Daniel Jeavons: Spearheading Digital Transformation in the Energy Sector for a Sustainable Future

There is a changing relationship between energy and technology in recent times. The constant advancements in cutting-edge technologies are improving efficiency and productivity in all kinds of sectors across the world. Just like that, the energy sector has also started reaping the benefits of technologies such as artificial intelligence, data science, IoT, and many more. By making the best out of digitization, the energy sector can put more focus on saving fossils, reducing fuel consumption, as well as promoting a greener future as a means of sustainable development.

Shell is one of the leading companies in the energy sector with a global group of energy and petrochemical branches. It is focused on an innovative approach to building a sustainable energy future for the next generation. Shell has expertise in the exploration and production with the refining of oil and natural gas, along with the manufacturing and marketing of chemicals. It is known for investing in power ranging from low-carbon sources to new fuels for transportation systems, and many more for a better future. 

A Go-to Tech Expert Streamlining Digitization 

Daniel Jeavons is the Vice President for Computational Science and Digital Innovation at Shell. He has played a key role in scaling digital technology across Shell's businesses. Dan has been recognized for his industry-leading work in the area of Digital Transformation. In 2020, he was listed in the Constellation Research #BT150 and Truata's Top 100 Data Visionaries. He led the multi-award-winning Data Science Centre of Excellence since its inception in 2013, growing the team from the ground up to over 180 individuals. The work of the team was most recently recognized as part of Constellation Research's Supernova Awards in the Data to Insights category. Dan was part of the team which developed the Shell.ai brand, which is now externally recognized, and the work of his team and their impact has been regularly publicized in mainstream journals like Forbes, the Wall Street Journal, and the Financial Times. Dan is known for developing effective technology partnerships, for example, with Microsoft, contributing to Shell's strategic alliance, which was announced in 2020 as well as with Baker Hughes and C3.ai leading to the announcement of the Open AI Energy Initiative (OAI) in 2021.

Dan began his career as an Accenture consultant, working in their upstream practice before joining Shell in 2008. Subsequently, he worked in the CIO Office and then in architecture before joining the Shell technology division in 2013. Dan is passionate about digital innovation, data science in all forms, and AI (all recurring themes throughout his career). His portfolio also consists of extensive experience in business process redesign, business transformation, and change. 

Leading towards a Sustainable Future with AI

Just a couple of years ago, Shell had only a few robots in the field, drones were relatively novel, and augmented reality was in its infancy. The team had only a few thousand rows of data in the data lake, and tens of machine learning models in production. Dan has been instrumental in building Shell's AI capability. Today, Shell is embedding AI in every part of the organization to support making existing businesses more effective and efficient. It helps to make the company competitive as it accelerates the development of the next generation of clean energy solutions. It is building up internal capability with a team of ~350 staff in Mathematics, Computational and Data Science disciplines working on AI and digital solutions. Shell has over 100 AI applications in various stages of development and deployment across businesses, the credit goes to Dan's hard work. The team has reached over 2.9 trillion rows of data in the data lake with his ardent help. It is monitoring over 12,000 pieces of equipment using machine learning across assets in upstream, downstream manufacturing, and integrated gas. 

To help achieve this, Shell is standardizing approaches and aligning on common data structures, platforms, tools, and ways of working across businesses. This allows to share best practices and code, and work seamlessly in cross-discipline global teams to develop solutions that can be deployed globally at a rapid pace. The team has brought together a community of professionals to share best practices. The Shell.ai network, a community of practice that shares ideas and knowledge across the entire company, already has more than 5,000 members. An annual awards program offers the network's members incentives to continue to innovate and bring new ideas forward. 

Open AI Energy Initiative (OAI) for the Betterment 

Shell is one of the Founders of the Open AI Energy Initiative (OAI), a first-of-its-kind open ecosystem of AI-based solutions for the energy and associated process industries. By providing a platform, the OAI helps energy businesses access highly relevant, pre-built, and proven solutions that match their specific needs. Using pre-configured machine learning models, operators can deploy AI for domain-specific use cases such as predictive maintenance for valves and critical equipment, making operations more efficient and safer. 

Denting the Energy Sector with Digital Transformation 

Shell, C3 AI, Baker Hughes, and Microsoft are collaborating on the Open AI Energy Initiative (OAI), an ecosystem of AI solutions to help the energy industry's digital transformation. By bringing solutions to the market and encouraging others to do the same, Dan hopes to accelerate the adoption of AI technology across the industry. The OAI provides an open framework for building interoperable solutions such as AI and physics-based models, diagnostic libraries, and services. Anyone can develop a small-scale proof of concept with machine learning that meets a specific local requirement. To make an impact and maintain it at scale, the Shell team needs to develop solutions that can be deployed globally at a rapid pace.

Bestowing Low Carbon Energy Solutions to Customers 

At Shell, Dan and his team are using digitalization and AI to reduce the footprint of operations. For example, leveraging AI helps to improve inventory demand planning, reduce wastage of products and raw materials, and decrease the idle time of heavy machinery. 

AI is also helping Dan by offering low carbon energy solutions to customers, ranging from AI solutions that reduce fuel consumption in ships, smart charging of electric vehicles which optimize renewable energy on the grid, virtual powerplants which connect decentralized energy units from solar and bio energy to hydropower.

Digital technology is also a key enabler for the next generation of clean energy technology. The team leverages computational science for optimizing wind farm design. It is using these same capabilities to design new containers to improve the safe storage and transport of hydrogen, as well as design better cooling of EV batteries.

Strategic Partnership to Fulfill Net-Zero Emission Goals 

Shell has a strategic energy and technology alliance with Microsoft to help drive the transformation of the energy sector, support a net-zero emissions future, and deliver new solutions to customers in support of their own energy transition and carbon reduction ambitions. Shell is supplying Microsoft with renewable energy as part of Dan's strategic alliance launched in 2020. Microsoft is supporting Shell in achieving its carbon goals through platforms and capabilities. Companies are creating and implementing new artificial intelligence solutions to accelerate Shell's digital transformation and energy efficiency.