Guest: Antonello Monti (LinkedIn)
Organization: LF Energy (LinkedIn, Twitter)

In this episode of TFiR: T3M, Swapnil Bhartiya sits down with Antonello Monti, who serves at the Technical Advisory Council (TAC) Chair for LF Energy, to talk about the global market trends he is seeing, particularly in terms of cost cutting and cost efficiency, and how LF Energy is making headway with its projects this year.

Current trends in the market:

• Companies and private people are more energy conscious, i.e., they are monitoring and becoming more aware of energy consumption.
• Due to the changing geo-political situation, there is a push towards self-consumption and self-generation, which translates to more installations and the growth of renewables.

How LF Energy is helping industry becoming more cost efficient: 

• Software and hardware open specifications for a new generation of smart meters with added services such as monitoring.
• Carbon data specification to be able to quantify and track carbon emissions from energy production and consumption.

Monti says efficiency is a tricky topic. An organization may have increased the efficiency of internal processes, but that doesn’t mean its overall efficiency has improved. In today’s context, energy efficiency includes storing energy, making better use of local resources, and incorporating renewables.

Lead by example: He cites examples of his own university (RWTH Aachen University) that has been establishing its internal green funding to reinvest in projects like rooftop solar panels to become more energy independent.

To be energy efficient and cost efficient, companies need to:

• Educate their entire staff (not just the tech-savvy ones) and get them engaged about energy and sustainability.
• Encourage regulators to facilitate the use of smart energy solutions.
• Invest more in software, and particularly open-source software.
• Invest in renewables and green projects as part of their corporate responsibility.

This summary was written by Camille Gregory.