I enrolled in a Lindy Hop class. This version of swing dance, born out of the Harlem Renaissance, is extremely popular here. In fact, I heard that the reigning Lindy Hop world champions are from Sweden! I'm just in the beginners class. But it's a good reminder that you never know where you might meet interesting people. I was talking to a classmate about my time in Stockholm researching active transportation. Another classmate, named Anton, chimed in to tell me about his work building a digital twin, of Stockholm. Anton works for RISE (Research Institutes of Sweden) where he researches sustainable ways to improve transportation in the city. A digital twin offers a chance to test solutions without the cost of actually building them, on the ground. While we were chatting, Anton mentioned that he would be showing off his work at the Stockholm Tech Live Smart City Expo, the following week. My colleague Matt and I thought this was a great excuse for a field trip!
We took a multimodal journey (with walking, bike share and train), to arrive in Kista, a technology focused area of Stockholm. In fact, the companies located here are investing in several green buildings and lots of dense multi-family housing, over the next several years. When we found my friend Anton, he told us more about his work with RISE, a state run research institute. Tools like the digital twin help them build low-cost prototypes to present ideas to the municipalities in more tactile ways. When we "toured" the digital twin, we saw how movements between buildings of people, cars and even bird could be modeled. We also took a closer look inside Anton's office, where he and his colleagues are exploring how to waste less energy, while many of his colleagues are still working from home. The digital twin could model more optimal usage of the space and turn utilities on and off, for the areas that were in use.
Last semester, I took a class focused on renewable fuels. We looked into the viability of hydrogen fuel cells. Though it has potential, the investments in Electric Vehicles for personal cars, seem to have mostly won out, in the US. However, this presenter thought hydrogen still has a lot of potential uses for trains, especially those without catenary wires and no access to electricity. In that case, hydrogen might be more cost efficient. He also discussed hydrogen's potential for aviation and ocean vessels.
In Sweden, hydrogen and electric power are also eliminating the need for coal in the steel manufacturing process. This results in a huge reduction of CO2 emissions. For the steel plant in Sweden's north, steel manufacturing accounts for 10% of Sweden's CO2 emissions. So, this new "Green Steel" has a lot of potential, not to mention being quite lucrative for Sweden, as the state owns the mining company. Read more here and here.
Matt and I ended our field trip with a nice souvenir beer made by robots. Well, not exactly. But we met a company that used Artificial Intelligence to analyze a brewer's successful recipes and brewing data. They then crunched the numbers to make an "ideal" batch of beer. It wasn't my favorite style. But it was still fun to drink, I guess...
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