Net Zero’s 2050 deadline can be slashed by 15 years if the world’s 100 biggest cities use Urban Digital Twins
World leaders have been offered the tantalising prospect of victory 15 years early in the battle for Net Zero
World leaders have been offered the tantalising prospect of victory 15 years early in the battle for Net Zero – the point when humanity’s excess global CO2 emissions are either eliminated or offset.
Global scientific consensus says Net Zero must be achieved by 2050 to avoid catastrophic climate change, triggering major loss of life and habitat, plus economic disaster, but Cityzenith CEO Michael Jansen told a key international conference:
"Digital Twins are the perfect tool for managing and accelerating energy transition. If we did this in the top 100 cities in the world, we could get to Net Zero globally by 2035...(instead) we are talking about 2050 right now."
Jansen was speaking at the two-day Future Digital Twin conference & expo attended by more than 700 oil, gas and energy professionals from around the globe.
The Cityzenith CEO joined a panel of leading Digital Twin exponents, including Dr Michael Grieves, Executive Director and Chief Scientist of the Digital Twin Institute.
Dr Grieves – widely regarded as ‘the father of the Digital Twin’ – suggested that international deployment of Digital Twins within an over-arching and beneficial virtual ‘metaverse’ mirroring mankind’s physical presence on Earth was still a long way off, with too much ‘siloing’ within industries including oil and gas, and energy.
And while internationally agreed standards for Digital Twin deployment would help, he said this might take too long and be influenced by politics.
He called instead for Digital Twins users to “play nicely” and work towards a common Digital Twin platform and, ultimately, an integrated system of systems.
This chimed with Cityzenith CEO Michael Jansen’s standpoint: his company already has that platform, SmartWorldOS, a software that can integrate and work with the myriad of building design and management software used across construction and other industries.
And Cityzenith has its sights on the biggest decarbonization target: the world’s cities, which UN statistics say consume 78% of global energy and produce 60+% of greenhouse gas emissions yet cover less than 2% of the Earth’s surface.
Furthermore, just 25 mega-cities produce 52% of the world's urban greenhouse gas emissions.
Cityzenith has responded to these damning figures with its ‘Clean Cities – Clean Future’ (CCCF) initiative, deploying SmartWorldOS (SWOS) to reduce operating costs in urban buildings by 35%, boost productivity by 20% and cut emissions by 50-100%.
High profile Cityzenith customers he named at the conference included New York City, Las Vegas, Phoenix, and Los Angeles, where SWOS is being deployed on significant projects that can be scaled elsewhere and ultimately across entire cities and infrastructures such as transportation, energy, and water and waste management – he was confident that Cityzenith would have 100 cities as customers within two years, with 300 the year after.
The Future Digital Twin conference & expo focus was driven by the oil and gas industry’s need to change at pace to maintain energy security – now exacerbated by the Ukrainian conflict – while also driving decarbonisation. The conference conclusion for hydrocarbon companies was clear: incorporate Digital Twins into your strategy or risk being left behind.
Major energy industry players who attended and sent speakers included BP, Chevron, Equinor, ExxonMobil, Petrobras, Shell, and TotalEnergies.
Adam Soroka, MD of conference organizer Cavendish Group International, said afterwards: "It's clear from the open and constructive discussions over the two days that Digital Twins are gaining momentum, and shifting from a nice-to-have to a must-have technology.”
If you want to learn more about this pioneering company, please register here for the Cityzenith webinar:
Urban Digital Twins set to create the first real world Metaverse for the decarbonization of buildings
on Tuesday, April 19, 1:00pm (CT).
Ends
For more information please contact steve.philp@worlddigitalfoundation.com
About Cityzenith
Cityzenith is based in Chicago, with offices in London and New Delhi. The company’s SmartWorldOS Digital Twin platform was created to manage and monitor buildings and infrastructure, energy efficiency, transport, health, and projects across entire cities and urban districts. Cityzenith’s Clean Cities – Clean Future initiative is now working with 10-15 major cities, helping their commercial building owners decarbonize and reduce operating costs, and benefit from carbon offsets/rewards as the world aims to ‘Build Back Better’.
About Michael Jansen – CEO Cityzenith
An impassioned architect, urbanist, and entrepreneur, Michael Jansen studied architecture at Yale and Cambridge and has founded and led high-growth companies in the U.S. and Asia for more than two decades - his previous venture with Sequoia Capital yielded a x17-fold return for its shareholders.
He became CEO at Cityzenith in 2010 and began a personal mission to revolutionize use of data to transform the global built environment. He has been featured by CNN, CNBC, the BBC, plus other world-wide media, and received several awards for his work, including a ‘40 Under 40’ accolade from highly respected industry publication, Building Design + Construction.
In 2014, Michael was honored as a ‘World Cities Summit Young Leader’ in Singapore for his life-long contribution to improving sustainability and the quality of city life and, in 2019, received a Chicago Innovation Award for Cityzenith’s ground-breaking work in the Digital Twin arena.
About Future Digital Twin 2022: Driving the momentum in Digital Twin
The second Future Digital Twin conference and expo, organised by Cavendish Group International, gathered more than 700 oil, gas and energy professionals virtually, drawn from around the globe on 29–30 March 2022.
For further information or to arrange an interview with Michael Jansen of Cityzenith please contact: Steve Philp at steve.philp@worlddigitalfoundation.com
Steve Philp
World Digital Foundation
+447973159065 ext.
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Cityzenith - What is an Urban Digital Twin
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