By Joe Kaeser
On April 12, 1870, a message from England clicked through on a telegraph machine almost seven thousand miles away in India—the first dispatch sent via a monumental telegraph line that Siemens helped to build from London, through Tehran, and all the way to Calcutta. This moment was among the first to mark a new, unprecedented era of intercontinental communication, trade, and cultural exchange that would come to be known as globalization. During the 146 years since that historic transmission, as the world has grown increasingly interconnected, so has Siemens, which now operates in nearly 200 countries.
Our footprint and longevity give our company a unique perspective on the challenges facing humanity in the 21st century. We therefore have a unique opportunity and platform to address the world’s single most urgent priority: climate change. We have proudly committed to cutting our global carbon footprint in half by 2020, and to becoming carbon neutral by 2030. This plan requires a substantial investment, but it will pay off quickly. In fact, we expect our $110 million investment to pay for itself in just five years and generate $20 million in annual savings thereafter. So, we have now set our sights on an even bolder quest: securing a carbon-free future while dramatically expanding access to electricity.
In the developed world, we are surrounded by electronics—from the computers on our desks, to the smart phones in our pockets, to the thermostats in our homes, to our data in the virtual cloud. For this reason, you might imagine that our critical infrastructure is digital, too. But in reality, much of the machinery of modern life is powered by combustion engines and old, analog systems that are carbon-intensive and inefficient. In fact, 40 percent of global carbon emissions result from the transportation sector, industrial processes, and the operation of buildings. Yes, we must replace the combustion engines in cars, trucks, buses, ships and airplanes with electric models. But electrifying the world’s commercial and industrial infrastructure is the critical next step to de-carbonization, and we must consider several tactics to speed progress toward this goal.
First and foremost, energy efficiency is a major lever for reducing CO2 emissions along all parts of the energy chain—from the production of resources all the way to final consumption. Fortunately, industry-led efforts to improve energy efficiency through the adoption of modern technology are well underway. We must double down on them.
Second, increased investment in renewable energy will provide abundant, clean, and increasingly cheaper electricity, which will further encourage electrification. Here, too, the world is making progress: In 2015, for the first time ever, more renewable capacity was built than conventional fossil generation.
Digitalization offers many new possibilities for optimizing the existing energy system and will also further catalyze electrification. Today, new efficiencies are being realized through the collection and analysis of big data and smart data, remote service platforms, low loss power transmission, decentralized energy systems, and intelligent energy distribution and storage technology. When scaled, these efforts will accelerate the efficient electrification of our existing infrastructure and bring down the cost of operation—potentially by orders of magnitude.
Finally, pricing of carbon emissions is one of the most important conditions for restructuring the energy system. In particular, carbon pricing derived by market forces, emissions standards, and intensified energy sector research and development would be a highly effective catalyst to achieve full electrification as quickly as possible.
Source: Time, 1st December 2016-To Beat Climate Change, Digitalize the Electrical World
