In the keynote speech on the second day of the Emerson Exchange EMEA 2024, Mike Train, Emerson’s Chief Sustainability Officer and Peter Zornio, Chief Technology Officer described different aspects of the sustainability journey relating to Emerson’s own operations and also the support it is providing its customers to optimize their enterprises.
Mike Train opened by saying said that sustainability is on everyone’s mind and Emerson has more tools than ever before to help customers achieve their sustainability targets. Before discussing some of those, he outlined to delegates the different aspects of Emerson’s Environmental Sustainability Framework, which covers three areas, Greening of, Greening by and Greening with.
Greening of
The sustainability goals Emerson has set for themselves are quite ambitious, but the company has made significant progress already. By 2030, Net Zero Operations should be reached in scope one and 2 and scope 3 should be reduced by 25%. By 2045 the goal is to reach Net Zero for the whole value chain. Another goal on the way to circularity is to reach Zero Waste to Landfill rate for the Emerson manufacturing operations by 2032. Compared with the base year of 2018, the reported results for 2022 show a reduction of emission intensity by 42% (MTCO₂/SM), 19% energy intensity (MWh/SM) and 30 % more use of renewable energies on a global level.
Mike Train stated that to reach these targets, it is important that company has the right culture. To be successful, everybody in the operation plays an important role. As an example, he cited the more than 50 treasure hunts at Emerson facilities that engage employees, increases their awareness of potential, and build on their creativity and enthusiasm. In its second year of participation, over 4000 Emerson employees participated in the Earth Month Ecochallenge. Emerson has also hosted dozens of events around the world including Green Innovation Days and Sustainability Summits, each an opportunity to share opportunities and best practices on implementing decarbonization strategies.
Greening with
Because the problems to be solved are complex, Emerson is keen to collaborate and foster dialogue with academia, research, policymakers, and other industry influencers to drive programs to achieve sustainability goals. Extensive collaboration is required, both internally and externally.
Greening by
This part of the sustainability and decarbonisation strategy is the customers’ journey and how to achieve their goals for a sustainable, economically and environmentally viable future. The four pillars of the strategy are: Energy Source Decarbonisation through the adoption of low carbon electricity and fuels, including wind, solar, biomass, LNG, biofuels and hydrogen. Emissions and Energy Management to help transform traditional industries to reduce energy consumption while predicting and preventing emissions with advanced monitoring, control, analytics and simulation. Electrification and Grid Systems provides smart grid management systems, building large-scale battery storage and maximising the use of minerals for battery technologies. The final pillar, Circularity and Waste Management, focuses on maximising the lifecycle value of products, using water more responsibly, extending the life of plastics, batteries and other materials, and creating new molecular sources for products.
Peter Zornio provided several examples of where Emerson is helping achieve; `never been done before’ projects, including a French customer named Albioma which is converting coal-fired power generation to 100% renewable and reducing emissions by 84%. In the area of electrification, Emerson has worked with Mitsubishi Power to provide automation to convert Green Hydrogen to Electricity during peak demand. And lastly for Circularity, Emerson has helped our PureCycle bring their “Born Digital” strategy to life to help tackle the challenge of polypropylene recycling.
Peter explained that Emerson has a wealth of technology for both existing and new facilities. The first step is tracking and accounting, with applications to optimize fuel usage and energy in general. Emerson and Aspentech offers a wide range of software and technologies to help. Another aspect is identifying and preventing methane emissions by utilizing sensor technologies and final control elements such as no and low-bleed valve solutions. Another example provided was helping to reduce energy consumption of compressed air systems. Peter Zornio also described how the company is ensuring it has the required solutions to support carbon sequestration.
For ambitious and innovative companies developing new processes and building new plants, there is need to work with a trusted automation partner that can help implement a digital plant with optimized operations from start up. That means deploying technologies such as advanced process control, state-based control, alarm management and building a data foundation from day one. Peter Zornio was quick to point out that experience matters in project execution and operations and Emerson can provide that.
Maximize agility and data availability
Achieving these ambitious goals requires a modernization of the automation architecture that liberates siloed data and helps to overcome the limitations that organizations face in their digital transformation programs, which have so far failed to deliver the expected results because of all the data that is not integrated or contextualized.
This is where the Emerson’s vision of Boundless Automation can help, as it liberates data and helps with analysis and optimization through artificial intelligence. The scope is shifting from hardware and device-centric automation to a software-centric view and an enterprise-wide software platform that covers multiple sites as needed and accesses data depending on the use case in the cloud and at the edge. But when you break down the perimeters that were built into the old architecture for security reasons, you must find something new to protect your data and your expertise. In this kind of environment, it will be a zero-trust approach, where information can only be exchanged with the authorization of the communication partners.
The keynote painted a very positive picture of the future. The challenges are great, but the portfolio of ways and technologies to solve the problems on an economic and societal level is there. Or as Peter Zornio put it: “There has never been a better time to be an engineer!”
