Siemens is proud to sponsor Climate Week NYC! We are committed to playing our part in helping to address the climate crisis for ourselves and our customers. With the publication of our Sustainability Report for fiscal 2022, we announced extensive investments and new, more ambitious targets for our own decarbonization: All Siemens manufacturing facilities and buildings worldwide are to achieve a net zero-carbon footprint by 2030. In addition, we’re among a small percentage of companies that have embraced a holistic view of the energy transition and are “Triple-Joiners” of three campaigns led by Climate Group: RE100, EV100, and EP100.
Questions are answered by Eryn Devola, Head of Sustainability at Siemens Digital Industries
Q1: How do you help your industrial customers reach their net zero goals?
Currently, production sectors are responsible for around 20% of global CO2 emissions and 38% of the world’s energy use. On top of that, only 13% of global waste is recycled, and businesses need to reduce their dependence on fossil fuels. At the same time, consumers increasingly demand sustainably designed and manufactured products.
Siemens helps companies transform their ways of working to incorporate sustainability as a vital component of business performance—taking a systematic approach and rethinking business to meet the highest standards of sustainable output. Digitalization and automation are helping industry prioritize decarbonization, circularity and resource efficiency along the value chain and thus reaching the goal of carbon neutrality. Businesses need to take charge of their data not only within their own operations, but also collaborate with partners and supply chain to make resource-efficient, planet-first decisions that entail end-to-end solutions for the products they manufacture. We call this concept “Collective intelligence."
Q2: Can you give an example of how a customer uses your digital and automation tools to reach their sustainability goals.
Sure, let’s look at Spanish mattress manufacturer Pikolin. A new production facility recently presented an opportunity for them to reimagine the way it operates in its state-of-the-art Zaragoza plant which opened in 2017. Pikolin Group is the second-largest European firm in the bedding industry, employing more than 3,000 people and generating an annual turnover of $453 million. With a very large output volume, the company wanted to take charge of its processes by implementing a scalable digital solution to manage its production and energy use. Pikolin implemented a vertically integrated production chain to streamline engineering while maintaining resource efficiency during operations and maintenance.
Having digitalized its operations, Pikolin now has access to 30,000 data points that provide complete transparency and data integration, which has allowed the company to move away from time-consuming and less reliable manual readings to track consumption data. As a result, the company’s Zaragoza factory has set a benchmark, improving performance by 30% while consuming 40% less natural gas.
Q3: How are you helping industrial businesses reduce emissions across their supply chains, as well as their own operations?
According to global carbon disclosure nonprofit CDP, supply chain emissions are, on average, 11.4 times higher than operational emissions. To decarbonize, companies need to aim for carbon-neutral operations within and beyond their businesses. As a first step, businesses need to measure their products’ total greenhouse gas emissions, also known as a product carbon footprint (PCF).
Calculating this accurately has been a longstanding challenge due to supply chain complexities and a lack of data transparency. That’s why in 2021, Siemens launched a PCF management system to tackle these challenges. It aggregates emissions data gathered where the emissions originate across the value chain to present a dynamic carbon footprint, which allows industry operators to quantify improvements and verify emissions data against established standards and provides the basis for data-driven decarbonization measures. The system affords partners in the value chain full control over their data, so they can share essential metrics through secure peer-to-peer communications while keeping information about their processes private.
Q4: You’re a manufacturing company yourself. How are you making sure that your commitments to climate action are having a real-world impact?
Siemens has been committed to sustainability for many years and our efforts are manifested in our DEGREE framework. DEGREE is based on six fields of action with clear priorities that drive our unique approach to sustainability: decarbonization, ethics, governance, resource efficiency, equity and employability – with stringent and measurable metrics.
We drive sustainability by investing in our portfolio and applying our technologies in our own operations. Our goal for all Siemens production facilities and buildings worldwide is to achieve a net zero-carbon footprint by 2030. One of them is the Siemens Electronic Works Amberg in southern Germany, where we produce automation technology. We’re proud to say that it was recently named as a Sustainability Lighthouse by the World Economic Forum (WEF). WEF acknowledged the factory’s proactive approach to sustainable manufacturing with energy and resource-efficient operations. By applying a holistic energy management to monitor the factory’s energy consumption, Amberg was able to increase output by 70%, while reducing energy consumption per volume by 47% and emissions per volume by 69%.
Siemens is a Gold Partner at Climate Week NYC. Register virtually and join Siemens at Climate Week NYC September 17-24.