It’s clear that, if deployed at scale, technology could be a gamechanger in accelerating the world’s transition to net-zero emissions. So, why aren’t more companies doing this? Lisa Wee, global head of sustainability at industrial software provider Aveva, points to the pace of digitalisation. “We still haven’t seen digitalisation done successfully at scale by most companies. In fact, 70% of industries haven’t yet managed this,” she said. “Until you have that foundation in place, you’re jumping ahead by talking about the benefits of AI or machine learning, because the quality of foundational data is so important.”
Wee pointed out that over 50% of industrial data in the world was created in just the last two years. “Once you have good foundational data and a standardised way of bringing it together [across plants or functions], you can deploy analytics on top of it. You can find out, for example, that paint drying might be your most energy intensive process,” she said.
Toyota’s use of software to monitor energy consumption data, for instance, enabled it to reduce emissions by over 30% and carbon impact by 28%, Wee noted.
Smart, liveable cities
The impact is not just at the factory level. In Maharashtra, the Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Corporation (PCMC) reduced water loss by 25%, traffic congestion at critical junctions by 20% and energy consumption and emissions by 15% by integrating over 4,600 individual municipal systems and applications — such as water, waste management and traffic — onto one platform, so that the corporation could see in real-time how city services were performing and act on it.
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Calling it a kind of system of systems model, Wee explained, “One of the big advantages is that our software is designed to be open and agnostic. We sit on top of all hardware, all systems and bring that data together, so that people are able to take action.”Ajit Kulkarni, vice-president and India market leader, Aveva, said that seven similar smart city projects are ongoing in tier-2 and tier-3 cities. “Some of them are in the process of identifying the systems; some are in the process of validating the data and some others are going through employee training,” Kulkarni said.
Customer expectations
Aveva has about 20,000 customers across eight different industry verticals and about three quarters of the world’s energy is designed or optimised using its software. On data security, Wee said, “We recognise that it’s an expectation of the market, especially as we grow the CONNECT environment [Aveva’s digital ecosystem], and so, we have a very large focus on this right from how we do our design.”
Wee, who has been in the sustainability field for 15 years, said she has seen a change in the way sustainability is being talked about. “You’re seeing business as a whole play more of an advocacy role,” she said. “When I started out, it was still very much governments regulating companies. But now, businesses are not waiting to be regulated.”
She added that businesses are recognising the emergence of sustainability as a competitive advantage and showing up at large events, like the UN climate conference, and saying, “We want governments to do more. We want policy frameworks that are going to help support the expansion of renewables, the development of a low carbon hydrogen economy.”
— The reporter was in Paris recently at the invitation of Aveva