Innovative clean energy technology to meet net zero goals
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Introduction
Envirocrops is a partnership between Crops for Energy, the National Farmers’ Union (NFU) and led by the Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute (AFBI), with Calvium being subcontracted to design and develop the Envirocrops.com web app . Its goal is to revolutionise the biomass crops industry and encourage non-fossil fuel use.
This project is part of the Biomass Feedstocks Innovation Programme, which is funded through the Department for Energy, Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) £1bn Net Zero Innovation Portfolio. The portfolio’s aim is to accelerate the commercialisation of innovative clean energy technologies and processes over the coming decades.
In 2021, Calvium delivered a proof-of-concept mobile web app that enables farmers, land managers and consultants to investigate the suitability, and profitability, of growing biomass crops on different land sites.
As a result of this successful project, Calvium was awarded a three year contract to deliver a market-ready version of the web-based app, called Envirocrops.com.
Envirocrops.com is a comprehensive online web app that serves as a valuable resource for farmers, consultants, landowners, and researchers interested in biomass crops. It provides users with the opportunity to explore and compare suitability scores for growing various biomass crops on different land sites, as well as offering insights into the potential profitability of growing biomass.
Additionally, Envirocrops.com goes beyond data analysis by providing practical advice and best practice guidelines, ensuring that users have access to the knowledge and tools necessary for working with biomass crops.
Where are we now?
The current Alpha version of Envirocrops.com was released in September 2023, with a public Beta release planned for March 2024. Users are providing feedback in order to inform the next phase of the product roadmap; ensuring that Envirocrops.com is the best possible product for its users.
The web app is free to use and enables prospective growers and consumers of biomass crops to compare estimated financial and environmental benefits.
If you are unfamiliar with biomass crops or would simply like to learn more about the industry, playing our Cropper game is a great place to start. You can also take advantage of the best practice guidelines available for free, on Envirocrops.com.
To help inform those that may not be familiar with Biomass crops, Calvium developed Cropper, an interactive STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) game for Envirocrops.com. Cropper was designed to provide a ‘hands-on’ educational resource for biomass farming, where young people step into the shoes of a farmer tasked with producing enough harvest to heat a local school.
Cropper provides a multifaceted learning experience, teaching players about the intricacies of biomass farming through gameplay and real-world scenarios; transforming complex agricultural concepts into an interactive and accessible format.
Cropper helps to raise awareness about the critical role biomass crops can play in achieving a sustainable future. It fosters a deeper understanding of sustainable agriculture – preparing users to address the challenges and opportunities in the evolving field of biomass farming.
The Challenge: create a central source of impartial information
- Biomass crops, such as miscanthus or willow, are low-cost, low-maintenance, and are grown purely to produce energy by combustion. To ensure they are grown efficiently and sustainably, land managers must choose the most appropriate crop to the most suitable site, considering soil, climate, yield and profit. The project aim is to create a decision support web app that a range of people can easily use, such as:
- farmers and landowners interested in growing biomass crops
- people looking to change from their oil and coal boiler, to a biomass boiler
- consultants advising on land use, crop choice and new boilers
- students and researchers looking to learn more.
How Calvium met the challenge to build the system
Proof of concept development
To build a successful system that meets the needs of current and potential users, it is necessary to have its foundations underpinned by deep user understanding. We took a user-centred approach to design and started with a proof of concept to test the UX and UI designs with future users from within the consortium.
Once the feedback had been received, Calvium worked together with the consortia to translate their insights into a set of complex flowcharts and decision trees to predict possible user journeys when using the tool.
Calvium started by exploring how we could design a tool that would accommodate different levels of user knowledge and understanding – whether being used by somebody with no knowledge of biomass crops, a farmer growing arable crops, or a consultant in biomass production.
We also had to design the tool in a way that would keep users engaged throughout their interactions. This meant finding an approach to gathering the data needed by the tool to make its calculations, without asking users too many questions. The more a user has to input into a service, the more laborious they find their experience and the less likely it is that they will use that service again. It was also important that users could pause a session and return to it later – in the same state as when they left.
The Alpha release and beyond…
A critical challenge that we met was to ensure that this complex data was visualised in a clear and easily understandable way. After analysing feedback collected from focus groups using the proof of concept app, we redesigned the UX flow of the application to be dashboard oriented; providing a better user experience for the user and presenting them with the information they need.
The UX/UI continues to be updated based on feedback collected from our External Advisory Group, consortia project members and our growing biomass network.
The complex calculations within Envirocrops.com are made possible by a large data set which includes the information needed to predict how well some different species of tree and crops should grow across Britain. The underlying calculations currently include:
- species of trees and biomass crops – miscanthus, willow, reed canary grass
- how well each crop will grow in a local area considering soil type, exposure and land use, identified by a postcode
- how much land is needed for each crop in each location to reach a certain yield
- time until the yield is delivered.
The current Alpha version of Envirocrops.com is free and available to use, with a public Beta release planned for March 2024.
Keys to success
Trust and support: Calvium’s knowledge of the biomass crops and biomass sector was limited, which meant that the Crops for Energy team had to share their industry understanding with us and be responsive to the designs as they progressed. Equally, our client had no experience of designing and developing technological systems and drew heavily on Calvium’s expertise to inform their thinking. Therefore, mutuality, openness and trust have made this collaboration really work, and created the conditions for the success of Envirocrops.com
Iterate: Naturally, some unforeseen challenges emerged during the early stages of the project. Ensuring an iterative test-and-learn approach helped to solve the majority of these challenges quickly and kept the project moving forward.
Experiment: Whilst the Calvium team are recognised experts in all aspects of software development, working with a new data format and modelling has been difficult at times. However, this is par for the course and rather than concern us, our team enjoys the opportunity to learn and expand our experience and skills.
User research and feedback: Knowing your user group is essential when designing a digital tool. Speaking with intended users before, during and after developing a solution has guided the evolution of the tool. For example, we have gathered insight into the average level of understanding people will have when they come to using the tool, the appropriate amount of industry terminology, and the comfortable quantity of hints and advice. Testing the tool with farmers and energy consultants at each stage has ensured that there is the right type of information within the platform to support everyone.
Accessible interfaces: Accessibility is not a barrier to innovation but an enabler of action. The Calvium team uses the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.1) as a standard, to ensure our products are as accessible as possible for the users.
Next steps
After a successful Alpha release in 2023, Envirocrops.com is now live and in the hands of real users. We have built this innovative clean energy platform with a Content Management System, allowing for easy updates in line with the evolving needs of users and their business.
Calvium looks forward to seeing how users respond to the recent updates made to Envirocrops.com over the coming months and, longer-term, how it contributes to the sustainability agenda; moving energy production away from fossil fuels and towards achieving Net Zero. This is a goal that Calvium cares deeply about and an area in which we will continue to innovate and collaborate with our clients.
Please contact us to discuss how the innovative use of digital technologies could benefit your business or organisation: hello@calvium.com / 0117 226 2000
