DETA Consulting
Challenge: To create better boardroom conversations about biomass
OrbViz partnered with energy efficiency company Deta Consulting to transform a technical greenpaper aimed at engineers into a digital conversation that anyone can understand.
We chatted with Deta GM Business Development and Strategy Jeff Smit about why he chose OrbViz to tell the very important story about industry’s impetus to shift from burning coal for energy to burning biomass: a renewable organic material that comes from plants and animals – most commonly wood.
Jeff: “Deta is taking a leading role in helping industry to decarbonise. What industry is saying is that most want to go to biomass. Which is cool: “we’ll be burning wood, and everyone will be happy.” The problem is that no-one has looked at the supply side.”
Solution: Change the way data and information is communicated
Deta worked with Transpower and New Zealand’s South Island electricity distribution boards to understand which energy sources industry use today from a heat perspective, what they want to convert to and what future supply looks like. The output was an in-depth technical greenpaper that engineers would be comfortable reading. However, Deta wanted their findings to reach wider, non-technical audiences to drive change.
Jeff: “What we’re hoping to do is to use the information to inform those industrial users who are looking to convert to something else, to help them make the best decision for themselves in the long term and for New Zealand Inc.”
Implementation: more user-friendly than an engineering report
What Deta discovered is that New Zealand has a surplus of biomass in some regions and a deficit in others. Biomass is an inefficient fuel to transport, often negating the perceived benefits. OrbViz and Deta worked together to collate data in a way that told this story.
Jeff: “The crux of it is, we don’t have enough biomass, so it’s about making better decisions about where we use that biomass. OrbViz is going to allow us to show that data in a different way that will appeal to non- engineers - who are possibly making some of those decisions - in a more user-friendly way than just a dry engineering report.”
Outcomes: better conversations result in better decisions
For Deta, using OrbViz is about creating better conversations that result in better decisions.
Jeff: “We think that a big part of moving forward is educating people at board tables who are making decisions around investment. There’s not much out there that can show information in the way that OrbViz does. I think it’s quite easy and it’s flexible to suit the varying data sets that we have.”