We are facing a climate crisis, and a rapidly closing window of opportunity in which to address it.
After all there were people in the room that in their own fields were already working very hard on these issues and had deep insight into it..Forming new connections across a broad sweep of the whole ecosystems of solvent use in Pharmaceutical and Agrochemical manufacture seemed to create some new insights, clarity and catalyse future collaborations.. What is the solvent dilemma?.
Solvents are used in large quantities in chemistry-based processing, their release to the atmosphere is climatically impactful, their waste streams are environmentally toxic, they represent a significant cost and risk in terms of treatment and regulation.There is a significant problem and no clear single path to addressing it.Some progress can be made intra-company, other parts require innovation in the supply and waste chains.
Technological solutions need regulatory change, and other parts will need cross-sector collaboration.. To address the problem requires significant investment in capital and resources.In short, a complex problem and therefore there are dilemmas.
Feedback from the participants demonstrated that the problem is seen as a priority within their business/sector.
This is not ubiquitous, and, in some sectors, there is a lack of market demand and economic momentum..However, the fact remained that every time they opened a new conversation, a new dimension and further complexity was revealed.. Sharp says this is why the ideas behind the National Digital Twin are necessary, because although we have lots of very specialised and efficient systems for sharing information, in order to achieve the next level of efficiency and public benefit, we need to start sharing information between systems.
While we’re very optimised to keep water off the roads, we don’t really understand other aspects, such as whether a drainage ditch should be built to go left or right at a particular junction.The information exists, we just need to find different ways of interpreting between it.. Sharp says that digitising planning is very much a use case of the National Digital Twin programme because people can see the value in it and therefore have the appetite to address it.
She highlights that we’re currently at the very early stages of connecting digital twins and we need to choose projects which will move us forward, picking the low hanging fruit.She cautions that we should be careful not to codify or entrench any particular positions that will be preventative in the future.