Your sustainability efforts require a numeric baseline

Posted: July 09, 2024

The growing emphasis on sustainability is challenging organizations worldwide to lower their environmental footprint. But how can they succeed without establishing a metric against which they can measure their progress? Establishing a numeric baseline for operational performance is a key step in any organization’s journey toward sustainability. 

When you go to a new doctor’s office, what’s the first thing they do? They check your vitals—blood pressure and pulse—and establish a baseline for you. It used to go in a folder in a locked filing cabinet. Now it disappears into a secure cloud server. Most of us never think twice about it. But it’s one of—if not the most—important pieces of data your physician has to measure your health.

The same logic holds true for your organization’s sustainability efforts. If you don’t have a comprehensive understanding of your company’s current environmental impact, how can you measure your sustainability progress? A numeric baseline serves as the anchoring point, offering a benchmark against which sustainability efforts can be continuously monitored and evaluated across an agreed-upon timeframe.

However, numbers are only the start. Being able to aggregate and visualize your data by the type of underlying physical asset is also critical for finding opportunities and comparing the impact of changes you make. Here’s how setting and monitoring against your baseline can help you gain valuable insights into the effectiveness of your sustainability initiatives:

• Identifying successes: You’ll see where your efforts are paying off. Whether it’s reducing energy consumption, minimizing waste, or promoting eco-friendly practices, when results significantly exceed your baseline, you can show proof of your achievement.
• Spotting opportunities: On the other hand, a baseline reveals areas for improvement. It’ll uncover if your water usage is higher than expected, or if your supply chain emits more greenhouse gases than expected. Armed with this knowledge, you can strategize effectively and take corrective actions.

Beyond offering a relative starting point for measuring success, a baseline also allows you to weave a compelling narrative. Consider stakeholders, customers, and the community. When you share your sustainability journey, backed by concrete numbers, your efforts resonate. The magnitude of your improvements becomes the evidence—showcasing your commitment to a better future.

Here are some common baseline metrics to establish:

• Energy consumption: Measure the amount of energy currently consumed by individual assets. With a proper asset hierarchy and data tagging, energy analysts will be able to aggregate and compare energy consumption by plant, stage of production, or geographic location. Are there opportunities to switch to renewable sources or optimize energy-intensive processes? Are some plants performing better than others and are their best practices you can use in other locations? You need a hybrid, edge-to-cloud data infrastructure to capture and aggregate data from remote and mobile assets.
• Carbon emissions: Track GHG emissions. By now, most companies have begun to calculate their overall carbon footprint from direct sources (scope 1) and from the resources they purchase to run their business (scope 2), but as time goes on, these calculations will become more accurate and finely tuned. Make sure you are following the practices of others in your industry to measure emissions and stay competitive. How much CO2 does your organization emit across all your active operations? Has the company met its annual goals? You need highly reliable, real-time data from every critical industrial asset for accurate calculations.
• Water usage: Quantify water consumption, as well as the amount of water that requires treatment as a result of operations. The growing demand for water has elevated the need to manage water quality, evaporation and release into the environment, often in coordination with government agencies and independent data scientists. Can you implement water-saving practices or reuse strategies? You need data management that can share real-time data with trusted partners, securely.
• Waste generation: Assess waste production. Are there ways to minimize waste or increase recycling? Encouraging greater circularity is another important part of overall sustainability. You need a data platform that integrates easily with simulation or modeling tools to let you predict the impact of changes.

Conclusion:

Creating a sustainability baseline goes beyond just taking care of the environment; it's also a smart business move, helping you to reduce costs, improve quality, and minimize environmental impact. Taking that first step is crucial. Measure, aggregate, look closely, and let your results guide you toward a more sustainable future. Reach out to us if you’re interested in discovering how AVEVA™ PI System™ can help you establish a baseline.

Want to drive sustainability? Learn how.

AVEVA PI System is the world’s leading operations data management solution built to address the specific needs of industrial environments. This vendor-neutral solution offers edge-to-cloud components to create a secure and consistent data platform across highly distributed industrial environments. AVEVA industrial data solutions present data visually and with context to optimize decision-making across your enterprise. Data users in engineering, operations, and data analysis can easily access the information and insight they need to optimize your business results.