While AI received its fair share of attention, the major focus of Schneider Electric’s recent Innovation Summit was clearly sustainability. The event theme for 2024 was “Make Your Impact,” and it was apparent in everything from the event décor to the agenda topics that addressing climate change is the main objective for Schneider Electric.
Schneider Electric CEO Peter Herweck started off the summit with sustainability front and center in his opening keynote. He called on the innovators and business leaders in the audience to rise to challenge of arresting and reversing climate change. Throughout his presentation, he cited several sobering facts and statistics to illustrate how important it is that energy, technology, manufacturing, construction, and other industries take definitive action now. Some memorable points in the keynote included:
- 2023 was the hottest year ever recorded in human history.
- 3.6 billion people live in areas that are highly susceptible to the impacts of climate change.
- By 2050, 2.1 billion more people will reside in cities. This shift will require building and powering 100 billion square meters of new homes, offices, and factories.
- 80% of climate-change-causing emissions are related to energy.
In addition, CEO Herweck pointed out that global trends such as generative AI and the growth of IoT mean that data centers are expected to 1.6x their energy consumption over the next five years. This makes planning for a sustainable future an ever more pressing concern.
Sustainability offers both large challenges and opportunities
A great challenge—and source of great opportunities—for our industries is how to construct and power all these new data centers and buildings, providing energy and connectivity for everyone in a growing and urbanizing world while also lowering greenhouse gas emissions.
“The future must be sustainable—with decisive action to tackle climate change together,” Herweck said in the keynote. “Addressing climate change requires fundamental transformation. To do that, digitization and the AI technologies that are here will be extremely helpful. We need innovative solutions to optimize processes and to improve efficiency and drive sustainability.”
How do we use less energy while the world needs more?
Fortunately, the Innovation Summit was filled with leaders, innovators, and exhibitors from across the industry landscape focused on addressing the difficult challenges of a warming planet.
CEO Herweck offered some good news as well: 70% of CO2 emissions from the energy chain can be removed with existing technology. To achieve this, energy generators need to continue transitioning to renewable sources, smart grid innovations, and clean energy tech.
Schneider Electric and HPE share a strong commitment to sustainability
As strategic global allies and OEM partners, HPE and Schneider Electric are well aligned in our visions and goals for sustainability and digitization. Last summer, our two companies joined forces to offer a broad range of new IT products and services aimed at helping enterprises accelerate progress towards their sustainability and net zero commitments. This includes:
- A sustainability dashboard for HPE GreenLake that provides visibility, monitoring, and management of IT energy consumption across multi-vendor, hybrid cloud infrastructures
- HPE Services focused on sustainability outcomes
- HPE Asset Upcycling Services to give new life to used IT equipment
- Schneider Electric expertise for helping organizations develop and execute comprehensive, enterprise-wide sustainability strategies
You can see several of these joint solutions in action at HANNOVER MESSE. Schneider Electric will be joining HPE OEM at our booth to demonstrate how the HPE GreenLake sustainability dashboard and modular data center solutions can help enterprises progress toward their sustainability targets with AI-enabled production.
Be sure to visit us in the HANNOVER MESSE Digital Ecosystem Hall 14/15 at Booth G76, April 22–24, 2024.
Schneider Electric recognizes companies making an impact
All of us at HPE are very proud that our company was a 2022-2023 Global Winner in Schneider Electric’s inaugural Sustainability Impact Awards. We were recognized for our efforts to decarbonize our operations and our commitment to becoming net-zero by 2040.
This includes HPE’s hybrid approach to transitioning to clean energy alternatives including renewable assets, power purchase agreements, green tariff programs, and green contracts. Our climate mitigation strategies also include shifting to low/no emission vehicles and sustainable aviation fuels to reduce the carbon footprint of our supply chain.
You can read about the sustainability efforts of all of this year’s winners here. Plus, you can view the video of Schneider Electric CEO Peter Herweck’s full opening keynote here.
I look forward to more joint efforts to progress sustainability worldwide.
MattQuirk
With a passion for innovation and technology, I am lucky enough to work within high-growth opportunities across multiple industries including manufacturing, healthcare, energy, media and entertainment and security - with technology innovations that are advancing the way people live and work such as AI, autonomous everything and 5G.