OUR IMPACT ON THE WORLD AROUND US
How HYDROGRID is improving our climate and its impact on the UN’s SDGs
WHAT ARE SDGs?
The United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals, SDGs for short, are “a shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and into the future”. With 17 goals across various areas, the UN and its member states implemented a framework to improve health and education, reduce inequality, and spur economic growth, while also tackling climate change and working to preserve our oceans and forests. These goals are not just a guideline for countries, but for individuals and companies alike.
We at HYDROGRID are actively working towards this improvement and have linked some of our corporate goals to our selected SDGs.
HYDROGRID’S IMPACT
We strive not only to make hydropower more efficient, but to save harmful CO2 emissions in the process through displacing energy produced from fossile fuels. In addition, we help hydropower operators to keep their plants from interfering too much with their environments – from introducing environmental- and operational restrictions to safety measures for fish to safely pass through power plants.
Our impact doesn’t end with our innovative software solution, but also includes our management principles and our company in its entirety. We are proud to be an inclusive, empowering, and international company, tackling climate change and making sure to reinvest our profits into making our earth a better place for generations to come.
HYDROGRID’s IMPACT ON SDGs AT A GLANCE
Impacting 6 different SDGs with our core processes, values, and our product
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Affordable and Clean Energy
Our mission is to increase the footprint of renewable energy by optimizing and thus increasing the production volume of existing hydropower plants. Our digital solution provides a comprehensive approach, which not only makes every drop in hydropower count, but it even makes the small power producers competitive on the electricity markets, which allows for transparent, fair, and affordable prices. In addition to making every drop count - such as avoiding dam spills, or correctly predicting rainfall - our solution allows us to strategically plan production ahead of time, depending on the weather predictions and according to market fluctuations. This enables hydropower producers to decide when it is best to tap into the water reservoirs – hydropower reservoirs become a green battery, which can be utilized to their full potential. In 2019 HYDROGRID was able to contribute to approximately 8.138 tons of CO2 savings. According to Climate-KIC Climate Impact Forecast, each MW of installed hydropower capacity equals 82.951 kg of CO2 emission savings.
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Gender Equality
At HYDROGRID we support gender equality and give equal opportunity to our team members regardless of their gender. We are one of the first female-led companies in a predominantly male industry, which includes the software, hydropower, and energy trade sector. Additionally, our executive team is made up of two-thirds of women. Our founder and CEO was one of the finalists in the «Female Founders Award 2020» by Handelsblatt, Germany. Through her activities with her Alma Mater TU WIEN and numerous public events, our CEO promotes STEM fields to women.
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Clean Water and sanitation
While we value water as an energy resource that provides low CO2 emission power generation, our product also allows our clients to manage their water resources according to the environmental needs of the communities surrounding the power plant – be it for minimum water discharge levels for fishing, downstream public water consumption, or upstream recreational use, to name a few. We are aware that water is a crucial component of our daily lives. That is why, in addition to our corporate product, we dedicate a portion of our profits to provide clean water to the poorest 10% of the world population.
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Decent work and economic growth
We are an inclusive workplace, with more than half of the team members currently coming from different countries. We value enthusiasm and interest over the nationality of our team members. Additionally, we continuously offer internships to students or recent graduates from around the world, who want to learn more about the renewable energy sector and how to increase its positive impact on the environment by optimizing it. With our goal of optimizing existing hydropower production, we are also bringing a centuries-old industry into the 21st century. Our solution combines basic hardware technology with software – bringing the best of two economies together and allowing for the healthy and sustainable economic and industrial development of this sector.
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Climate Action
Our mission is to create a more sustainable and more efficient approach to energy generation from renewable energy assets such as hydropower. So far, HYDROGRID had a carbon negative impact of 414.8 tons per 5 MW plant which is equivalent to planting 18.852 trees. The projected avoided climate impact of implementing HYDROGRID in 4% of global hydropower plants, is roughly equal to the total climate impact of all current global hydropower. Source: Climate-KIC Climate Impact Forecast
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Life on land
At HYDROGRID we value the biodiversity and ecosystems around us. In recent years, hydropower producers have been faced with increasing environmental restrictions and regulations such as environmental flows and fish passages, thus ensuring a respectful attitude to both life on land and life in water. HYDROGRID helps hydropower producers manage these restrictions in an optimal way, thus enabling them to increase their production and indirectly contributing to the prosperity of the ecosystem. Additionally, we prefer to not send out Christmas cards to our clients, shareholders, and cooperation partners, but rather contribute to one of the main organizations supporting wildlife and rainforest preservation instead.
HOW HYDROGRID REDUCES CO2 EMISSIONS
Displacing fossile fuels by increasing energy production from renewable energy
Because electricity production from hydropower comes with one of the lowest CO2 emissions of all fuel types, and especially significantly lower than from fossile fuels, our purpose at HYDROGRID is to increase the amount of electricity produced by hydropower, specifically from existing hydropower infrastructure and assets. HYDROGRID achieves that by optimizing the power production at existing hydropower plants – enabling production and dispatch to reach its full potential with regards to the technical, hydrological, and market conditions. With hydropower being the biggest source of renewable energy, it also has the greatest potential of increasing the efficiency of existing power plants.
In the past 4 years, HYDROGRID has on average increased the electricity generation of its clients by 7.1%. HYDROGRID’s clients therefore have -over the past four years, by using our optimization solution – avoided feeding the electric grid with electricity produced from fossil fuels, thus offsetting the equivalent of 51.885 tons of CO2; this amount is proportionate to the annual climate impact of electricity used by 24 000 households.
Based on our current expansion plans, our customers, and their power plants, as well as the future potential of an improved forecasting process that further reduces spill for our managed power plants, we predict that HYDROGRID Insight will save more than 139kt of CO2 emissions per year starting 2023. This is equivalent to 97% of the CO2 emissions caused by global hydropower, which means that from 2023 onwards, HYDROGRID Insight will transform hydropower into a zero-carbon source of energy.