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UTILITY WEEK | FEBRUARY 2022 | 39 and agreeing a standard method of expan- sion within policies and guardrails that ensure each rm's data is consistent and comparable. "We've mapped out more than 9,000 companies in the energy system in the UK – are you going to do bilateral contracts with each one of them? Is each company going to have its own so ware-as-a-service solution? While that can be automated, you've still got to sign up to dozens of di€ erent terms and conditions, and that's just a lengthy process and is going to introduce friction." On this point, Starks draws comparison with the rollout of open banking. "The banks said, 'well, we've got application program- ming interfaces, we're doing data sharing already, why do we need this thing?' But it's not about you, it's about us – all of us creat- ing cohesion and interoperability across the whole market. "So rather than having dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of integration points all doing things di€ erently, you've got stand- ardised ways of achieving that. We're not a technology company from that point of view, we're taking existing bits of technology and plugging them together." Proven blueprint from open banking Established as a nonpro t – "to occupy a space tha t nobody else really wanted to," Starks claims – Icebreaker One functions independently of industry and government, much like its CEO's work at the Open Data Institute and in open banking. "With Treas- ury backing, open banking opened up secure access to shared nancial data," he explains. "It has since transformed the ntech sector, creating tens of billions of pounds in value." This "proven blueprint" for market-wide data sharing within a common framework can subsequently be applied to the most rel- evant sectors to climate change, Starks adds, explaining that working to develop open standards will unlock access to shared data – essential in the delivery of a "green indus- trial revolution". "Energy's at the top of that list – obvi- ously – but as are water, transport, agri- culture and the built world. And so we're looking at all of those areas and have been trying to work through the primary use cases here for market-wide data sharing. "When you look at the emergent land- scape of millions of assets being generators, or stores of energy – whether that's a wind turbine, or an electric vehicle – and millions of assets acting on the demand side and also as an energy store, you end up with a very complex problem. "Our purpose is to act as a catalyst, bring industry together and say if we're going to pick data standards, let's act as a way of gathering people around particular use cases – whether that's ' ex markets, smart meters, electric vehicles – and let's make it happen." A seismic shi in behaviour For Starks, creating an open web of energy data necessitates a seismic shi in busi- ness behaviours – especially when handling "harder" commercial data and deciding whether to collect or connect. "I think the major thing here – and it's not speci c to energy – is just the way that we do business," he explains. "Businesses are programmed to keep everything close and thinking, if we let things leak out the sides we're going to lose value or somehow our competitors will get an edge. "Every company wants to build a data lake – it's the classic, if we've got all the data, we can get a market edge," Starks con- tinues. "But having the data is not where the value is, connecting the data is where the value is. And so the most valuable compa- nies here are going to be the ones that con- nect the most data – we're helping those connections exist." Starks concludes that the challenge is therefore a cultural one. "It's getting busi- nesses and governments generally to think that we're going to create more value by con- necting our data than by hoarding it – it's unlocking the sense of we're going to create more value if we join forces." Beginning of a 'Cambrian explosion' A winner of the Modernising Energy Data Access (MEDA) Competition and BEIS's Energy Data Visibility Project, Icebreaker One's nal destination is, ultimately, a data ecosystem capable of supporting "millions of assets from thousands of vendors". However, in the context of a race to decar- bonise, said assets must be also shaped by better and more broadly shared data insights between companies to pull towards a com- mon goal. Starks cites a Bloomberg report claiming that global energy-related emissions need to drop 30% below 2019 levels by 2030 – a point by which Icebreaker One hopes to in' uence investment decisions of $3.6 trillion per year – in order to deliver net zero by 2050. "Everything we build in the next 10 years basically determines the 2050 outcome – we're not going to be rebuilding our energy infrastructure every ve years," he says. "My very broad understanding is if we were to switch everything to net-zero electric tomorrow, we'd need to triple or quadruple our renewable energy supply. If you look at that through the lens of 'we need to very rapidly increase renewable energy supply' there's going to be a huge amount of invest- ment there – but it's going to be a distributed network and you're going to have more and more micro generation – heat pumps, and so£on." Starks adds that open energy data can have positive knock-on e€ ects in other sec- tors striving for net zero – for example, given the huge number of interactions between sectors such as water or transport and energy, opportunities exist to empower com- panies in EVs and heat pumps with shared data insight. "Glasgow is expecting 100,000 electric vehicles on the roads within a year or two – they don't have the infrastructure to do that yet, as far as I know. I think sales of EVs have been outstripping fossil fuel cars now in some areas of Europe, so we've got to get a move on, and how are we going to do that in an e¥ cient way? "It feels like we're just at the beginning of this Cambrian explosion of innovation," he says, "and all the promises of the Internet of Things, we've got to turn them into reality now." Stuart Stone, editor, UW Innovate Utility Week Live 2022 See this content brought to life at Utility Week Live, 17-18 May 2022, NEC Birmingham New approaches to asset management and maintenance and delivering smart energy networks are among the frontline challenges at the heart of Utility Week Live 2022's live content programme. View the challenges and be alerted for tickets to the industry's most eagerly awaited reunion at utilityweeklive.co.uk Open banking standards demonstrate what can be achieved with industry cooperation

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