Amidst a world wave of company pledges to decarbonize or attain net-zero emissions, a system for verifying precise greenhouse fuel reductions has by no means been extra necessary. Context Labs, based by former MIT Sloan Fellow and serial entrepreneur Dan Harple SM ’13, is rising to satisfy that problem with an analytics platform that brings extra transparency to emissions knowledge.
The corporate’s platform provides context to knowledge from sources like tools sensors and satellites, gives third-party verification, and data all that info on a blockchain. Context Labs additionally gives an interactive view of emissions throughout each facet of an organization’s operations, permitting leaders to pinpoint the dirtiest components of their enterprise.
“There’s an outdated adage: Except you measure one thing, you possibly can’t change it,” says Harple, who’s the agency’s CEO. “I consider what we’re doing as an AI-driven digital lens into what’s occurring throughout organizations. Our purpose is to assist the planet get higher, quicker.”
Context Labs is already working with among the largest power corporations on the planet — together with EQT, Williams Firms, and Coterra Vitality — to confirm emissions reductions. A partnership with Microsoft, introduced ultimately 12 months’s COP28 United Nations local weather summit, permits any group on Microsoft’s Azure cloud to combine their sensor knowledge into Context Lab’s platform to get a granular view of their environmental influence.
Harple says the progress permits extra knowledgeable sustainability initiatives at scale. He additionally sees the work as a option to fight overly obscure statements about sustainable practices that don’t result in precise emissions reductions, or what’s often called “greenwashing.”
“Simply producing knowledge isn’t ok, and our clients understand that, as a result of they know even when they’ve good intentions to scale back emissions, nobody goes to consider them,” Harple says. “A technique to consider our platform is as antigreenwashing insurance coverage, as a result of should you get attacked in your emissions, we unbundle the info prefer it’s in shrink-wrap and roll it again by means of time on the blockchain. You may click on on it and see precisely the place and the way it was measured, monitored, timestamped, its serial quantity, all the things. It’s actually the gold normal of proof.”
An unconventional grasp’s
Harple got here to MIT as a serial founder whose corporations had pioneered a number of foundational web applied sciences, together with real-time video streaming expertise nonetheless utilized in functions like Zoom and Netflix, in addition to among the core expertise for the favored Chinese language microblogging web site Weibo.
Harple’s introduction to MIT began with a paper he wrote for his enterprise capital contacts within the U.S. to make the case for funding within the Netherlands, the place he was dwelling together with his household. The paper caught the eye of MIT Professor Stuart Madnick, the John Norris Maguire Professor of Data Know-how on the MIT Sloan College of Administration, who steered Harple come to MIT as a Sloan Fellow to additional develop his concepts about what makes a robust innovation ecosystem.
Having efficiently based and exited a number of corporations, Harple was not a typical MIT scholar when he started the Sloan Fellows program in 2011. At one level, he held a summit at MIT for a gaggle of main Dutch entrepreneurs and authorities officers that included excursions of main labs and a gathering with former MIT President L. Rafael Reif.
“Everybody was tremendous enamored with MIT, and that kicked off what turned a course that I began at MIT referred to as REAL, Regional Entrepreneurial Acceleration Lab,” Harple says. REAL was ultimately absorbed by what’s now REAP — the Regional Entrepreneurship Acceleration Program, which has labored with communities all over the world.
Harple describes REAL as a framework automobile to place his theories on supporting innovation into motion. Over his time at MIT, which additionally included collaborating with the Media Lab, he systematized these theories into what he calls pentalytics, which is a option to measure and predict the resilience of innovation ecosystems.
“My sense was MIT needs to be analytical and data-driven,” Harple says. “The thesis I wrote was a framework for AI-driven community graph analytics. So, you possibly can mannequin issues utilizing analytics, and you should use AI to do predictive analytics to see the place the innovation ecosystem goes to thrive.”
As soon as Harple’s pentalytics idea was established, he needed to place it to the take a look at with an organization. His preliminary thought for Context Labs was to construct a verification platform to fight pretend information, deepfakes, and different misinformation on the web. Round 2018, Harple met local weather investor Jeremy Grantham, who he says helped him understand crucial knowledge are concerning the planet. Harple started to consider that U.S. Environmental Safety Company (EPA) emissions estimates for issues like driving a automotive or working an oil rig have been simply that — estimates — and left room for enchancment.
“Our method was very MIT-ish,” Harple says. “We stated, ‘Let’s, measure it and let’s monitor it, after which let’s contextualize that knowledge so you possibly can by no means return and say they faked it. I feel there’s a whole lot of fakery that’s occurred, and that’s why the voluntary carbon markets cratered within the final 12 months. Our view is that they cratered as a result of the info wasn’t empirical sufficient.”
Context Labs’ answer begins with a expertise platform it calls Immutably that repeatedly combines disparate knowledge streams, encrypts that info, and data it on a blockchain. Immutably additionally verifies the data with a number of third events. (Context Labs has partnered with the worldwide accounting agency KPMG.)
On high of Immutably, Context Labs has constructed functions, together with a product referred to as Decarbonization-as-a-Service (DaaS), which makes use of Immutably’s knowledge to offer corporations a digital twin of their total operations. Clients can use DaaS to discover the emissions of their belongings and create a verification or certificates of the quantified carbon depth of their merchandise.
Placing emissions knowledge into context
Context Labs is working with oil and fuel corporations, utilities, knowledge facilities, and enormous industrial operators, some utilizing the platform to research greater than 3 billion knowledge factors every day. As an example, EQT, the most important pure fuel producer within the U.S., makes use of Context Labs to confirm the carbon depth of its operational belongings and refine its general GHG emissions mitigation technique. Different clients embody the nonprofits Rocky Mountain Institute and the Environmental Protection Fund.
“I typically get requested how massive the overall addressable market is,” Harple says. “My view is it’s the most important market in historical past. Why? As a result of each nation wants a decarbonization plan, together with instrumentation and a digital platform to execute, as does each firm.”
With its headquarters in Kendall Sq. in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Context Labs can be serving as a take a look at for Harple’s pentalytics idea for innovation ecosystems. It additionally has operations in Houston and Amsterdam.
“This firm is a dwelling lab for pentalytics,” Harple says. “I consider Kendall Sq. 1.0 was manufacturing facility buildings, Kendall Sq. 2.0 is biotech, and Kendall Sq. 3.0 will likely be local weather tech.”
