Recommendations

Area for action: building a trusted data infrastructure for net zero

Data will be at the core of the net zero transition, enabling emissions monitoring as well as data-driven applications and services underpinning emission savings across sectors. For digital technologies deployed in the context of net zero to work for everyone, they will need to enable individuals and society to scrutinise their outputs and methods, they must be secure and resilient, and there must be a wide engagement of all stakeholders.

Recommendation 1

The net zero transition should be data-led, with governance arrangements in place that enable the safe and rapid use of data to support the achievement of the net zero target:

• As part of the COP26 effort and future international engagement, the UK Government should lead on the creation of international arrangements to enable the collection, sharing and use of data to underpin the development of applications and services helping achieve net zero. A key aspiration should be the establishment of a flow of data making planetary digital twins and a control loop for the planet possible. For the latter, data about a number of essential climate variables need to be made more widely available, for example measured atmospheric composition and concentration, and rainfall data, which is important for estimating the future land carbon sinks and should be shared widely on a global level.
• To ensure the transition towards a low-carbon economy harnesses the potential of data and digital technology, there needs to be coordination between initiatives happening across government, regulators, industry and the third sector. To this end, the UK Government should be informed by a cross-departmental and cross-sector taskforce devoted to the digitalisation of the net zero transition (footnote 1) and ensuring these initiatives are connected and amplified. It should identify immediate policy interventions and develop a roadmap for the digitalisation of the net zero transition, setting out priority use cases for existing data, actions to increase data access and use, and priorities regarding new data collection and analyses. It should ensure that data that can help achieve net zero follow the FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable).
• Data for emissions monitoring: In order to accelerate the systematic collection of robust data about businesses’ energy use and emissions across sectors, the taskforce for the digitalisation of the net zero transition should work with the science community and business to review standards for reporting Scope 1, Scope 2, and Scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions – respectively associated with energy use, the energy mix involved, and upstream and downstream emissions. This should consider the temporal and spatial sampling of published data that would support greater monitoring of supply chain emissions and intervention impacts.
• Data that can help achieve net zero should be made accessible through appropriate arrangements. Wherever possible it should be made open, while adequately addressing social and ethical dilemmas in data use. Where data cannot be made fully open, appropriate and robust frameworks should be in place, such as data access agreements or data trusts. In the case of datasets containing sensitive data, data might be made more shareable through privacy-preserving approaches including anonymisation, synthetic data generation and other approaches. For example, smart meter data should be made open after applying differential privacy or equivalent approaches to prevent the identification of any single household.

Recommendation 2

The UK Government has a responsibility to set an example of best practice through well governed use of data.

When implementing the National Data Strategy, Government should ensure data strategies and data standards across government departments and regulators function to facilitate data use and promote trustworthy technology use. This should build on the Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation’s work on public sector data sharing, to overcome barriers to data sharing and address citizen trust. Through low-carbon, outcome-focused procurement and through sponsoring pathfinder studies, Government can lead the way in driving development and adoption of digital technologies for net zero, modelling their use for others and engaging regulatory bodies in identifying the data sharing agreements and other frameworks needed to support such applications.

Recommendation 3

The UK Government, through a taskforce set up to connect and amplify cross-departmental and cross-sector initiatives on the digitalisation of the net zero transition, should enable industry, in particular the larger tech companies, as well as regulators and the third sector to ensure:

• Data-driven systems for net zero be developed to allow people to inspect and challenge their output. There should be a concerted effort to set standards to support contestation: data-driven systems to achieve net zero should be explainable, transparent, and auditable.
• Digital systems for net zero be developed to be secure and resilient. A collaborative effort should set resilience standards for data-driven systems deployed to achieve net zero: they should be able to work on a range of scales, be cybersecure, interoperable, flexible, safe and robust.
• Digital systems benefit the communities into which they are deployed. A collaborative effort should involve affected communities in order to develop a shared understanding of the purpose of technologies deployed in the context of net zero and to co-design approaches to navigate the associated dilemmas. This requires careful design of the interface between people and technology, and consideration of the societal impact of such technologies. Participatory design should play a central role in shaping and delivering digital solutions to the net zero challenge.

Area for action: optimising our digital carbon footprint

Keeping track of the tech sector’s own carbon footprint will require greater data availability. The sector’s footprint can be reduced through multiple approaches, including the further uptake of renewables and the scrutiny of digital technologies’ energy proportionality – ie whether specific data and computing applications bring environmental or societal benefits that outweigh their own emissions.

Recommendation 4

The tech sector should lead by example and make data accessible to allow the greater monitoring of its energy consumption and carbon emissions.

• Government leaders should identify the levers to ensure tech companies share publicly data about the energy consumptions of their digital systems and products, including embodied and use phase emissions, in particular from data centres – this should include Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions. This should be part of the National Data Strategy and could build on Defra’s Greening Government: ICT and Digital Services Strategy. This would involve the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) and HM Treasury working together to identify and establish those levers.

Recommendation 5

The UK Government has a responsibility to set an example of best practice through well governed use of data.

Recommendation 6

Regulators should develop guidance about the energy proportionality of digital applications.

Such guidance could set out key questions to consider when developing or deploying digital technologies. Where there are options to use less energy-intensive approaches, guidance should make this clear. For example, the Financial Conduct Authority should provide guidance on the energy intensity of blockchain-based applications used in financial systems.

Area for action: establishing a data-enabled net zero economy

Rebuilding the economy after the COVID-19 pandemic should focus on building a low-carbon economy, utilising data and digital technologies to achieve this. A focus on skills is essential to enable everyone to take part and accelerate a data-enabled net zero transition. COP26 presents an opportunity for the UK to demonstrate leadership in the digitalisation of the net zero transition and secure global change.

Recommendation 7

Action is needed to build digital and net zero skills at all levels – from basic literacy to advanced data analysis skills, and from an appreciation of efficiency to an in-depth understanding of carbon externalities. Re-tooling the workforce in this way will require a coordinated approach to nurturing data science and net zero skills across the country.

• The National Data Strategy, developed by DCMS, should prioritise action to equip the UK with the skills to drive a data-enabled net zero revolution, and DCMS could prioritise the use of data for net zero within the National Data Strategy missions.
• BEIS’ and the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government’s (MHCLG) joint Cities and Local Growth policy team should prioritise skills for a data-enabled net zero economy at the local level, providing annual reports on progress in increasing digital skills in local communities. Local Enterprise Partnerships should push digital skills in the local economy, for example by auditing whether universities and local employers are collaborating to identify and meet local digital skills and net zero skills needs.
• To support the development of a data-enabled net zero economy across the country, research institutes, the Energy Systems Catapult and Digital Catapult, learned societies and charities should provide information resources and toolkits to support local energy and environmental initiatives led by volunteers or social enterprises. There is also a role for training providers to develop agile and nimble opportunities for individuals to reskill and upskill as the nature of their job changes due to digitalisation.

Recommendation 8

The UK Government should use COP26 as an opportunity to lead the way in establishing ambitious programmes that bring together governments, industry and the third sector – committing funding, data, skills, and computing facilities – to develop computing as infrastructure for the planet.

• The UK Government could put forward an initiative on a robust data-driven approach towards achieving a reliable carbon credits market internationally, with a focus on supporting developing economies.

Area for action: setting research and innovation challenges to digitalise the net zero transition

A number of research and innovation challenges need addressing in order to realise the full potential of the digitalisation for net zero. This calls for an urgent and ambitious collaborative research and innovation effort.

Recommendation 9

The UK Government’s policies should be updated to reflect the net zero imperative.

• For example the Clean Growth Strategy and Industrial Strategy Challenge Funds on artificial intelligence (AI) should explicitly seek to harness the digital revolution and direct research and development activities to achieve climate goals. To boost collaboration to tackle climate change, and to increase university-business connectivity in particular, Challenge Funds should comprise collaborative grants and large programmes of interconnected grants.

Recommendation 10

Regulators should provide frameworks to help business innovating in the space of digital applications for net zero, acknowledging the need for a step change in innovation to adapt to the net zero agenda and enable the green recovery.

• This can be based on adaptive regulations and regulatory sandboxes that provide space for  experimentation. For example, Ofgem announced an expansion of its regulatory sandbox service to support innovative services and business models contributing to the decarbonisation of energy. There is an opportunity for regulators across sectors to build on this work.

Recommendation 11

Creating a stronger innovation ecosystem for net zero and distributing the benefits: Government should use new models of challenge-led innovation to tackle the net zero challenge, with a greater focus on digitalisation.

• These should consider a balanced portfolio of risk, including ‘high-risk, high-reward’ research, and should be based on a lean structure in which qualified research and innovation programme leaders appointed on a fixed-term basis are given greater discretion over the programmes that they select.