Meeting sustainability goals with industrial software: Real-world wins

Posted: February 13, 2025

According to a study by the Harvard Business Review, highly trusted companies—organizations that make a commitment to the environment and community—outperform others by up to 400%. Stocks grow as customer trust grows. And it’s not just customers who are pushing for greater transparency. Government regulations are tightening. Last year, the EU’s European Parliament adopted a new law to curb greenwashing, banning companies from making false or unverified claims about a product’s sustainability or environmental value. Additionally, the EU’s new Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) and Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) require companies to assess and report on the environmental impacts of their activities as part of the European Green Deal.

This push for transparency and sustainability comes as the world nears a tipping point in carbon emissions. A report by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) indicates that greenhouse gas emissions must decline by 43% by 2030 if we’re to avoid the more catastrophic effects of climate change. Organizations are going to face increasing pressure to decarbonize as regulations and customer demand for greener practices continue to grow. But while 37% of the world’s largest companies have set net-zero targets, only 18% are on track to cut emissions fast enough to reach the goals set out by the Paris Agreement.

The industrial sector has a real opportunity to lead decarbonization efforts. As new technologies help companies work smarter and more efficiently, becoming more sustainable also makes business sense. “Digital solutions are our pathway to simultaneously reduce costs, improve profitability, accelerate schedules, and minimize emissions,” says Azad Hessamodini, Executive President of Consulting at Wood. “All key factors in achieving net zero.”

The path to decarbonization relies on harnessing data to optimize processes, reduce emissions, and implement new greener energy sources. Here are a few companies across industries that are proving innovative digital solutions can deliver measurable sustainability results.

Operational efficiency and decarbonization go hand in hand

Optimizing operational efficiency is a win-win for companies on the path to decarbonization. By improving processes, companies can reduce waste, energy use, and emissions—while saving valuable time and money.

Albemarle, one of the world’s leading lithium producers, has been working hard to keep up with the demand for lithium batteries for electric and hybrid vehicles. In an overhaul of its data management system, the company converted time-series data to datasets to identify operational process improvements and catch anomalies across its enterprise. By leveraging machine learning models and advanced analytics, the company identified and implemented efficiency measures that cut emissions—reducing 50 tons of downstream emissions for every ton of lithium produced. Improvements in overall equipment effectiveness have saved Albemarle about $1M every year and led to a 75% reduction in environmental incidents.

The success of Albemarle’s ambitious digital transformation illustrates an essential lesson of our time, so far as industry is concerned: more sustainable operations are more profitable operations and vice versa. One needn’t come at the expense of the other.

This lesson is made all the more impactful when it involves economies of scale. On their own, improvements to equipment effectiveness, small tweaks and process optimizations, might not seem all that revolutionary. But add them up, many times over, across the enterprise and across the world, and the result is a better future—for the business, and for the planet. 

Tracking and reducing greenhouse gas emissions with a digital twin

Companies that have traditionally operated in the oil and gas space like TotalEnergies are also using digital tools to pivot into more sustainable practices and energy sources. In its digital transformation, TotalEnergies used a digital twin with analytical models and enterprise visualization to track and mitigate its greenhouse gas emissions. Using dashboards to see an overview of total site emissions or drill down into specific equipment and KPIs, the team can calculate emissions per equipment as well as the specific energy efficiency for each asset.

As a result, TotalEnergies is tracking about 85% of its Scope 1 emissions from operations in real time. The models the team created of rotating and firing equipment provide up-to-date information that helps the team identify and prioritize emissions reduction opportunities. In one use case, in which the company set out to optimize power delivery configuration of a wind farm, it reduced CO2 emissions by 15% annually. And now that these models are built, TotalEnergies can apply them to hundreds of other equipment and processes without additional capital expenditures.

As pressure from governments, regulatory bodies, and consumers continues to push oil and gas operations to trace and minimize greenhouse gas emissions, a data infrastructure that enables companies to accurately track and reduce emissions will become foundational to companies’ success.

Adoption of new green technologies for a sustainable future

In addition to optimizing energy use and increasing operational efficiency, industrial software is also enabling the development and deployment of next-generation green technologies.

Green hydrogen is just one form of clean energy in the spotlight right now, due to its feasibility as a zero-emissions energy source. Because its only byproduct is water, green hydrogen has enormous potential to provide clean power, in particular for energy-dense sectors. The European Union has pledged to invest $430 billion in green hydrogen by 2030, and other countries and entities are following suit.

Protium, a pioneer in green hydrogen production, is using industrial software to streamline and connect the network of sites it’s developing across the UK and Europe. Protium’s digital infrastructure allows it to visualize, analyze, and optimize assets, essential to managing the suite of complex processes and equipment required for this kind of endeavor.

Protium has created a digital twin of its Pioneer 2 project, one of the fully automated facilities that, once operational, will deliver one ton of ultra-pure hydrogen daily. The advanced modeling from the digital twin enables Protium to quickly identify underperforming areas of the facility and focus on issues that need to be resolved quickly. They can conduct scenario analysis to test out impacts on upstream and downstream processes and optimize KPIs. This means fewer errors, less downtime, and more savings. Overall, the team predicts a 30% reduction in working hours with the use of the digital twin, with ROI within the first year.

Whether organizations are trying to operate more efficiently or shifting to more renewable energy sources, it’s clear that industrial software is helping leaders decarbonize up and down the value chain.  

Industrial software to drive decarbonization at scale

The global climate crisis demands urgent, measurable action, and industrial organizations are stepping up by using industrial data software to drive decarbonization. From optimizing operations and reducing energy consumption to pioneering new green technologies, these digital solutions can offer a scalable and financially rewarding path to achieving net-zero emissions.

As companies continue to leverage data and technology for decarbonization, collaboration will play an essential role. Collaboration between companies, industries, and governments will be necessary to move the climate change needle. “We need to leverage our collective strengths,” says Sue Quense, AVEVA’s Chief Commercial Officer. “Building new systems today will unlock a better tomorrow, and of course leveraging data and digital solutions to get there as fast as possible. . . Individually we can have impact. Collectively, we can generate industrial-scale impact.”