I think there is a real link in tackling, as my Swedish colleague said earlier on, some of the big challenges – climate change and energy security. We can use the internet as a vehicle not just for economic development but also for environmental gain.
Maybe I could expand on our chairman’s concept. He mentioned that the internet may develop into an “internet of things”. I will give some examples of our own work in our country to show how we might develop the internet in this way.
Taking our own country as an example; we’ve had a successful economy. Now we’re looking at the development of a further knowledge economy, adding economic value and using IT in particular to develop that. We are also increasingly committed Europeans and I think that within the European context, of the 20 20 20 targets, tackling climate change is a second track of work that I have to achieve in my energy brief as Minister.
We are well placed as a small country – sometimes as a smaller country you have an advantage, you can be flexible, you can make links with industry and adapt in a much quicker way possibly than larger country can. We are an interesting location in that we are already the location for some 210 of some of the largest IT companies worldwide, which now often have research centres and which are looking at some of the primary issues. We have our own indigenous companies also - some 600 companies in the software sector, many of them in our own Digital Hub which his designed to create an innovative, creative environment for new and emerging digital technologies.
We also have a Science and Technology Innovation Programme which runs up until 2012 and in which we are investing some €8.2 billion concentrating on ICT, biotechnology, renewable energy and energy efficiency. We are seeing these areas combine, and work together to deliver common solutions.
I don’t think we should underestimate the scale of the challenge we have and again using Ireland as an example; we have a lot of natural resources and renewable energy. We’re aiming to increase our level of renewable energy used in electricity from some 10% to 42% at least by 2020, which is a very ambitious target indeed.
Even in achieving that though, we’re seeing that we still have a problem:
The demand for electricity could still continue to rise with economic development. Often with the development of new digital industries, new data centres require huge amounts of electricity. What we’re seeing is not only that we can solve it in terms of developing renewable energy, a key solution is also the development of energy efficiencies and I think this is particularly where the internet of things can come in.
I wanted to give some examples of innovative new ideas that we’re working on to help deliver such reductions in our energy use:
We have a Workflow programme that we’re looking into to try and tackle the issue of commuting, and use a local wireless network in the greater Dublin area (where we have significant traffic difficulties) to measure where vehicles are both public and private, and then extend it to the home to create a dynamic office-house work connection. So the person at home can use that information coming through, to assess what their journey time might be, to assess what the real time congestion issues are and perhaps to adapt their working conditions. This will help us not only with the transport problem, but it will create greater working efficiencies.
That also can expand in terms of connectivity, in terms of the devices we’ve seen here in the exhibition centre, to create a work - office connectivity on relatively low bandwidth which gives you real efficiencies and real gains.
Another programme we’re looking at in developing renewable electricity, largely from variable energy sources like wind power, wave power and tidal power – we have to be smart in how we deliver our electricity grid and thus, we’re looking at new digitally assisted technologies to create a smart grid. There will be a smart meter in every house that will have the capability when electricity is expensive and emitting a lot of emissions, to cut back devices in the home – one could have an internet connected fridge, or air conditioning or other systems, which could be switched off in a smart way, using these new internet technologies.
A third example is the Smart Bay Programme off the West coast of Ireland in Co. Galway. We’re looking to extend the fibre optic network out sub-sea and create a corresponding system of buoys in the sea to measure what’s going on in our oceans, to maximise our potential to help us in our development of ocean energy and also to let us understand what’s happening in the North Atlantic. This for us is a very serious environmental measure. It’s again, an example where relatively cheap technologies can be deployed using this new internet connectivity on simple devices. This will provide us with information and therefore increase efficiencies in managing our natural resources.
They are just three examples coming from our Science and Technology Innovation Programme. We have to go way further than this – it goes into every sector. I don’t think people yet understand the scale of the response that is needed.
I was very drawn by a comment by the Japanese Ambassador at the United Nations negotiations in Nairobi on Climate Change – he cited Japan’s attitude, an attitude we should have towards energy efficiency – he said we must take a dry towel and squeeze it to get that extra drop of water out. I think it was a very good an powerful image because it shows the extent of the effort we have to put in to this area. I was also taken with our Japanese colleague here too, taking off his tie to cope with the heat.
If we don’t do something, we’re going to have to take off a lot more! And I think we can use digital technologies. The big issues coming out of the conference here that the principles we agree (and it’s clear there’s a common principle that we can use the internet to help us tackle climate change) should be given as specific directions to the OECD Secretariat on Thursday. These principles should be used to deliver real, practical solutions. I understand there is a plan to bring an OECD meeting to Denmark in 2009 when the key Climate Change negotiations are due to occur, which is extremely encouraging.
This week’s event is timely for us to start preparing real solutions to help get global agreement on that crucial issue.