Digital Tools for Climate

Cityfi
3 min readApr 17, 2024

By Alexander Kapur

What do you envision when you hear the terms “cleantech” or “green infrastructure?” For most, the immediate image of climate mitigation technologies involves massive, durable infrastructure inter-woven into a futuristic, verdant scape. Examples: the lush Jewel Centre in Singapore’s Airport, or the hulking, intricate deployment of Los Angeles’s Hydrogen Fuel Hubs serving heavy-duty freight trucking near the container Ports. But do you ever conjure the relatively invisible connective tissue and the intelligent systems that will enable all of this new infrastructure and our climate frameworks? If you don’t see it, you should.

As a sample of the invisible, but essential digital backbone supporting our climate mitigation actions, consider just four of the hundreds of types of digital solutions in the toolkit and the forecasts of their market potential. Not only are the technologies themselves impressive, but also notable is their forecasted growth potential:

  • For water conservation and quality, the collective value of firms in the Smart Water Management Market are predicted to soar at a 9.6% CAGR (compounded annual growth rate), surpassing US $45.10 billion by 2030. Take, for example, Digital Water Solutions’ hydrant.AI product which allows utilities to monitor the distribution system in real-time, providing actionable insights as conditions change and water leaks are detected.
  • The global electric vehicle (EV) software market that supports everything from payments for consumer-level charging sessions to highly complex vehicle-to-grid (V2G) bi-directional energy exchanges is projected to reach US $693.70 billion by 2030, from US $193.55 billion in 2022, at a CAGR of 17.30%. ElectroTempo takes a differentiated approach to EV charging placements with their site analysis toolkit.
  • Carbon accounting software and related carbon/GHG data tracking aid firms in managing their carbon release and contributions, aligning with sustainability reporting standards, and governing regional carbon markets and air quality. Sweep is a carbon emissions management tool built with an emphasis on collaborative features, helping embedded sustainability teams manage their mitigation actions and track results across organizational functions. This segment is projected to grow from US $15.31 billion in 2023 to US $64.39 billion by 2030, at a CAGR of 22.8%. And the global market for climate risk digital solutions is expected to grow from around $880 million in 2021 (the baseline year) to more than US $4 billion in 2027, approaching a 30% CAGR.

And let’s now drill into just one of these segments. The EV software market includes not only the proprietary vehicle and charger packages necessary to support a single charging session, but is evolving to include Demand Management systems for utilities and Charge Point Operators, Vehicle-to-Grid coordination, roaming and interoperability systems, user-facing applications for planning and accessing charging sessions across multiple networks, contactless payments via mobile apps, QR codes, or RFID cards associated with an account and payment method. Like any other networked device, EV chargers are also susceptible to the risk of cybersecurity attacks. Blockchain appears here in applications such as P2P (Peer-to-Peer), enabling innovative applications such as the sharing of private charging stations and energy trading between utilities and the EV users (V2G).

This surging digital complex is energizing, but also daunting! Private sector solution providers and enterprise customers of these tools (think fashion labels for carbon tracking) will need to carefully understand the landscape of these systems and the involved players in order to develop the best partnerships and go-to-market plans. The public sector will need to grasp this expanse of firms and segments/subsegments, the interrelated components, and the substantial data insights that will be generated to support system performance, to persuade and enforce standards, to set policy and target infrastructure, and to make the right elections in procurements.

Need help bringing your cleantech product to market? Maybe you need some guidance on what tools can be used in your organization? Let us know! Our team of thought-leaders and subject matter experts are happy to assist.

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Cityfi

Cityfi advises cities, corporations, foundations and start-ups to help catalyze change in a global, complex urban landscape. Twitter: @teamcityfi