Following on from ADPIEC, and just a few weeks away from COP28, ESG Mena talks to Joanna Mainguy, Sustainability Accelerator Director at AVEVA, about decarbonisation, digitalisation, and driving forward clean energy action.
What kind of progress was made at ADIPEC, and what were your key takeaways?
This year, the overarching theme of ADIPEC was “Decarbonizing Faster Together”, which shows that the global energy industry is willing and getting ready to play an active role in the net zero race. Most of the exhibitors’ booths mirrored this engagement.
ADIPEC conferences highlighted that game-changing solutions towards a cleaner and more secure energy future can only come from dialogue and cross-sector partnerships.
From government ministers to CEOS, and energy experts, most visitors to our booth were interested in tangible examples that show how digitalisation can support a more sustainable energy industry. My key takeaway from ADIPEC 2023 is that the vision of collective and responsible actions from the energy industry towards net-zero is becoming a reality.
What are your thoughts on oil and gas companies’ decarbonisation efforts? Are they taking the task seriously? What are your thoughts on their participation at COP28?
The power and ‘oil and gas’ sectors are finding new pathways to produce clean energy and fuel. While power is expanding the use of wind and solar to produce electricity, the oil and gas industry is diversifying to become the new energy sector with renewable feedstock and increasing the capacity of clean hydrogen production and Carbon Capture Utilization and Storage.
Ensuring both energy security and equity is a challenge. However, our industrial software is a key enabler of the transformation that these sectors need to go through. The design of new low-carbon infrastructure needs to be faster and more optimised, especially when we consider renewable feedstock such as biomass, CO², or waste plastics and how they will be integrated into the existing infrastructure.
Some 75% of global oil, natural gas and liquids are gathered, processed, and transported using AVEVA software. Both in Power and ‘Oil and Gas’, our customers choose our software to optimise existing operations and lower the current carbon footprint, and also to be ready to incorporate future changes.
AVEVA enables them to engineer and design faster, operate reliably, and manage their supply chain.
Some practical examples are:
- Improved production planning for refineries and petrochemical plants through advanced modelling that reduces decision time from days to minutes. It allows evaluations about which feedstock will result in lower carbon intensity to the overall production
- Carbon-aware planning that allows visibility and management of the operation carbon footprint including emissions scope 1, 2 and 3 through a single advanced digital model and data infrastructure
- Robust data management and sharing in the cloud through a secure platform to enable the exchange of relevant information with partners, customers and suppliers
At AVEVA, we are convinced of the importance of accelerating private sector collaboration on Scope 3 upstream and downstream mitigation activities. We believe that an open and connected industrial economy is essential to speed up and scale up the decarbonisation of hard-to-abate sectors.
The world emits around 50 billion tons of greenhouse gases each year, ¾ of emissions from energy use. If decarbonisation is a global goal, all actors who can contribute to achieving it need to be involved, including actors of the Energy industry. COP 28 is the perfect space to gather all stakeholders who can play an active role in our joint effort towards decarbonisation.
Tell me about how you’re working with companies within the energy sector to address some of the key challenges they’re facing and decarbonise.
Today, energy companies recognise that digital transformation is essential as they look to optimise their performance in 6 areas: Productivity – Savings and Profitability – Sustainability – Quality – Supply Chain – and Collaboration.
These six areas are interdependent, and data is the only way to measure progress in each of them and show the correlation between each of them. AVEVA enables energy companies to engineer and design faster, operate reliably, and manage their supply chain through improved data management.
Data is key to making better use of global resources. Industries that are on a digital transformation journey are on good track to measure and assess their progress to net zero.
Currently, energy companies have a huge need for organisational metrics around sustainability. By providing them with real-time data and advanced applications in the cloud, we support improved operational efficiency, lower energy and utilities consumption, and minimum greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
Many of our customers in the energy sector achieve significant gains in sustainability with our technology: with Aker Carbon Capture, we enable their engineers to collaborate in the cloud, speeding the design and development of carbon capture projects by 20%. We also support Duke Energy in managing and sharing operational data via the cloud (PI System) to optimise power operations across their network. This has led to $34M in a single predictive catch in their ultra-sensitive compressor, along with countless further efficiency gains, enabling them to shift to a greater number of renewable power supplies and accelerate towards their net zero commitments.
What’s the role of partnerships in driving forward change here?
Decarbonisation is a global challenge. If it’s been at the agenda of the past COPs and of COP28 it is because shaping a better future for all of us is a shared responsibility. Game-changing solutions towards a cleaner and more secure energy future will only come from dialogue and cross-sector partnerships. As transparency about environmental footprint becomes of growing interest, we see more and more customers rethinking the way they use and share data to support their journey towards more sustainability: data sharing happens among employees, of course, but also with partners, suppliers and even with customers. One of the outcomes of this new dimension of data sharing is to foster innovation. We call this phenomenon the connected industrial economy.
It’s underpinned by a completely new mindset, a data-centric way of thinking where all players in the industrial value chain recognise that through collaboration, they can drive greater value for everyone. No company can achieve their net-zero target alone; no innovation is done in isolation. We need a systemic change to tackle climate change challenges.
What is the role of digital technology in targeting efficiency and energy conservation? Tell me about your product offerings in this regard.
Digitalisation and sustainability are two sides of the same coin. Indeed, digitalisation is essential to track and measure operational efficiency and agility, but also to drive measurable gains and circularity. For instance, using machine learning and AI to mandate actions is a way to further cut emissions and optimise processes, and can lead to cutting waste by 20%.
Combining process improvements is also a good way to drive energy efficiency at scale. Digitalisation is also a driver of collaboration: it allows data and insights sharing between governments, industrial leaders and tech providers to accelerate innovation and bring onstream new sources of energy (CCUs, Hydrogen, Electrification, bioplastics, etc.). It’s also a driver to develop “systems thinking” solutions that increase the scale and scope of decarbonisation.
Here are some examples of how customers use our solutions to achieve the sustainability goals:
- Saudi Aramco is using data-driven insights enriched with AI to improve the reliability, performance, and safety of hydrogen processing
- REPSOL has used software optimisations (Romeo + AI) to cut emissions at one of their major refineries by 20% drop
- Aker Carbon Capture uses the cloud to help engineers to collaborate in real-time. As a result, they boosted engineering efficiency by 20%
- Fortescue Future Industries is using our digital design and simulation tools in the cloud to monitor the performance of new hydrogen production plants
The World Economic Forum estimates that digital technologies at scale represent an emission reduction opportunity of up to 20% by 2050.
AVEVA wants to support more and more energy companies in developing their saved and avoided CO²emission baseline and target.
By improving efficiency, reducing carbon emissions, minimising waste, and boosting circularity, our products enable our customers to make their enterprises more sustainable.
How are tools like AVEVA’s Digital Twin technology assisting the oil and gas industry to meet sustainability targets?
Let’s look at the development of fully autonomous and sustainable Floating Production Storage and Offloading Solutions (FPSO).
Using digital twins of FPSO vessels (virtual models designed to accurately reflect the floating structure) allows the capture of engineering and operational data through the complete asset lifecycle to improve visualisation, reliability, and efficiency.
A growing trend in the energy industry is for FPSO vessels to be operated with minimal human involvement. The vision is for them to become fully autonomous. This can greatly enhance the energy and resource efficiency of assets, whilst significantly lowering emissions.
It can also reduce human error and manual intervention, leading to stronger safety and environmental performance through low-carbon operations. AVEVA PI System is already implemented on FPSO assets, and AVEVA Engineering tools are being leveraged for design and construction.
The MENA is being highlighted as on track to becoming a green hydrogen hub. How do you see the landscape evolving, and what is AVEVA doing to drive forward the green hydrogen economy?
Analysts predict green hydrogen has the potential to expand to a $US11 trillion addressable market globally and supply up to 25 per cent of the world’s energy needs by 2050.
The hydrogen sector will require a new transportation, distribution and regulatory approach to operate successfully as an alternative fuel.
Harnessing the potential of green hydrogen could avoid up to 80 gigatons of cumulative CO2 emissions by 2050, contributing to as much as 20% of total abatement required to drive the net-zero economy.
We are working with leaders such as ThyssenKrupp, Topsoe, Wood and Saudi Aramco to mature and scale innovative technologies and processes and realise clean hydrogen projects across MEA and Worldwide.