The green potential of digital technologies

Dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies play a cru­cial role in the imple­men­ta­tion of eco­nom­i­cal­ly and social­ly accept­able cli­mate pro­tec­tion mea­sures. A new report pro­duced by tech com­pa­ny Schnei­der Elec­tric in col­lab­o­ra­tion with CNBC Cat­a­lyst pro­vides con­crete exam­ples of the enor­mous envi­ron­men­tal and eco­nom­ic poten­tial that can be real­ized through the means of IoT-based dig­i­tal­iza­tion. Only recent­ly, Schnei­der Elec­tric was award­ed the inde­pen­dent Ger­man Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Award in the “Cli­mate” cat­e­go­ry for the devel­op­ment of its hard­ware and soft­ware solu­tions aimed at sus­tain­able business.

Case studies for sustainable business

The report, pro­duced by CNBC Cat­a­lyst and Schnei­der Elec­tric, pro­vides insights into glob­al case stud­ies that have used dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies to reduce green­house gas emis­sions, shift to renew­able ener­gy, or make sup­ply chains more trans­par­ent and sus­tain­able. Among the most notable findings:

…how IBM was able to use arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence and blockchain-based solu­tions to estab­lish a more trans­par­ent and low­er-car­bon sup­ply chain.
…how Hong Kong and Chi­na-based real estate com­pa­ny Swire Prop­er­ties man­aged to cut green­house gas emis­sions by 19 percent.
…how glob­al engi­neer­ing and ser­vices com­pa­ny Jacobs is help­ing the City of Lon­don ana­lyze bil­lions of data points to set up a trans­porta­tion sys­tem in which 80 per­cent of trips are made by CO2-free modes of transport.
…how Tata Pow­er, a com­pa­ny spe­cial­iz­ing in solar ener­gy ser­vices, is enabling its cus­tomers in now 90 Indi­an cities to use smart mon­i­tor­ing and man­age­ment sys­tems to gen­er­ate ener­gy sus­tain­ably while sav­ing money.
Oth­er case stud­ies men­tioned in the report include Equinix, IHG Hotels & Resorts, Sin­ga­pore Man­age­ment Uni­ver­si­ty and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Oxford. With its holis­tic hard­ware and soft­ware solu­tions com­bined with spe­cial­ized con­sult­ing services,Schneider Elec­tric has played a lead­ing role in imple­ment­ing ener­gy effi­cien­cy and sus­tain­abil­i­ty mea­sures in all of these cas­es. As the exam­ple of Swire Prop­er­ties shows, this is always about the long term. Specif­i­cal­ly, tar­gets were joint­ly set here with regard to reduc­ing CO2 emis­sions, which are now being imple­ment­ed step by step through appro­pri­ate mea­sures and invest­ments — for exam­ple, by con­tin­u­ous­ly increas­ing the data trans­paren­cy of the man­aged prop­er­ties through the use of ener­gy mea­sur­ing devices.

Climate protection cannot wait

Par­tic­u­lar­ly against the back­drop of the results of the recent UN Cli­mate Change Con­fer­ence in Glas­gow (COP26) and the urgent appeal made there for cli­mate pro­tec­tion mea­sures to be accel­er­at­ed and inten­si­fied, it is clear that only more sus­tain­able man­age­ment, respon­si­ble use of finite resources and dras­tic reduc­tions in glob­al CO2 emis­sions can pre­serve pre­vi­ous ways of liv­ing and doing busi­ness in the long term.

“The results of COP26 under­line how nec­es­sary it is for com­pa­nies to think sus­tain­ably and take mea­sures for greater ener­gy effi­cien­cy. Over the next decade, dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies in par­tic­u­lar will make more sus­tain­able busi­ness pos­si­ble. The report now avail­able from CNBC and Schnei­der Elec­tric is strong evi­dence of this. With prac­ti­cal appli­ca­tion exam­ples, it shows that it would already be pos­si­ble to save up to 70 per­cent of green­house gas emis­sions today with exist­ing, proven and com­pet­i­tive tech­nolo­gies alone. Noth­ing less than the future of our plan­et depends on it.”

- Jean-Pas­cal Tri­coire, Chair­man and CEO

More sustainably successful

As the exam­ples in the new report show, the pos­si­bil­i­ties of IoT-based dig­i­tal­iza­tion make sus­tain­abil­i­ty a val­ue and an oppor­tu­ni­ty from a busi­ness per­spec­tive. Accord­ing­ly, sus­tain­able busi­ness, low­er CO2 emis­sions and the use of green ener­gies are not just unwel­come oblig­a­tions imposed on busi­ness by soci­ety and pol­i­tics. With the help of holis­tic net­work­ing and intel­li­gent soft­ware, a dig­i­tal­iza­tion approach guid­ed by sus­tain­abil­i­ty con­sid­er­a­tions leads above all to con­sid­er­able eco­nom­ic advan­tages. In oth­er words, greater reli­a­bil­i­ty, flex­i­bil­i­ty and ener­gy effi­cien­cy not only have an impact on the eco­log­i­cal foot­print, but also make them­selves felt in oper­at­ing and invest­ment costs.