Service: Product Strategy & Innovation

Hacking for a better future

When British Antarctic Survey (BAS) extended a challenge to help its Rothera research station reach net zero using sustainable energy storage, we knew it would demand a multidisciplinary team to look beyond the brief and bring fresh ideas.

We won the challenge with a simple solution to enable low-carbon energy systems at the Antarctic base – and elsewhere in the world.

“What stood out from CDP’s entry was that the solution the team presented was actually very simple but at the same time innovative – something we hadn’t thought about.”

Nopi Exizidou, hackathon judge and Senior Carbon Manager at British Antarctic Survey

The power of a multidisciplinary team

We built our team from various disciplines – electronics engineers, mechanical engineers, physicists, and simulation scientists – and backgrounds, including renewable energy generation, low-carbon buildings, and economic analysis of decarbonization strategies. The combination ensured a broad knowledge of different energy storage principles and technologies. Team members also brought experience in unconnected and indirectly related fields in science, technology, and design – and tapping into this expertise led to unexpected ideas.

Refining the brief – the power of ‘why?’

“It’s easier in an emergency to get parts to the International Space Station than to Rothera. Storms can cut you off for months at a time.”

Hackathon briefing team

Analyzing the wide-ranging brief as a team at once presented two questions: what does an energy storage system need to do, and what exactly does BAS mean by ‘the best energy storage solutions’?

Our rapid analysis of data provided by BAS revealed that most of Rothera’s energy needs were for heat, not electrics. We probed the data to understand the nature of the demand and the valuable services energy was providing. This ‘jobs to be done’ approach of examining the real benefit helps challenge implicit assumptions and uncover other ways of delivering the same benefits.

We decided to focus on a need that amounted to a substantial proportion of the station’s energy demand and offered the potential to examine solutions that hadn’t already been considered – the thermal comfort of those living and working at Rothera.

Three steps to concept creation

Equipped with a honed brief and deep understanding of BAS’s needs, we began a three-step concept creation process:

One, generate as many solutions as possible. Even ideas that seem far-fetched on the surface can function as catalysts to conceiving innovative and workable solutions.

Two, prioritize solutions to fit with brief and success criteria. In the fast-paced context of a hackathon, we rely on our team’s diverse expertise and perspectives to swiftly filter ideas.

Three, conduct rapid research and analysis to prove our chosen solutions could solve BAS’s problems. This basic de-risking ensures bad ideas fail as early as possible and good ideas make it through with the start of a business case to demonstrate their potential.

About the hackathon and BAS

The virtual one-day hackathon was held on December 3, 2021, and run by the University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL) in collaboration with BAS and Cambridge Zero.

BAS challenged nine teams of global innovators to a one-day hackathon to help one of its Antarctic research bases achieve net zero. Teams were asked to address one of three areas of energy: generation, storage, or backup systems.

BAS is a center for polar science and polar operations.

In its own words: “The Polar Regions may be at the ends of the Earth but what happens there affects us all. Understanding how the Earth works, and in particular how it is responding to ever-increasing human pressures, is one of science’s greatest challenges.”