Whether we like it or not, fossil fuels power the world. From the polyester clothes we wear to the plastic furniture and packages we order, to the shampoos we consume, to the oil in our cars, we will find fossil fuel-derived products everywhere in our lives.
Climate Action advocates often talk about clean-tech and a green economy, but today's global economy is heavily dependent on fossil fuels.
And each aspect of the global oil economy is contributing to the 51 billion tonnes of CO2 added to the atmosphere every year.
Can we afford to talk about net-zero targets while ignoring the real directional shift required to actually reach net-zero?
Lessons from the IT Boom
A shift from the status quo would require the same level of innovation and ecosystem backing to go into climate tech that we have seen for the internet, software and technology economy over the last 30-40 years.
Global-Tech now makes 15.5% of the global GDP, just above the Oil Economy at 12%. The resulting digital economy has almost doubled in size since 2000.
A powerful by-product of the internet and technology boom has been the abundance of data generated. More than 100 TB of satellite data alone is generated per day (DCF) and with less than 1% of the world's data analyzed, a whole new frontier of possibilities has opened up.
Jamnagar Refinery, India's pride
Though India is not home to large crude oil resources, it has marked its place in the oil economy via its refining capabilities. The Jamnagar refinery, set up by Reliance Industries in Gujarat was commissioned in 1999, 20 years prior to the inception of Blue Sky and is currently the world's largest refinery. With data being the new oil, our vision is to build the world's largest Geospatial Data Refinery.
The challenges in the data value chain do not lie in the exploration, generation and collection of data, rather the refining and distribution capabilities. Further, as seen in the case of Jamnagar, the downstream space economy is potentially much more valuable than upstream.
Over the last 5 years, there have been significant developments in cloud-computing and AI. The Indian ecosystem has an abundance of young tech talent; which gives an India-origin company a great chance to leverage the advancement in the tech infrastructure and succeed in the downstream space sector.
The Upside-Down
Drawing lessons from the IT boom and India's success with the Jamnagar refinery, Blue Sky is taking a spin on the model oil refinery to build a geospatial data refinery, focusing on sustainability and climate action.
Our thesis is that everyone will interact with Blue Sky datasets everywhere in their life from retail product pricing to investment decisions to public policy to news reporting as climate-tech takes center stage and environmental data powers the world.
