AI-powered predictive emissions monitoring systems

Lisa Raitt: Welcome to The Sustainability Agenda, a podcast series focused on the evolving complexities of the sustainability landscape. I’m your host, Lisa Raitt. Please join me as we explore today’s most pressing issues with special guests that will give you some new perspective and help you make sense of what really matters.

Ling Bai: But the first question is what’s the benchmark? How do we know? How much are we needing first? So this is basically a benchmarking tool that’s advising the companies as the first step, how much you are really emitting.

Lisa Raitt: Welcome to our multi-part series, profiling female entrepreneurs enabling Canada’s energy transition. Our guests in this series represent innovation led clean energy start-ups incubated through the University of Calgary’s Energy Transition Centre. CIBC fosters the energy transition ecosystem through strategic investments in academia, including the University of Calgary, to enable a more inclusive and sustainable economy. And today I’d like to introduce Ling Bai, Managing Partner of VL Energy, a Canadian environmental consulting company. Now, Ling has spent many years working in environmental regulatory compliance and is also currently a tech start-up advisory board member with Innovate Calgary. On today’s episode, we’re going to discuss a first of its kind artificial intelligence powered predictive emissions monitoring systems called PEMS and how it helps companies achieve cost efficiency, regulatory compliance and sustainability. All things that companies are striving to get their hands around these days. Good afternoon, Ling. So nice to see you and thanks very much for being on The Sustainability Agenda.

Ling Bai: Good afternoon, Lisa. I’m so honoured and thrilled to join the conversation today. Thank you.

Lisa Raitt: Let’s just start from the beginning. Can you describe how you came up with the idea for VL Energy?

Ling Bai: Yeah, VL Energy, we started back in the year of 2014, so it has been about nine years now. It was born out of a combination of market research, identification of the market gaps and the challenges in the sustainability energy sector. Of course, as well as the founders expertise and innovative thinking. So we are trying to provide a unique and customized solution to address the gaps or the needs from the sustainability market through strategy building, consulting and innovative technology.

Lisa Raitt: So what gap did you see that needed to be filled?

Ling Bai: It’s the sustainability gap in our industry, so which is our topic today, actually, the energy transition that’s needed for greenhouse gas. You know, the methane reduction everybody is talking about. This is a hot topic, but it’s still a gap, like lots of technologies are still at an early stage. And how do we really link, for example, the academia to the industry? How do we resolve or accelerate the gaps to be filled in the industry? So that’s where I see the gaps.

Lisa Raitt: So let’s talk about PEMS specifically right now. Everyone’s going to want to know, Okay, well, artificial intelligence sounds really interesting and it is cutting edge and I definitely want to know how I’m going to deal with emissions that I have. But you say that it’s going to help companies achieve cost efficiency and regulatory compliance and sustainability. So can you tell us how PEMS can help companies?

Ling Bai: Absolutely. So the tool helps a company, like I mentioned, the cost efficiency with a cost reduction of about 70%. Regulatory compliance is relating to the current regulatory requirement of the uptime of the unit. Also the sustainability by providing accurate real time predictive monitoring that’s helping optimize the operations.

Lisa Raitt: Okay. So somebody would be able to utilize this tool and see where emissions was going and then they could make some kind of abatement in order to change the trajectory on the emissions. Is that about it?

Ling Bai: Absolutely. So the current challenge in the industry right now is to continuously monitor emissions for multi-gas. So, for example, my thing is a hot topic and people are talking about emissions and there are different emissions and different pollutants and lots of people are working on strategies. We are as well. But the first question is what’s the benchmark? How do we know? How much are we emitting first? So this is basically a benchmarking tool that’s advising the companies as the first step. How much you are really emitting by various of the seasonal change and operation scenarios change everything. So on top of that, as we mentioned, because it’s a predictive emission monitoring system using machine learning AI, we are able to understand or predict or doing some preventive response before any emergency or unplanned event happening. That’s the functionality relating to greenhouse gas reduction. So go back to what you just commented, Lisa, regarding to the abatement. Absolutely. If you don’t know the benchmark, how are we going to calculate the abatement? How are we going to generate carbon credits for the client and how are we going to advise the strategies? Yeah, definitely linking back to what you just commented.

Lisa Raitt: And is your tool prescriptive as to a certain sector or it’s basically wherever you see emissions, PEMS can fit in?

Ling Bai: You know, it can be applied to different sectors for sure, but I see a huge potential in the energy sector as we are in the right timing for the energy transition. And this is, you know, I’m learning from my clients every single day and my client wanted to try out a new application detecting the leakage and also the efficiency on CCUS. So I see our tool can be a huge impact in the energy transition for different technologies.

Lisa Raitt: That’s really cool. Okay, so now let’s talk about being a young female entrepreneur from science, which is not your normal way to become an entrepreneur. What has been your biggest challenge so far?

Ling Bai: It’s a combination depending on the timing stages for the companies as well. So for example, at the beginning it’s the financial challenge and later on it’s the team building who are the good fit and what’s the corporate environment, what’s our vision and stuff? I would say as an entrepreneur, as I mentioned, you know, it’s a combination of challenges, including the fund and the market expansion, the innovation, the operation sales and marketing, everything. So we’ve been expanding really well and different challenges in different stages for sure.

Lisa Raitt: Yeah, it’s true. What do you need to scale up your business?

Ling Bai: So at current stage, for example, is definitely the market expansion, right? So we’ve got lots of attractions, which is very good to see. It’s a really good timing. You know, to generate sales is not a single factor, right? So we totally understand. So this perfect timing, I really think the energy transition and in Canada right now it’s never better timing to do so. So I see a really good future here.

Lisa Raitt: And you’ve learned so much. You’ve become a tech start-up advisor yourself. So what is the most important advice you think you can give to early stage companies?

Ling Bai: I’m so honoured to be a tech start-up advisor in Calgary. So we are actually in the Energy Transition Centre. Our office is located here, so I’m currently advising tech start-ups to resolve the real problem, build a strong team. Having a very clear business plan so you can share with your potential customers and everybody else. Validate your market, right? So it’s a combination of everything, but the most important thing to start, I see lots of, you know, including myself, we all have failures and lessons and learns. I think the most important thing I’m advising the teams is, first of all, a great idea. You have to have a market fit. The market fit is not only whoever is needing this kind of technology or services or product, but also is it the right timing? Is it the right tool for the current market? Yeah, different stages for sure. That’s the most important thing I realized is for early start-up.

Lisa Raitt: Okay, so speaking of timing, one last question then. You’re very excited about the potential of energy transition. I can tell from the way you’re talking to me. So can you think about 12 to 14 months into the future, where do you see the clean energy sector then?

Ling Bai: Absolutely. As I mentioned, it’s never the best timing. I see an increase of the awareness and adoption for clean energy technologies, and it’s good timing for us starting, you know, the recent years to contribute to the impacts of fuel consumption and reducing our pollution and creating new economy opportunities. I see that where are we going for the energy transition.

Lisa Raitt: So it’s a good time to be in the clean energy sector?

Ling Bai: Absolutely. That’s what we needed.

Lisa Raitt: Especially if you’re young. Yeah, that’s what we need. I agree. Well, thank you, Ling. I appreciate your time today. I really appreciate you sharing with us everything about VL Energy and I’m looking forward to seeing applications in your great success. So thanks very much for being here on The Sustainability Agenda.

Ling Bai: Thank you very much, Lisa. My pleasure.

Lisa Raitt: Please join us next time as we tackle some of sustainability’s biggest questions, providing different perspectives to help you move forward. I’m your host, Lisa Raitt, and this is The Sustainability Agenda.

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