AVEVA is paying it forward for future generations

AVEVA is paying it forward for future generations

Firm’s software supports the energy transition for emissions reductions and advancing renewable energy  
 

Elly Yates-Roberts |


The global conversation has focused on sustainability and the importance of aligning business processes with net-zero targets. Accordingly, software companies must take a greater role in supporting the transition by enabling customers to improve their sustainability posture and create innovative routes to achieve their environmental goals. 

Industrial software companies have already shown how technology can help reduce greenhouse gas emissions across the industrial value chain. Together, AVEVA and Microsoft help thousands of customers move towards their sustainability goals using our joint engineering and operations solutions. 

Now we are going a step further. Microsoft and AVEVA are using their products to transform the energy efficiency, circularity, traceability, and resilience of industries around the world for a regenerative effect. At AVEVA, we refer to these net-positive contributions to sustainability as our technology handprint. This handprint thinking enables us to focus on the environmental benefits of our actions and outline the positive impacts of our net-zero goals. 

AVEVA’s data-led innovation overlaid with predictive analytics and artificial intelligence (AI), together with Microsoft’s cloud leadership, has transformed the industrial technology landscape. By helping customers digitalise every aspect of their business, our solutions reveal quantifiable metrics that allow companies to understand the impacts of their actions and progress towards their sustainability goals. 

Thailand’s largest petrochemicals firm SCG built a Digital Reliability Platform that integrates online and offline equipment and process data to visualise plant performance, enhance workforce efficiency, and apply AI for predictive maintenance and resolution. The solution uses a mix of cloud and on-premises applications from AVEVA and Microsoft to achieve end-to-end visibility of plant performance and realise SCG’s vision of zero unplanned downtime, improving plant reliability from 98 to 100 per cent. 

Enhancing performance and reducing downtime results in the use of fewer resources and generates less waste. As a result, businesses don’t just gain by way of reduced costs, they are also able to make a strong sustainability impact. 

AVEVA is also helping customers to leverage predictive analytics to improve public health. The Pacific Northwest state of Oregon is home to the city of Salem, where the impact of climate change is already visible in rising outbreaks of toxic algal blooms on lakes and rivers around the state. With the help of the multi-tenant, cloud-native AVEVA Data Hub platform, which is built on components from Microsoft Azure, city authorities have generated intelligent predictive insights that alert them to increased algae and cyanotoxin activity two weeks before they occur. Now that it has enough lead time to advise stakeholders and roll out alternative measures, the city has been able to preserve water quality, safeguard ecosystems and ensure that Salem’s five million residents have safe water for drinking and other uses. 

Data is now available from previously unreachable areas. When this information is overlaid with analytics, the resiliency of public health services and infrastructure can be improved.  

From design to operations and analytics, industrial software has a new significant role to play in supporting the energy transition – for both energy producers and consumers. Neste, the leading global producer of renewable diesel and sustainable aviation fuel, is using digital innovation to drive sustainable outcomes throughout its business on its journey towards carbon neutrality by 2035. 

With more than 80 processing units across multiple sites, cross-business coordination was complicated for Neste staff. The company turned to AVEVA Unified Supply Chain software, to optimise and schedule renewable credits as well as to reduce emissions from conventional refining and production of renewable diesel. Today, teams across the world have access to shared, real-time information in the cloud, which means production can be optimised automatically, while decision support and production planning all take place in a central digital space. As a result, waste is down while business yield is up, and the company is progressing more quickly towards its carbon-neutral goal. 

As the industrial world races to meet ambitious climate targets, trusted information and insights can help equip workforces for success. 

At AVEVA, we understand that achieving global temperature reductions and avoiding the most damaging effects of climate change – for both us and future generations – requires us to work together across the industrial ecosystem to drive exponential gains. That’s why we don’t just focus on using our technology to accelerate our sustainability-related research and development efforts. Instead, we partner with stakeholders like Microsoft and customers such as SCG, Neste, and the City of Salem, to advance net-zero gains. 

Our technology handprint offers our greatest opportunity to make a positive global impact. It’s a way of paying it forward.  

Lisa Johnston is chief sustainability officer at AVEVA 

This article was originally published in the Summer 2022 issue of Technology Record. To get future issues delivered directly to your inbox, sign up for a free subscription.

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