Businesses need to accelerate their existing adoption of digitisation, electrification and automation in an effort to curb climate change and gear towards sustainability. All these processes would prove that they would be able to compensate businesses and even generate profits, according to France-based industrial technology company Schneider Electric.
"To fight climate change by attempting to control the world's temperature not to increase by 1.5 degrees Celsius in terms of global warming, the business world needs to accelerate three times faster," said Zheng Yin, executive vice-president for China & East Asia Operations, on Wednesday during Schneider Electric's "Innovation Summit Bangkok 2023: Innovations for a Sustainable Thailand" at Bitec. The event continues on Thursday.
He recommended actions that would generate energy savings 10 times faster by measuring diagnostics, building awareness, upskilling/reskilling, and calculating the total cost of ownership, while the government could be a role model by providing incentives through regulations and through their deployment of existing technologies.
Two inflection points from digital technologies would help increase efficiency and electricity that would serve decarbonisation and lead to sustainability, said Stephane Nuss, Schneider Electric's cluster president for Thailand, Myanmar and Laos during the summit.
Mr Nuss said Thailand is a country very committed to sustainability that will reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 30% and have 30% of power generation generated by renewable energy by 2030. By 2035, all new vehicles sold in Thailand would be electric vehicles (EVs). Thailand also plans to become carbon neutral in 2050.
With the power of Internet of Things (IoT), the cloud, software, artificial intelligence and automation, all these technologies are available to make businesses achieve more efficient energy management and become net zero in a bid to fight climate change.
"We found that 70% of carbon dioxide emissions could be removed using existing technologies," he said.
Technologies could also help generate energy savings of 15-30% in buildings, industries, data centres and infrastructure, while digitisation and electrification could reduce the carbon footprint by over 20%.
Digital technology also raises productivity through automating operations and remote monitoring, resulting in a 30% reduction in capital expense costs.
"We need to accelerate faster to save the world and these steps can compensate through cost savings and efficiency and even by means of profitability to businesses," Mr Nuss said.
Schneider Electric offers new innovation technologies to captialise on the requirements of sustainability. At its Bangkok summit, the firm launched its new EVlink Pro DC model of EV fast charger. Thailand is the first and largest market in which the firm has received orders for this model. The firm will launch the charger through a partnership with EVLOMO and Bangchak Corporation, Mr Nuss said.
According to a Schneider Electric customer survey, 99% of respondents said digitisation is a key driver of sustainability, while 62% have clear decarbonisation targets and an action plan.
In addition, the firm is offering new SM AirSeT switchgear for sustainability, using pure air and vacuum interruption instead of Sulfur hexafluoride or SF6 gas, which allows users to take full advantage of digital features to unlock the value of data.
Moreover, the firm also offers a consulting service to cover sustainability, industrial digital transformation and cybersecurity.