faster servers with lower cost storage and better networking equipment. While these servers provide great performance per unit power, their power consumption is very high, thus adding a pressure to both the companies’ costs and environmental resources. To add to this, development of the rack mount servers has further increased heating in data centers, thus creating demand for data center power and cooling equipment’s. Apart from power consumption concerns, experts estimate that approximately 2% of the global greenhouse gases are caused by these data centers. Market players are thus increasingly moving to green technologies that involve upgrade of large infrastructure like replacing air condition cooling solutions with economizers, as well as small restructuring measures like removing under flow cable blockages that obstruct air flow or blocking cable opening to prevent cold air waste in the hot aisle.

IBMs supercomputer system Aquasar is a perfect example of such energy saving trends in the market, applied recently for the supercomputer SuperMUC. This water cooling technology, inspired by the human circulatory system has micro channel liquid coolers that transform water directly to the processors and carry away the heat, which is then transported to heat exchangers where it can be used to provide heat to other buildings. This allows the super computer to be run without employing chillers or compressors and has the ability to save around 1 million euro per year.  With the proliferation of cloud computing and big data, more and more companies are looking for technologies that make data centers more efficient, and immersion cooling is another step in this direction. Vienna Science cluster uses this technology to submerge its supercomputer SuperMicro in dielectric fluids similar to mineral oil. Servers are inserted vertically into different slots in a tank that is filled with around 250 gallon of Elecrosafe Fluid which transfers heat without conducting an electric charge. This system has emerged as one of the most efficient ones in terms of Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) and shows how energy saving technologies is not just a macro level concern but can also provide great benefits to private enterprises in term of cost reductions.

A successful Paris agreement is a good sign of how climate change is finally being recognized as a global collective responsibility. The environment for green solutions is thus perfect at the moment as policy makers across all regions are ready to incentivize adoption of cleaner technologies. Businesses and manufacturers must increase investment and R& D activities in green solutions and make the most of this opportunity.