According to the report, the digital technologies with the highest potential for upstream oil and natural gas (O&G) applications are:

1. AI-based predictive maintenance
2. AI analytics decision-making
3. AI- and IoT-powered digital twins
4. IIoT data and asset management
5. IIoT remote monitoring
6. Robotics for inspection and maintenance
7. Autonomous drilling
8. XR technology for oil exploration
9. Automated well design
10. Automation technologies for oil and gas electrification

The focus on decarbonization, digital transformation and technology innovation accelerated in the O&G industry in the past five years, according to Research and Markets, which predicts that these trends will continue to add significant benefits for the O&G sector and its customers for many years.

(Image: Unsplash / Dean Brierley.)

Automation technologies are becoming increasingly important in most industries, including O&G. Research and Markets reports that in 2022, the O&G automation market for products and related services reached sales of $17.78 billion, driven by the adoption of digital transformation initiatives, attractive improvements in price/performance of the technologies and the urgent need to reduce the number of safety incidents. Research and Markets forecasts the automation technologies market will grow steadily at a CAGR of 7.61% from 2022 to 2030, ultimately reaching a market value of $32 billion.

Digital technology and new business models are driving the optimization of O&G to achieve critical business goals, including:

• Driving profitability through cost reduction
• Maintaining operational efficiency
• Achieving sustainability goals
• Reducing GHG emissions
• Advancing decarbonization
• Reducing safety incidents

Artificial intelligence, digital twins, the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), machine learning, robotics, and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) will dominate the technology market because they enable operational automation to reduce operating costs. In O&G, the predominant applications of these technologies will be asset management, data-driven decision-making, predictive maintenance, remote site monitoring and energy management, according to Research and Markets. These AI-augmented applications pave the way to cleaner and innovative oil and gas processes, including sub-surface 3D modeling for exploration, geostatistics, subsea production facility design, autonomous drilling operations and immersive virtual training.

The report concludes that automation technologies will play a significant role in achieving the digital transition in O&G and supporting the energy transition, claiming that these technologies are essential for the O&G industry to advance meaningfully toward the 2050 net-zero objectives.

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Carbon capture technology company Spiritus novel adsorbent-based direct air capture technology for CO2 in a unique way: by offsetting the carbon footprint of Taylor Swift’s recent transpacific jet flight from Tokyo to Las Vegas for the Super Bowl. At current pricing, carbon neutrality for this single flight cost $28,000. But the company claims that the cost of removing CO2 by direct capture can be reduced by a factor of seven. If it works, Taylor Swift’s flight would have cost $4,000 to achieve neutrality, and the average American passenger car could be made carbon neutral for about $40 per month. At that pricing, it may be possible to keep the internal combustion engine relevant for decades to come.

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Episode Transcript:

When the Kansas City Chiefs won their historic Super Bowl victory in Las Vegas, millions of people were watching who had no interest whatsoever in the NFL: Taylor Swift fans. 

The pop diva has been a star attraction at Chiefs’ games all year, but to get to the Super Bowl, she flew from Tokyo, Japan, site of a recent concert, to Los Angeles — a distance of some 5,488 miles. That flight was made in the comfort of a Bombardier Global 6000, flying at 39,000 feet with a 652 knot ground speed on average.

It’s a comfortable way to travel, but like all private jets, CO2 emissions per passenger mile are considerable: Swift’s transpacific flight generated an estimated 40 tons of CO2. In one of the more clever guerrilla marketing efforts of the year, that CO2 was offset courtesy of Los Alamos, New Mexico-based Spiritus.

The company has developed a direct air capture CO2 removal technology which the company claims is scalable and capable of removing carbon dioxide on megaton scales. The Spiritus system uses silo-like machines the company calls “carbon orchards” where ambient air circulates passively across a proprietary solid sorbent that the company calls “fruit,” where CO2 is adsorbed. The “fruit” is then passed into a desorption system where the CO2 is stripped off the sorbent, which is then cycled back into the airstream. 

From an engineering perspective, absorbent types of CO2 capture are technically both simple and elegant with the right materials, but the secret sauce is in removing the CO2 from the sorbent surface.

This can be achieved by heat, vacuum or combination of both, in a process called vacuum temperature swing adsorption, but Spiritus uses a proprietary low-temperature desorption process, which the company claims can reduce both energy requirements and overall system cost. And costs with current technology are high, typically on the order of $700 per ton of removed CO2. 

Spiritus believes that their technology can reduce the cost to below $100 per ton, a carbon price level which could introduce some interesting economics into the CO2 balance equation. A typical passenger car emits about 4 ½ tons of CO2 per year, so if an internal combustion engine’s emissions are offset with the projected Spiritus system, net zero emissions could be achieved at a cost of approximately $40 per month.  

Current U.S. electric vehicle pricing is approximately $5,000 higher than average internal combustion engine models, so if fossil fuel offsets were charged at the $40 a month rate for internal combustion engines, it would take about a dozen years to match the price premium for an electric vehicle. 

This is coincidentally about the average age of cars and trucks in the American consumer fleet. From an economic perspective, this would make the consumer choice for electric vehicles dependent almost entirely on factors like the cost of charging, maintenance and insurance. 

In essence, advanced direct air capture technologies like the Spiritus system would be a new lease on life for traditional fossil fuel combustion technologies in transportation and power generation. There are literally dozens of firms from industrial gas suppliers to oil companies working on direct air capture technology, with radically different technologies, and at this point it’s not clear which will be the first to commercial viability, or if direct air capture will ever emerge as the solution to the CO2 problem. 

At current pricing, to offset Taylor Swift’s Super Bowl flight cost $28,000. That cost needs to drop by a factor of 7 to 10 for commercial viability, so direct air capture firms are in a race against companies developing non-fossil fuel-based energy sources and electrified vehicles, who also must reduce costs significantly to stay competitive.  

The post How Taylor Swift flew Tokyo to Las Vegas, without a carbon footprint appeared first on Engineering.com.

Stockholm, Sweden-based Corpower Ocean has developed a standalone generation source the company calls a Wave Energy Converter, a floating generator unit tethered to a seabed anchor. The converter is essentially a floating buoy, resembling a giant sport fishing float or “bobber,” containing a novel mechanism. As the converter rises and falls relative to its seabed anchor, the vertical motion is converted by a rack and pinion mechanism into rotation, driving generators. The technology has been tested in real-world conditions since 2018 and has little environmental impact on marine life. Ocean wave power resources globally are approximately 500 GW, enough to potentially supply 10% of the world’s electricity needs.

Access all episodes of This Week in Engineering on engineering.com TV along with all of our other series.

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Episode Transcript:

The recent COP 28 climate conference in Dubai was centered on possible timelines for a phase-out of fossil fuel use globally. It’s a highly contentious issue, with the oil industry strongly represented for the first time at a major climate change event. Solutions to rising CO2 levels in an energy-hungry world are, of course, engineering solutions. And at COP 28, two approaches were discussed: carbon sequestration and alternate energy sources. 

Solar photovoltaic and wind, along with nuclear power, are the most popular forms of alternate energy in use worldwide, but there are others that have outstanding output potential with sensible economics. One that gets relatively little attention is wave power. 

Stockholm, Sweden-based CorPower Ocean has developed a standalone generation source the company calls a Wave Energy Converter, a floating generator unit tethered to a seabed anchor. The converter is essentially a floating buoy, resembling a giant sport fishing float or “bobber,” containing a novel mechanism. As the converter rises and falls relative to its seabed anchor, the vertical motion is converted by a rack and pinion mechanism into rotation, driving generators. The device uses a pneumatic pretension linkage which addresses the inevitable resonance problems encountered in any wave harnessing technology. The system allows the floating mass to be tuned in or out of phase with the incident waves, both optimizing electrical output and damping the unit’s motion as necessary in rough seas. Sealing rotating elements such as turbines against seawater ingress has always been a challenge for ocean power systems, but the Corpower device oscillates vertically, simplifying the sealing problem with slower, purely linear motion in the moving element. 

Unit hulls are produced as fiber-wound composite monolithic structures, which are built on site using a mobile factory. Wave Energy Converters weigh 70 tons, in a 9 x 18 m footprint, producing 300 kW. According to the company, this represents an energy harvest using 1/10 of the volume of conventional wave energy conversion technology. 

In development since 2012, and initially tested in 2018, the CorPower system will be deployed in numbers to form local networks for grid scale power production, with full commercial rollout in 2025. The total addressable market is considerable. Current estimates of commercially feasible wave energy resources are about 500 GW, of which just over 330 GW are expected to be in use globally by 2050. Wave energy could deliver 10% or more of the world’s electricity needs if deployed fully. Plus there is an additional environmental bonus: the Wave Energy Converters have minimal impact on marine life.

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In his annual letter to CEOs, investment heavyweight BlackRock’s CEO, Larry Fink, addressed decarbonization as a major driving force in investment strategy going forward. But notably, he identified the problem of cost. Alternate energy is too expensive, and as long as it remains that way, the transition to green energy will be glacially slow. The solution, according to Fink, is investment in a new generation of alternate energy startups, similar to the manner in which Silicon Valley launched the modern software industry. The pooled investment capital available is at historic highs, and fund managers like Fink appear ready to write the check. All that’s missing are the engineering entrepreneurs to kickstart the revolution.

Access all episodes of End of the Line on Engineering TV along with all of our other series.

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Episode Transcript:

This man is not an engineer. Or a scientist. Or politician.  

He’s Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock, one of the world’s biggest investment firms, currently managing 9,4 trillion dollars in assets. Control of that kind of wealth has economic and political implications, and Fink’s annual letter to CEOs is watched carefully. 

His last annual letter, entitled The Power of Capitalism, was the traditional celebration of capitalism as an engine of economic growth, but in it he also described a sea change in the economy which will have profound implications for engineering.  

According to Fink, who naturally has an investment view of economic evolution, startups and high-growth innovation companies have access to capital that has never been seen before. Global financial assets now total 400 trillion dollars. Young people with a good idea who want to build something have access to investment capital in ways and amounts that would have been unimaginable even 20 years ago.  

Absurdly low interest rates were a factor until recently, and frankly, massive government deficit spending in most of the world’s industrialized nations is a factor too. But regardless, there’s never been a better time for an innovator to start a company.  

The other factor, he notes, is the changing nature of those startups, and the money that finances them. According to Fink, the next 1,000 “unicorns” won’t be search-engines or social media companies, they’ll be startups that will drive decarbonization. He also mentions the elephant in the room, which is refreshing: that the green premium—the extra cost of green energy—has to come down before a meaningful transition can be made.  

As it stands now, that transition is going to take three or four decades at best. Maybe longer, for the simple reason that most of the world’s population cannot afford to pay more for energy. Which means substantial investment in the existing petroleum-based energy infrastructure for at least half a century, as significant demand for fossil fuels will likely be a reality for decades, barring some dramatic technological breakthrough. 

Larry Fink is not an engineer, but he is addressing with some clarity the issues that most engineers understand about sustainability going forward—the issues that politicians won’t talk about and that many environmentalists intentionally obfuscate. 

Going green is not about politics. It’s not about regulations. It’s about developing a set of technologies that deliver the same benefits that petroleum does, at equal or lower cost. This is an engineering problem. 

But developing a workable technical solution is only the first phase. Scaling those solutions in mass production requires capital, and Larry Fink is sending a signal that the global investment community has dollars to invest, like they did with the original software startups in Silicon Valley.  

If so, we’re about to see a couple of decades of radical technological innovation. But cash is king. To take my home off grid with solar would cost approximately $50,000. Which isn’t going to happened in this space-time continuum. But what if it cost $15,000? I’d do it tomorrow. So, Fink describes it simply, like Field of Dreams: build it, at lower cost, and they will come. 

The post BlackRock’s Larry Fink Tells an Inconvenient Truth appeared first on Engineering.com.

My next car will be electric. My wife has one already. We had to transition. Because where we live north of San Francisco and its fog, we average 262 days of sunshine a year. We installed 12 solar panels that produce over 40kWH daily, a surplus of energy. It was time for an electric vehicle.

Many in the Western and Southwestern United States are basking in solar power and driving around in electric vehicles. The rest of country, which averages only 205 sunny days a year, may not be as fortunate. But still, all concede the transition to electric vehicles is inevitable.

But in the environs of Detroit, the heart of the U.S. auto industry is having some serious angina.

The United Auto Workers (UAW) union is striking against the top three U.S. automakers—GM, Ford and Stellantis, better known as Chrysler. When President Joe Biden joined the strikers outside GM’s distribution center in Belleview, Wayne County, Mich. in a show of solidarity on September 27, over 18,000 workers were on strike. The strike is affecting one assembly plant and 38 automotive part suppliers and warehouses across the U.S.

The electrification of America’s vehicles is the real yet unspoken reason for the UAW strike, according to popular media sites.

In “How Elon Musk and Tesla Helped Spark the Auto Strikes,” Wired magazine came to the conclusion that it was people like us, with our electric vehicles, that are the real reason for the UAW strike.

“This strike is about electrification,” said Mark Barrott, an automotive analyst at the Michigan-based consultancy Plante Moran, to Wired.

“The transition to E.V.s is dominating every bit of this discussion,” said John Casesa, senior managing director at the investment firm Guggenheim Securities, in Battle Over Electric Vehicles Is Central to Auto Strike in the New York Times.

While the UAW seeks to safeguard itself against plant closures (such as the closure of Stellantis’ Belvidere, Ill. plant because the cost to convert it E.V. production was too great) by the threat of strikes, the union has been mum about electric vehicles, Tesla and Elon Musk.

Electric Winners and Losers

As with every technology shift, there will be winners and losers. The winners will see the old technology in their wake and not pause for the fallout at corporate, societal and personal levels. U.S. automakers are struggling to transition—and under pressure and by force of will—may be able to save themselves. But what about the thousands of workers who will be displaced and the businesses that will be shut down? Electric vehicles require 30 percent fewer labor hours to assemble. Some parts (radiators, tailpipes, mufflers, radiators, etc.) will cease to exist.

The UAW has had its ranks reduced by 45 percent over the last 20 years. Tesla, which came out of nowhere to become the highest-valued automaker, pays $45 per hour for nonunion labor, while union workers are paid $63 per hour. This is more than twice the national hourly rate of $29.81, which equates to over $130,000 annually for a 40-hour workweek—that’s more than tech workers in Seattle and New York ($123,000) earn annually but less than those in the San Francisco Bay Area, where they earn $157,000¹. The union is also asking for cost-of-living raises as well as compensation for several years in which no cost-of-living raises were provided. That’s not all. New hires will progress to the same pay as veteran workers in 90 days—compared to 8 years as agreed in a deal worked out in 2019.

Union president Shawn Fain is careful not to blame Tesla in his rhetoric. In a recent interview with CNBC, he was dismissive of the competitive pressures cited by the Big Three U.S. automakers and Elon Musk.

“Competition is a code word for race to the bottom, and I’m not concerned about Elon Musk building more rocket ships so he can fly into outer space and stuff,” said Fain, inexplicably mentioning Musk’s SpaceX but refusing to acknowledge Tesla.

During the Japanese car invasion, Detroit workers often turned to violence in their bitterness toward foreign-made cars—and their drivers, but little of that bitterness has emerged against electric cars and their drivers.

It’s more likely that the union has its eyes on the profit the Big Three automakers have made—a whopping $259 billion over the last 10 years, and this year already $32 billion—and wants a piece of it.

The sharing of corporate profits with labor is a time-honored move for the union. So is the parity of management and workers. It must not sit well with the UAW that CEO salaries are going through the roof while their own numbers are going down. The average autoworker’s wages have dropped 20 percent over the last 20 years. Meanwhile, GM’s Mary Barra made almost $29 million in 2022.

The automakers have said they would increase wages by 20 percent. That’s not enough, said the UAW, which is demanding a 40 percent increase.

The post Why Blame the Electric Car for the Automobile Worker Strike? appeared first on Engineering.com.

Hydrogen fuel cell stacks have been produced commercially since the 1960s, mainly for military and space exploration tasks. Handmade, delicate and expensive, the mass production problem has been a major inhibitor to the widespread adoption of fuel cells as a mass-market power source. U.K.-based Bramble Energy has developed a manufacturing technique for hydrogen fuel cell stacks that uses an existing and well-optimized technology in the electronics industry: printed circuit manufacturing.

Access all episodes of This Week in Engineering on engineering.com TV along with all of our other series.

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Episode Transcript:

Hydrogen fuel cells are a very interesting technology in the age of climate change. Their basic operating principle is remarkably simple: combine gaseous hydrogen and oxygen, and the byproducts are water and electric power, both useful commodities.

Experimentation has been ongoing for decades, and commercial units were first designed and built for the Gemini space program in the 1960s, and were used successfully in the Apollo moon landings and in the Space Shuttle program.

They work, but they have an important drawback: they are very expensive to manufacture.

Mass production of hydrogen fuel cells for widespread power generation has proven difficult, but U.K.-based Bramble Energy has developed an interesting solution: fuel cell stacks based on printed circuit technology. While the company has not disclosed exactly how PCB technology is used in their processes, the company believes that the new production system will allow low-cost, rapid manufacturing of unique and customized fuel cells, leveraging a printed circuit board manufacturing capacity that is available worldwide.

The scalability of the technology is considerable, with Bramble pursuing applications as broad as maritime shipping, trucks and buses as well as small portable power generation. Fuel cells are particularly attractive for heavy truck and bus applications, where space and weight capacity are available for pressurized hydrogen gas storage, and where quick refuelling time is important.

To develop these applications, Bramble Energy has joined the U.K.-based Hydrogen Electric Integrated Drivetrain Initiative, along with Equipmake, Aeristech and the University of Bath. 6.3 million pounds of government funding will be matched by 12.7 million pounds of industry money to develop a hydrogen double-decker bus integrating Bramble’s printed circuit-based fuel cell technology.  

Equipmake will supply motor power electronics and the battery management system, while Aeristech will be responsible for a new, high-efficiency air compressor. The entire powertrain system will be developed using simulation at the University of Bath.

Range limitation is a serious drawback to pure battery electric vehicles, making full decarbonization of transportation very difficult to achieve with current battery technology and charging infrastructure. Low-cost hydrogen fuel cells may be the key to commercialization of fuel cell technology that has already been extensively tested in the aerospace, marine, off-highway and commercial vehicle space.

The post Cheaper, Mass Produced Hydrogen Fuel Cells, From a Familiar Technology appeared first on Engineering.com.

Digital transformation in public utilities started as the “e-government” movement in the late 1990s, when billing and other basic services became available online. Over time, the transformation journey evolved from back-office reengineering and network infrastructure enhancements to cloud computing, interoperability, and the blending of physical infrastructure with cyber using sensors and Internet of Things (IoT) technology.

While progress was well underway, COVID-19 highlighted a digital gap. Surges in demand for pandemic credits couldn’t be accommodated. Websites crashed and call centers were increasingly overburdened. Any service requests or changes were slow to scale. Today, utilities are increasingly embedding digital technologies and processes across their organization—yet so much more can be done.

Public utilities striving to evolve and adapt are using artificial intelligence (AI), cyber and cloud technologies to elevate the human experience and radically transform service delivery. Along with improving and innovating digital service delivery, we are seeing more utilities focusing on transforming back-end operations and digital infrastructure because establishing robust back-end digital operations goes hand-in-hand with improving front-end service delivery.

Digital transformation is not just about new technologies, it requires an overhaul of organizational structures, governance, work processes, culture and mindset. It also means realizing a wider vision of relationships and business models that will redesign how public services function. The five critical areas for utilities looking to accelerate their digital transformation include: customer experience, public value, citizen security, future workforce and intelligent infrastructure. 

Today’s citizens expect public services to be as personalized and responsive as what they receive from the private sector. Helping utilities to reimagine how digitalization can be used to enhance the end-to-end experience of public services across all touchpoints and lifecycle is critical. The goal is to improve service quality, promote transparent and efficient interactions, enhance the level of public trust in government and drive better citizen outcomes. To keep pace with this demand and meet this goal, modular and scalable digital platforms can enable organizations to better engage, inform, serve and connect with their communities online through a custom citizen portal.

In an environment of declining revenues and rising demand, utilities must find better ways of producing value through services, infrastructure and customer interaction. New solutions and services are available for utilities to reduce costs, improve productivity and optimize public value. Creating opportunities to explore new models for providing services, improve management of resources through smarter spending, and link the money invested in programs and services to the outcomes they produce for citizens will boost accountability and trust. Prompted by a rising movement to confront environmental justice and water equity, solutions must leverage technology to seamlessly facilitate, direct and empower both clients and their customers to make the right decisions towards the outcomes desired.

Network connected infrastructure helps organizations operate, manage and plan enterprise-wide business functions. But with increased connectivity comes a drastic increase in vulnerability to cyber-attacks. Furthermore, nation state cyber-attacks are on the rise due to global political tensions. Combined with a loss of critical infrastructure, the effect on public safety, significant financial, reputational and environmental damages and the potential for regulatory and civil legal action means organizations need to establish secure and customized cybersecurity programs.

Protecting organizations, their critical systems, and sensitive information from cyber-attacks is increasingly vital. Through assessing, improving and managing your environment, industry-leading cybersecurity practices can be applied through people, process and technical controls.

Economic growth, social cohesion and equality of opportunity rely on an organization’s workforce being skilled and ready to embrace the needs of 21st-century employers. Utilities need to build the skills and capabilities of their own employees to drive greater efficiencies, elevate customer focus and strengthen diversity and inclusion. In a competitive labor market, the public sector has not always been an employer of choice for top talent. Utilities need to do more to attract, retain and develop people with the required skills and capabilities across a wide range of areas.

Public utilities are taking steps to build core technical skills such as software development and systems architecture, as well as the new skills that support transformation. As they gradually build a more dynamic and responsive environment, utilities will attract younger workers who are in search of purpose-led roles where they can make a difference to society. Through focused and strategic talent development, utilities can also empower employees to be agile, life-long skill developers able to learn and apply new technological advances, thereby future-proofing utilities.

Infrastructure investment and development is one of the top priorities for modern utilities, imperative for poverty reduction, social progress and inclusive economic growth. Many of today’s most fundamental challenges—urbanization, globalization, pollution, water shortages and climate change—can be tackled with intelligent infrastructure developments such as connected infrastructure, intelligent water networks and plants, energy-efficient buildings, IoT networks and open data portals. Utilities that pursue policies to create the enabling environment for a thriving digital economy are setting themselves up to be future-ready. To do so, they need to work with private businesses to provide enhanced 4G and forthcoming 5G networks and data centers, create high digital literacy among citizens, promote digital inclusion, and enable secure access to service through digital identification systems.

The pandemic demonstrated the importance of digital innovation in surviving unexpected crises. Only those who are prepared to take risks, pivot, and try new approaches are likely to succeed in the long-term. Utility leaders need to rethink the way they do business and deliver public services. Embedding digitalization into every aspect of the operating model, from the back-end through to the citizen facing interfaces, is needed to adapt and evolve for the future.

The post Five Ways Public Utilities Can Accelerate Digital Transformation appeared first on Engineering.com.

Due to the need to lower carbon emissions and use more renewable energy, the use of renewable energy sources (RES) has increased dramatically in recent years. Reed switches and sensors are increasingly essential in developing dependable and durable renewable energy solutions. They work in harsh environments across a wide temperature range while consuming no electricity, lasting longer, and providing a hermetic seal. They also have numerous characteristics that make them appealing for use in smart homes and smart grids, among other renewable energy applications. As the largest producer of reed switches, relays, and sensors, Standex Electronics provides the broadest range of these devices to satisfy switching needs in renewable energy.

The white paper covers:

• Reed switch facts and attributes
• Features that make them particularly efficient, sustainable, and safe
• Specific uses of reed switches within wind turbines, solar panels, EV charging, and more
• Reliable sources of reed switch and sensor solutions

Your download is sponsored by Standex Electronics.

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For grid scale electricity production without CO2 emissions, there are several options. Wind, solar, hydroelectric, and geothermal are all viable technologies, but they are dependent on proximity to key resources, namely water, wind or sunshine. Nuclear fission has offered clean power generation without these constraints for over 60 years, and a new generation of small reactors promises to remove the disadvantages of waste disposal and cost associated with older reactor designs. 

The post Small Solid Core Reactors for Safe, Reliable Fission Energy appeared first on Engineering.com.

The Sustainability LIVE New York conference took place on April 19, 2023, covering “Disrupting Sustainability Net Zero & ESG” with themes such as Insights from COP27, AI’s role in Sustainability, Net Zero 2050, the Sustainable Workplace, ESG and Ethical Supply Chain, the Circular Economy. (Image courtesy of Sustainability LIVE New York.)

Sustainability reporting evolved from being a marketing tool to an all-encompassing legal and finance framework, towards inside-out auditing transparency. There is a proliferation of ESG frameworks and important decisions are expected when it comes to the incentives and support required for organizations to learn their way through sustainability. Furthermore, scope 3 emissions continue to be challenging in several industries. This requires an ecosystem approach across value chains, including supply chain engagement in the sustainability journey.

Organizations are not only driving innovation; they are also becoming responsible for the disposal and end-of-life of their products—with increasing accountability across the entire product lifecycle. Difficult and challenging decisions are required to redesign business and operating models to drive new data-driven sustainability priorities. Transparency is required at all levels, driving change management, by educating top-floor to downstream suppliers and cross-functional partners.

During one of the last sessions at Sustainability LIVE New York, Kyra Whitten, senior vice president, Sustainability and President at Flex Foundation, highlighted that “Product lifecycle management (PLM) is becoming more and more important to enable sustainability goals, […] from how products are manufactured, to how materials are managed until the product end-of-life.”

In this post, I elaborate on an interesting panel discussion from the conference entitled “Sustainable Supply Chains Forum: a top-down approach.”

10 Lessons from the Sustainable Supply Chain Panel

The session took a deep-dive into “sustainability [as] a full company endeavor,” debating the fact that “without direction and buy-in from senior leadership, often sustainability efforts are dead in the water. This can be particularly true within supply chains, where lowest cost is often the main consideration when it comes to which suppliers earn those valuable contracts.”

The expert panel was comprised of both industry and consulting representatives: Sheri Hinish, principal, Global Sustainability Innovation and Ecosystem leader at EY; Joanna Gluzman, chief sustainability officer at PZ Cussons; and James Butcher, CEO at Supply Pilot. (Image courtesy of Sustainability LIVE New York.)

Broadly speaking, the panel agreed that sustainability goals are defined top-down and company-wide. Overall, key points highlighted in the session can be summarized in the following 10 recommendations:

1. Sustainability is a top-down strategic mandate, which concerns every business function (not only buried under marketing or the R&D function), with finance playing an increasingly important role in driving business intelligence and driving change.
2. Beyond mandatory reporting, effective cross-functional sustainability requires a mindset change. This needs to be embedded in the company-wide culture and DNA: new behaviors, values, beliefs and asset managements.
3. Board members are accountable for both business performance and sustainability goals; the two are interconnected in a closed-loop manner.
4. Company executives must be educated to fully appreciate the importance of sustainability and its business ramifications. This includes ESG committees and cross-functional governance, but also reporting automation and data-driven sustainability-empowered decision-making at all levels.
5. Effective sustainability is about balancing short-term financial goals and long-term sustainability transformation goals; not one or the other, but both perspectives at once and always, following incremental steps.
6. Businesses must invest in technologies which help inform better decision-making in parallel to investing in the right people to drive execution, continuous improvements and enabling the relevant cultural transformation.
7. Sustainability implies operational transparency across the wider enterprise and supply chain. Beyond financial metrics and regulatory reporting, it relates to core business performance, customer retention and loyalty, brand image, talent attraction, compliance, supply chain auditing, investor relationships and more.
8. Sustainability is to be embedded across functional budgets and resource allocation to support end-to-end transformation, not only to enable top-down sustainability initiatives.
9. Transparency implies sustainability results that are visible at the board level, and with shareholders and investors. This includes climate emergency command compliance accuracy, implementation agility, data-driven due diligence and promoting trust, accountability and transparency in selecting and managing supply chain relationships.
10. Enabling technologies and enterprise platforms are required to drive sustainability forward, from closed-loop analytics to end-to-end PLM solutions, informing better decision-making and compliance reporting.

In addition, James Butcher, CEO at Supply Pilot, compared the sustainability mandate with health and safety requirements—stating that “it is everybody’s job,” both internally and externally. Subsequently, he concludes that the circular economy “is not a sustainability issue, but a [holistic] business issue.”

The panel also debated the approach to get started on the sustainability journey and the importance to do what is necessary now, focusing on incremental gains and accounting for ongoing changes as it is a moving picture. Joanna Gluzman, chief sustainability officer at PZ Cussons, highlighted the continuous need to prioritize. Butcher expanded on the need to put ideas into actions, aligning on-the-go resource efficiency, waste reduction, packaging sustainability and other economies of scale across circular supply chains: “Get started, don’t over-think it!”

Furthermore, Sheri Hinish, principal, Global Sustainability Innovation and Ecosystem leader at EY, commented that “creating value to society goes beyond operational efficiency.” The panelists concurred about the need for adaptability, flexibility, learning and an agile mindset to adjust with sustainability requirements and delivery frameworks. Supply chains are a key element of innovation value chains, hence they have a key role in delivering the end-to-end sustainability mandate.

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