The founding vision for Wattwatchers Digital Energy, dating back more than a decade, has been to empower energy customers with real-time data about their electricity use. Supporting the transition to a clean, fair, reliable and affordable ‘New Energy’ system is embedded in our business model and technology roadmap. Climate action is in our hearts as well as our solutions.
CEO UPDATE: GAVIN DIETZ
As a small energy technology company now scaling up in our home country Australia, and internationally, Wattwatchers has both negative and positive impacts on the environment, society and the economy.
We aim to ensure this impact is ‘net positive’.
Inevitable negatives – such as our use of physical resources to make solutions, waste from our products during manufacturing, distribution and post-life stages, and carbon emissions linked to our activities – are minimised when they cannot be eliminated.
On the positive side, Wattwatchers solutions are designed to enable and accelerate the evolving transition to a ‘New Energy’ system that is clean, fair, reliable and affordable for all.
Beneficial use cases
The main use cases for Wattwatchers solutions have their own beneficial impacts. These include energy efficiency, data-driven empowerment of customers, optimisation of household and business investments in solar, sustainability-related measurement and verification, industrial productivity, and more.
The daily impact challenge for our business is to make sure that the net of our contribution to these predominantly ‘good things’ always outweighs any ‘bad things’ that are caused by our operations and products.
Potential impacts, both positive and negative, are not confined to environmental matters. For example, contemporary societal and legal expectations in regard to consumer data rights pose impact challenges for how data is gathered, hosted, analysed and shared.
UN Sustainable Development Goals
To assist in guiding Wattwatchers’ further growth, we’ve increasingly been drawn to the United Nations’ Agenda 2030 Decade of Action, and its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) recognising the interconnectedness of prosperous business, a thriving society and a healthy environment.
Our initial step in framing our first Impact Statement has been to map our company, products and activities against the 17 SDGs, identifying those most relevant to what we do. Through this mapping and alignment process, we identified this list of six:
Our solutions are purpose-designed to enable the ongoing clean energy transition in Australia and globally.
We’re an aggressive innovator with an expanding commitment to research and development across hardware, firmware and software.
Granular energy data is a vital ingredient to engage, educate and empower consumers and communities.
Our device designs are ultra-compact compared with traditional metering; and we minimise packaging, with an emphasis on lightweight recyclable cardboard.
Our solutions help to mitigate the impact of carbon-intensive electricity through efficiency and waste elimination, and support adaptation through optimising solar, electric vehicle use and other ‘New Energy’ technologies.
Our core business model is partner-friendly including 40-plus integrations with our REST API. which sits at the heart of our digital energy platform.
We know there’s a lot more to be done
Our Impact Statement 2021, which you can read at Wattwatchers Impact Statement 2021, further explores what we are doing already to make a net positive contribution to sustainability.
Taking this important first step of self-assessing Wattwatchers against the SDGs has the strong support of the whole Wattwatchers team, including our Board of Directors.
But we all know there is a lot more to be done. Our ongoing commitment is to improve each year, ensuring that our intention to be net positive is matched by the outcomes.
Wattwatchers Impact Statement 2021
Gavin Dietz is CEO of Wattwatchers Digital Energy
