IIC Journal of Innovation 12th Edition | Page 49

Creating Cities of the Future with Digital Twin Technology Clean Air Act was to establish a federal program to research into techniques for monitoring and controlling air pollution. Significantly enhanced by a series of subsequent amendments, the Clean Air Act evolved from monitoring and controlling to limiting sources of pollution by setting air quality standards and thorough enforcement actions. earth, changing weather patterns and shortening lives. In 2018, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 7 sparked an impassioned international conversation on the urgent need to address climate-change risks to our environment. As a result, cities around the world are seeking to decarbonize their energy systems as quickly as possible. Swift adoption of renewable energy, however, can have unintended consequences. Without a measured approach to the potential network impacts of distributed energy resources (DERs), some early adopters have experienced a number of issues related to the reliability and power quality of renewables. Despite technology advancements in auto emissions, regulations and policies intended to drive compliance, poor air quality continues to affect almost every aspect of our health, from decreased lung capacity in children 2 to inflammatory skin conditions 3 and even physical changes in facial features such as thickening of the skin around the mouth and nose. 4 For example, the amount of energy that can be produced via solar depends on weather conditions and time of day. With this type of variation, the amount of power from renewable sources that enters the electricity grid fluctuates. Since most rooftop solar Photovoltaics (PV) generation is not visible to power grid control rooms, this variation in power production leads to load forecasting errors which, in turn, require additional generation reserves to cover the load Fossil fuel-based energy generation is a major source of air pollution in many communities. The World Health Organization has linked emissions from fossil fuel with 43% of lung cancer deaths and 25% of heart disease deaths. 5 The deleterious effects of air pollution are not limited to our skin, our hearts and our lungs. Air pollution and other byproducts of our continued reliance on fossil fuels 6 is also warming the 2 US National Library of Medicine. March 24 2005. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15356303 3 US National Library of Medicine Dec 29 2015. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5916788/ 4 ResearchGate. May 2014. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/266850972_Air_Pollution_and_the_skin 5 World Economic Forum. June 5 2019. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/06/10-facts-about-air-pollution-on-world- environment-day 6 Pacific Standard. Apr 17 2019. https://psmag.com/environment/air-pollution-is-killing-more-people-than-smoking-and-fossil- fuels-are-largely-to-blame 7 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Oct 2018. https://report.ipcc.ch/sr15/pdf/sr15_spm_final.pdf - 44 - November 2019