The Keeling Curve

Using premium to invigorate innovation in clean energy

By Dunyang Li

In his new book “Future Perfect”, Steven Johnson introduced about the Royal Society of Arts that gave birth to a series of breakthrough inventions in industrial revolution. He pointed it out that the true genius of RSA is the “PREMIUM” that was delivered to thousands of innovations such as spinning wheels, mechanical telegraphs and brocade weaving.

As society moves forward, the patent and license have been created to protect the intellectual property rights. On the one hand, this stimulates big corporations especially big pharmaceutical companies to produce innovation. But on the other hand, it goes against the open exchange of ideas among peer networks. To tackle this contradiction, a group of people in US resembles the spirit of RSA and creates a premium for those who make innovations. For example, Sanders Pharmaceutical Prizes and X Prize Founders (www.xprize.org) were created to provide robust premium for winners but mandate them share their innovation in an open-source style and give up their attempt to patent their discoveries.

Similarly in the field of clean energy, this problem is also common. Big companies like GE and BP have hundreds of patents on energy-saving products so that people who use it for the sake of environmental protection would pay a high price for it. Therefore, in the field of clean energy, we also need this kind of revolution that flatten the arena and reduce the barrier of patents. By offering more prize-backed challenges and contests, we may expect a more affordable energy-saving products and a brighter era of innovation.

A Kickstarter/DonorsChoose model for Poor Children in China

By Dunyang Li

When the children in the east coast of China are pursuing lifestyle of US and Europe, their counterparts in the west part of China are still suffering from poverty. Same as the future of China, the children’s circumstances are different. Although children in that area already have access to school, they are still eager to have books to read, gloves to wear and many more basic needs to fulfill.

Successful public campaign such as “Free Lunch for children”, “Western Sun” and “Sunny Library” have largely expanded the networks of school in the poverty-stricken area of China. On the other hand, two local crowd-funding platforms, Demohour (www.demohour.com) and Dreamore (www.dreamore.com), which followed the same pattern of Kickstarter and DonorsChoose have received two rounds of venture capital investments. The combination of these two trends is bringing an opportunity for these poor children in China.

Given both trends, it is desirable to establish a crowd-funding platform specifically for these children. On this platform, children can post their needs by themselves or guided by their teachers and parents. On the other end, the Internet user can quickly make a small donation to fulfill their needs. For example, if they post a need for a new $5 blackboard in their classroom, it will be paid in an hour by an online donor. This platform transforms the way people help the poor children and greatly increases timeliness, accuracy, and transparency of donation.

From the perspective of feasibility, given that seldom is there computer, tablet or Internet in these areas, this platform should support a low-fi mobile phone message system that allows children send request to the platform. Then coders or editors can translate and visualize these requests so that the Internet users can identify critical needs and make their donation in time.

Three major Challenges in using big data

By Dunyang Li

This article is based on an interview with Thomas Chang, a manager of a leading market analytical consulting firm. Working with various clients in different fields, he would talk about what he finds challenging in using big data.

1. The size of data is not always “big” among all fields. Sometimes the huge amount of data is just not available in a certain industry or function, such as marketing. But in order to convince the clients, he needs to try every means to collect a comprehensive, granulous and accurate database.

2. Think deep before analyzing any data. The size of data is just the first step. A well-designed structure and statistical model that are put around the data is also challenging. He always asks himself some questions before mining the data, such as what the interactions between these metrics are and what a pathway of consumer journey is, which gives him a bigger picture in the way of handling data.

3. Link the insights with decision-making. Insights are not the end of analysis and furthering them to inform decision-making is a tough process. When he derives an insight from simulation of huge amount of data, he is always conscious of who the stakeholders are in this project, how they would use the insights, and what the tradeoff is. All these concerns translate the original insights into more actionable plan of steps.

How analytical consulting firms help client by leveraging big data?

By Dunyang Li

This article is based on an interview with Thomas Chang, a manager of a leading market analytical consulting firm. Working with different clients ranging from private sector to private sector, he would talk about how his day-to-day work helps these clients develop data-driven strategies by using big data.

Private Sector Client – A US based big pharma

Objective:

Help the client understand market efficiency around the globe in different markets.

What he did:

(1) Collect marketing, distribution and innovation data in different media channels.

(2) Run data in a statistical model and put it into the whole eco-system of modeling.

(3) Identify factors that motivate the consumers to buy its products thereby driving the most ROI and elasticity.

(4) Simulate different media strategy in a competitive landscape. For example, if its competitor increases their marketing spending, how much it should increase to combat that move.

(5) Predict sales outcome and help manage its annual global marketing budget.

(6) Provide software infrastructure to ensure that client can utilize analysis to guide the timely decision making by itself.

Public Sector Client – A US Private University

Objective:

Help understand what is driving its revenue and public attention, which can be reflected by the number of application. Identify what the metric it should track and where to invest efficiently to drive its brand.

What he did:

(1) Collect marketing data in different marketing channels.

(2) Run data by a statistical model and identify key factors that motivate students and parents choose the university.

(3) Simulate in different scenarios and predict applications outcome and revenues for future years.

To sum up, the big data analysis and statistical modeling help quantify the market outcome, add transparency in annual spending and ultimately inject confidence in the client to make a business decision.

CompostCommunityConnect

CompostCommunityConnect is a project I've been working on to connect neighborhood composters and reduce the insane amount of trash that New York City sends to landfills every week. For more info, check out my project page on Truonex.

For now, enjoy this mock-up of CompostCommunityConnect's map interface. Let me know what you think!

Visualizing Composting Drop-Offs Throughout New York City

Composting in New York City is a spotty and inconsistent activity. Some areas (lower Manhattan, central Brooklyn) have a number of compost drop-off points, whereas others have considerably fewer. The information regarding comopsting is equally spotty. The Department of Sanitation and its Bureau of Waste Prevention, Reuse and Recycling (BWPRR) provide information about composting online, but the information is either old or difficult to find.

To me, one of the biggest no-brainers is to provide reliable information on the location of compost drop-off sites throughout the city. BWPRR does have some information, but it's spread between five different websites and is difficult to find. I spent an hour or so looking for this information while working on my CompostCommunityConnect project, but eventually got tired of looking and decided to do it myself. Using BWPRR's data, I created one map of all 43 official drop-off sites. I also split the sites up by borough, which you can find below. This project shows the difference between providing data (which BWPRR did) and providing usable data. Though the information is all online, it's spread between websites and is not in a format that people can do things with besides viewing. Hopefully this visualization helps highlight the areas that do not have compost drop-offs and some intrepid composters decide to set one up in the city's many unserved neighborhoods.

 

 

 

 

Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bronx is Fine (circa 2023)

In 1977 New York City lost power for most of the night during one of the hottest days of the year, resulting in widespread looting, rioting and violence. At the time, Mayor Beame said that the utility, ConEdison, was guilty of "gross negligence."

Utilities never want to lose power to any of their customers, especially since it can turn into an extremely embarrassing incident when it happens. However, blackouts are inevitable at times due to weather or aging infrastructure, even if the utility is functioning to the best of their ability. The nature of our electrical grid is that it is old and messy and in many ways, dumb. What we need, is a smart grid.

Today, when the power goes out, you usually call your local utility supplier and let them know. You have to do that because they often don't know that you don't have power. But imagine a world ten years from now when a "smarter" electrical grid that gives back information to the utilities in real time stops that power outage before it happens.

Humans really like having electrical power. We got used to have lights and refrigeration and air conditioning and we're not about to give that up. But in order to keep our meat cold and our iPhones charging, we demand constant electricity flowing into our homes. In order to meet the demand of thousands of people in a city all with their own decisions of when to charge their iPhone and when to dry their hair and hot days when we all turn on our air conditioner, utility companies bring in power made far outside the city and try to predict how much demand there will be.

The current electrical grid is old (built primarily in the 1890s) and "consists of more than 9,200 electric generating units with more than 1 million megawatts of generating capacity connected to more than 300,000 miles of transmission lines." (http://www.smartgrid.gov/the_smart_grid#smart_grid)

A smarter grid means upgrading that old messy system into a two-way street that builds on modern technology to send information as well as electricity between the electricity customers and the electricity suppliers and distributors. If you think about electricity like a marketplace, then it doesn't make sense not to collect information from customers to improve the electricity experience.

A smarter electrical grid is about giving consumer the information and tools they need to make smarter choices about energy use. Instead of waiting for an electrical bill each month, ratepayers will have real-time feedback on the energy they use through "smart meters" inside their homes and businesses. As electricity prices fluctuate during peak periods, consumers can make the choice not to use as much energy during the higher rates.

Politically Speaking: What Can President Obama afford to do for the Climate?

President Obama may be selling short the public’s appetite for climate action.  Or not.  It all depends on how you interpret the numbers. 

To my ears, the second most remarkable piece of President Obama’s 2^nd inaugural address was his words on climate mitigation:

We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations. Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires and crippling drought and more powerful storms. The path towards sustainable energy sources will be long and sometimes difficult.  But America cannot resist this transition, we must lead it.

The events that have and have not transpired since January have caused many pundits and environmentalists to conclude that the President’s rhetoric on the climate is just that. The list includes:

-                The EPA has not issued new rules regulating the pollution of existing power plants

-                The President’s budget doesn’t present a legislative strategy for addressing climate, but it does cut funding for the EPA by 3.5%

-                Still no ruling on Keystone XL

 Political writers love to talk about how during a second administration, Presidents focus on cementing their legacy.  And President Obama seems to understand that action around climate change will figure prominently into his legacy. Yet, here we are five months on and no action.  What gives?

In a Pew poll conducted in January of 2013, respondents were asked to prioritize Obama’s second term agenda.  Taking action against global warming ranked last (21 out of 21) on the list.  The percentage of people who view global warming as a serious problem currently stands at 33%, a six-year low and a full 12 percentage points lower than 2006 (when Hurricane Katrina and An Inconvenient Truth were on people’s minds).  Worst of all, only 19% of Republicans and 57% of Democrats believe the earth is warming because of human activities.  

Hard to blame President Obama and his advisors for looking at the numbers and concluding, “the public isn’t really behind us on this one.”  With a full legislative agenda, the recent gun control defeat, and the real possibility of losing control of the Senate in 2014, political capital must be closely guarded. 

Yet, I can’t help but feel like a huge opportunity is being missed here.  If you believe the science, which I’m sure Obama does, climate change is only going to get worse.  And as the damage becomes increasingly apparent, we will begin looking back at our history for scapegoats and heroes.  All the efforts the Obama administration has made to quietly address the systems problems that facilitate our addiction to fossil fuels will be seen as half hearted and incomplete. 

Behind all the depressing data on public opinion and climate change, there is reason for optimism.  71% of young people favor developing renewable energy over expanding oil and gas drilling.  The Yale Project on Climate Change Communication estimates that a full 45% of the public is either alarmed or concerned about climate change, far outweighing the estimated 21% who are doubtful or dismissive of climate change. 

It will be interesting to watch the administration as it proceeds in the next year, before midterm elections and the subsequent lame duck period.  For the sake of our future and the President’s legacy, I hope he chooses to act boldly, in spite of the many obstacles that stand in the way of substantive climate action. 

When Climate Policy isn't "Climate" Policy

A guest lecturer in my environmental economics class here at NYU said something a few weeks back that has really stuck with me:

"The most important climate policy on the table is filibuster reform."

Think about the number one complaint Americans have about Congress: that it's broken, that they can't get anything done. On both sides of the political spectrum, voters are concerned about the partisan gridlock... and yet are also relieved that the "other side" isn't getting their way either, hence the problem. What's worse than not getting your way? Your opponent getting theirs.

But what about issues that have broad bi-partisan support? Shouldn't they have a chance? Isn't that what our government was set up to do--make compromises that a majority of the country can find something to like within the policy? In cases like stronger background checks for gun control a few weeks back, we saw an issue that has broad on-the-ground support die to the louder yells of a powerful minority. And we know that no matter how long we work to craft a beautiful climate policy--with market-based solutions and intricate flexibilities, of course--it won't go anywhere because the "climate" has become a dangerously polarizing word for a powerful minority.

The filibuster power of the U.S. Senate is prime example of that minority power. I'm pleased that my Senator, Oregon's Jeff Merkley, has taken on filibuster reform as his biggest priority. He's a climate warrior as well, so it's clear that the Senator also got the message that came up in my econ. class. His idea? Make it a real talking filibuster, just like Jimmy Stewart did in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Currently, a single Senator can threat to filibuster by signalling that they would, and then 60 votes are needed to overturn that threat. This simple, lonely gesture blocks policy after policy after policy.

Let's support real climate change policy, by demanding Congress change policy.

Spring is Springin'! - Visualization and Cherry Blossoms

On this blog, we've discussed a number of ways where people are using technology to help visualize environmental issues. Posts like Deborah's discussion of 5 environmental maps created with open data show the power of using visualization to identify huge environmental problems and solicit collaborative solutions.

On a lighter note, visualization can also help us enjoy the environment. Enter the Brooklyn Botanical Garden's new tool for helping its patrons take full advantage of its 5-week cherry blossom display. On their website, BBG has a map--updated every day--of each cherry tree and its current bloom status. 

BBG's map may not be the most impactful, world-changing tool ever, but I think it's a cool use of data to increase our enjoyment of the season. Visualization of open data serves all kinds of needs, and can be used to impact our lives in many different directions.