Data and Artificial Intelligence can help assess and mitigate the risks of climate change for organizations to transform sustainably.
An engineer by training with a background in consulting, Gwendal Bihan is convinced that new technologies can have an impact in the service of the common good. This is the reason forAxionablewhich he co-founded and of which he is president.
What does Axionable offer?
Gwendal Bihan: Axionable helps companies to accelerate their sustainable trajectory, i.e. to thoroughly review their business model in a logic of mitigation through decarbonization, and in a logic of adaptation through their resilience to climate risks . We also help them identify new opportunities for sustainable value. To respond to these issues, new technologies, in particular data and artificial intelligence, are formidable allies.
UK: It is true that we are facing a certain paradox: artificial intelligence is proving to be extremely useful, but also presents unsustainable risks, whether in terms of excesses or energy consumption, among others. Fortunately, in addition to all the literature that exists on the subject, such as the Villani report for example, the European Commission is working on a specific regulation, the “AI Act”, with a risk-based approach and the implementation of upstream controls in order to standardize good practices. Our AI ADM methodology, to Axionable Delivery Methodwas also the first to be certified, labeled and aligned with this future regulation.
Why will your start-up change the world?
UK: We are all seeing more and more, and yet it was announced for many years by the IPCC, that extreme climatic events are more and more frequent and intense. Scientific models therefore need precise data to better anticipate them, understand the impacts they can have for a company, enable them to anticipate and take the right decisions today. In terms of decarbonization, the calculations are sometimes difficult, especially for companies with diverse upstream suppliers and many downstream customers. However, these represent 80 to 90% of an organization’s carbon footprint. This requires reliable data to be able to analyze, compare and put them into perspective. This is the goal that Axionable has set itself: to provide companies with services and solutions to improve speed, reliability and efficiency in these areas.
UK: I co-founded Axionable 6 years ago with a smooth start since we each already had a client portfolio and complementary skills. This allowed us to experience rapid acceleration in our early days and above all to maintain our financial independence, a model that is close to our hearts.
What are the next steps ?
UK: Our ambition is to maintain our leadership in our three specialties, AI and Data for decarbonization, AI and Data for climate resilience and trusted AI. We have the advantage of experience, of having a little perspective on the subject and of having been the first to be certified on the issue. We will therefore continue to innovate in R&D and in training to change scale in the years to come. From around fifty employees at present, we should be more than one hundred within two to three years. The growing regulatory pressure on companies is also a good thing for accelerating the subject and should, in turn, offer us good growth prospects.
What will the world look like in 2050?
UK: In all transparency, even if I am proud of what we do, I am well aware that I am only a drop in the bucket in this ocean of challenges. The more we work on these questions, the more we realize that the alarming future climate scenarios are no longer uncertain, but a reality. It’s a fact: a temperature increase of 2 to 4 degrees will lead to the extreme phenomena that have unfortunately been predicted for many years. But today there is no real change observed, while we need a bifurcation, an urgent scaling up at European and global level.
If you were Prime Minister, what flagship measure would you put in place?
UK: I will implement the French Economic Transformation Plan (PTEF) proposed by the ShiftProject. It covers three fields of application, starting with training to inform public debates and fight against fake news. It is also a question of setting up a long-term planning, because if France can be proud of its infrastructures, we navigate with blows of bar on the right or on the left, and therefore, it is necessary to avoid for the good of the Planet that a new government unravels what the previous one did. It also takes a certain courage: really changing scale and having a runaway effect inevitably lead to certain constraints and generate discontent. It is therefore necessary to accompany them.
By the way, which topic of Futura fascinated you?
UK: The one on melting permafrost. This phenomenon fascinates me and frightens me at the same time, and illustrates the complexity of the phenomena linked to climate change, with its share of discoveries and theories which today form a consensus, but also elements which remain to be explained, discovered, clarified. … This proves the importance of science to better understand the impacts of climate change, and the role that Futura and other scientific media have in popularizing these phenomena among the general public.