A BizClik Brand
CHIEF CONTENT OFFICER
SCOTT BIRCH
PRODUCTION DIRECTORS
GEORGIA ALLEN
DANIELA KIANICKOVÁ
PRODUCTION MANAGERS
JANE ARNETA MARIA GONZALEZ
CHARLIE KING
CHIEF DESIGN OFFICER
MATT JOHNSON
CREATIVE TEAM OSCAR HATHAWAY SOPHIE-ANN PINNELL HECTOR PENROSE SAM HUBBARD MIMI GUNN JUSTIN SMITH REBEKAH BIRLESON JORDAN WOOD DANILO CARDOSO CALLUM HOOD
VIDEO PRODUCTION MANAGERS
KIERAN WAITE
DIGITAL VIDEO PRODUCERS MARTA EUGENIO ERNEST DE NEVE THOMAS EASTERFORD DREW HARDMAN
MARKETING MANAGER LAUREN ALICE TYE
PROJECT DIRECTORS BEN WIGGER
MEDIA SALES DIRECTORS
LEWIS HAMMOND MANAGING DIRECTOR LEWIS VAUGHAN
EXECUTIVE ASSITANT
JORDAN HUBBARD
CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER STACY NORMAN CEO GLEN WHITE
Anyone who attended our Sustainability LIVE hybrid event will know that the discussions around sustainability are many and far reaching. Our 60+ speakers over two insightful days covered everything from diversity to data centres, and this latest issue reflects the challenges – and opportunities – ahead.
From a fascinating roundtable discussing ageism in the workplace to flying cars, we really do have it all.
We have exclusive interviews with top executives from SAP, EcoVadis and Kin + Carta, take a lap of the track with former F1 world champion, now green tech champion, Nico Rosberg, plus highlight the latest carbon capture innovations from Climeworks.
And if you did miss Sustainability LIVE, fear not – our Top 10 features recorded sessions I have personally picked from the main stage. Be enlightened.
SCOTT BIRCH scott.birch@bizclikmedia.com
Change is inevitable, but how we handle it is what matters.
Defying disruption is the theme of Sustainability LIVE
Climeworks, a leader in carbon dioxide removal through direct air capture, has broken ground on its appropriatly titled Mammoth recently storage facility in Iceland. Mammoth meets long-term market demand for permanent CO2 removal from the atmosphere.
Following earlier purchases from Stripe, Klarna, Square Inc., LGT and Verdane, UBS is the latest and largest financial services company to commit to Climeworks’ carbon removal solution in a 10-year deal.
Five years after being listed as one of the world’s richest people, Yvon Chouinard has donated all shares in Patagonia to a charity that will use profits to fight the climate crisis. Chouinard, now 83, founded the outdoor clothing company in 1973 to provide sustainable and functional outerwear for his fellow climbers.
Since then, the Patagonia brand has led the way in making sustainable and ethical manufacturing the ultimate goal of the apparel industry. In contrast to the ‘greenwashing’ campaigns of a lot of well-known fashion brands, Patagonia has consistently lived up to its 1% ‘earth tax’ promise, giving millions of dollars to
Yvon Chouinard
Founder
The Netherlands-based smart cities solutions provider Netix announces a first-of-its-kind sustainability finance model to support net-zero ambitions and help address the current European energy crisis.
READ MORE
Siemens Commissions 8.75MW Green Hydrogen Plant in Germany
Siemens has commissioned one of Germany’s largestgreen hydrogen generation plants. Up to 1,350 tonnes of green hydrogen can be generated annually from renewables.
READ MORE
SEG Solar say construction of the facility will start at the end of 2022 and will have three state of the art production lines.
READ MORE
The US company has created a new, transparent solar technology that turns windows into solar panels. Virtually indistinguishable from ordinary glass, this photovoltaic technology could offset up to 30% of buildings’ electricity usage.
LOUIS VUITTON
LV stores have promised to lower thermostats and reduce light usage this Winter. This announcement came in response to the French President Emmanual Macron’s pleas for companies to cut their power consumption by 10%.
Great Britain’s independent energy regulator, recently announced an 80% rise in the energy price cap. As protestors gathered outside Ofgem’s HQ, experts warned that nationalising energy firms is the only way to save them.
The German government has bought a 30% stake in Germany’s biggest importer of natural gas, Uniper. Nationalisation seems to be the company’s only option as it struggles to survive amidst reduced supply and soaring prices.
Former Formula 1 World Champion Nico Rosberg is founder of the Greentech Festival and Rosberg x Racing, a team driven to inspire positive change in the Extreme E racing series that draws attention to the risks and consequences of global climate change
WHILE YOU WERE RACING F1?
While I was still an active F1 driver, I was fully concentrated on my career. This changed drastically when I ended my racing career and began to show interest for other technologies, particularly in the space of sustainable mobility.
Through my former employer Daimler, I was introduced to the latest powertrain developments
and future technologies in their R&D, which I thought were fascinating. So I began to invest in e-mobility startups and later moved on to other sustainability projects.
YOUR CREDENTIALS FOR
BEING INVOLVED IN F1? Not anymore. In the beginning, the shift from F1 to sustainability certainly seemed like a bold move, but people quickly understood that we need to have a positive view on innovation and technology in order to advance on matters of climate protection. Motorsport has played a big role in making our road cars more efficient and continues to be an important platform for new technologies. The mindset in F1 is, there is no ‘can't do’. This is precisely what we need to fight climate change.
It was a trip to the CES in Las Vegas which brought upon the idea to establish a technology festival in Europe with a focus on sustainable ideas. My co-founders already had the Green Awards in place and it seemed like the perfect combination to tag it onto a global platform showcasing the latest products and ideas from the area of sustainability. It was also the right move for me as an investor because I wanted to establish a place where all of the innovative green startups could come together and network with other players.
“The mindset in F1 is, there is no ‘can't do’. This is precisely what we need to fight climate change”
“We need to have a positive view on innovation and technology in order to advance on matters of climate protection”
We founded the Greentech Festival in 2019, one year before the pandemic, so the next two years were tough for us, but I am incredibly proud of the fact that we not only survived, but managed to grow the business and turn it into a global event series. This year, we will be in New York, London and Singapore for the first time.
We are competing in Extreme E, the first motorsport series focused entirely on climate protection, social and environmental causes.
The cars are fully electric SUVs charged with solar power and hydrogen fuel cells. The equipment is transported by a very efficient ship, and we don’t allow on-site viewers so the travel and logistic emissions remain minimal. All teams engage in activities and projects to support local communities in their battle against climate change and Extreme E is the only racing series to feature both a male and a female driver in each team. Furthermore, our team RXR has set up its own campaign called Driven By Purpose. As an example, we have equipped schools in Senegal with solar powered lamps, or raised money to plant trees in Sardinia after the devastating wildfires.
| Nico Rosberg
David McClintock is the marketing director of EcoVadis, the leading provider of business sustainability ratings. Here he shares his views on responsible sourcing
» Sustainable sourcing is the integration of social, ethical and environmental performance factors into the process of selecting suppliers. Typically, when it comes to selecting new suppliers, it is important for businesses to make sustainability-related expectations clear during the initial engagements. Procurement teams should set minimum eligibility conditions that prospective
suppliers must provide some indicator of their engagement in sustainability so they may gain an understanding of sustainability performance.
» Procurement needs to have insight into the maturity of the supplier’s management system across key sustainability topics including environment, labour and human rights, ethics and sustainable procurement, as well as their willingness to improve over time. This insight will involve not only data collection and validation, but also monitoring of multiple sources of data to assure reliability of provided data, provide a cross check on the supplier’s sustainability transparency, reporting practices and ongoing performance.
Suppliers who respond and engage in a sustainability assessment and improvement journey send a strong sign that they are willing to make sustainability part of a long-term relationship.
» They need to be aware for several reasons, not only risk management (eg. to comply with new regulations) due to stakeholder scrutiny, to assure resilience (eg. avoidance of disruptions) and longterm value creation.
Comprehensive international standards are available to guide corporate approaches to human rights, including the UN Guiding Principles on Business & Human Rights and the OECD
Suppliers who respond and engage in a sustainability assessment and improvement journey send a strong sign that they are willing to make sustainability part of a long-term relationship”
Due Diligence Guidance for Responsible Business Conduct. In addition to these standards, it’s important for businesses to be aware of legislative changes that can affect current business operations and practices. Over the past decade, various due diligence laws emerged such as the Modern Slavery Act 2015 in the UK, California’s Transparency in Supply Chains Act and Australia’s Disclosure Act.
Companies can get ahead by understanding their supply chain better and determining where they stand in terms of human rights risk management. Working on your existing supplier relationships now will let you leverage those relationships and react to changing
“
requirements with more flexibility once you are mandated to do so. By focusing on understanding the current supply chain due diligence landscape better, companies can explore strategies to react to existing – and future – requirements.
» Beyond the initial screening process, setting expectations at the beginning of the relationship with the supplier, and ongoing monitoring, companies need to engage suppliers in a continuous improvement journey. No suppliers (or buyers) are perfect in any sustainability
when it comes to
it is
the
topic. Changing suppliers (e.g. discontinuing a supplier with a low sustainability score and selecting and onboarding a new supplier) is expensive, and should be an exception. Long term relationships with suppliers who are committed to progressing on the journey is often a more reliable path, even if they do not have exceptional performance or scores at the beginning.
» There may be a ‘shakeout’ coming in the procurement sustainability tech space. There have never been more technologies and tools purporting to help procurement teams collect data – such as sustainability metrics – from suppliers. But many of these are not moving the needle on the sustainability journey toward positive impacts, similar to their predecessors; “DIY” programs that companies traditionally tried to run internally using spreadsheets and email.
A BizClik Brand
WRITTEN BY: TOM SWALLOW
PRODUCED BY: LEWIS VAUGHAN
Sustainability is about forward thinking. The assessment of past, current and future activities provides a holistic view of emissions in the supply chain and social impact among communities, but switching present planning to foresight mitigates emissions and reduces costs.
This is the primary goal of Black & Veatch from both an internal and external perspective as it works with clients to achieve environmental, social and governance (ESG) compliance without compromising on profit. A mindset shift is in order, and firms in the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) industry must build a circular economy into their projects from the concept phase.
Experts from Black & Veatch are working collectively to drive sustainability within their organisation as a case study to share with clients and help them overcome similar changes. Embedding sustainability into project planning requires commitment to the cause, education from professionals, and the necessary digital tools to manage energy and material sourcing.
This report features industry insights from key personnel at Black & Veatch who are invested in its activities and translate the company’s achievements into professional services for its core industries.
Amanda O’Dell and Ajay Kasarabada of Black & Veatch are making sustainability known across the company and among its construction and engineering clients Sustainability has been ingrained in Black & Veatch’s DNA for more than a century, whose strong environmental credentials predate the term ‘carbon footprint’ by 70 years.
Black & Veatch is an employee-owned global engineering, procurement, consulting and construction company, headquartered in Overland Park, Kansas, with a century’s work in sustainable infrastructure.
“Since 1915, we have helped our clients improve the lives of people around the world by addressing the resilience and reliability of their most important infrastructure assets,” says Amanda O’Dell, Corporate Sustainability Manager.
A lot has changed since Black & Veatch was founded, not least the meaning of the term ‘value’. Back then, it meant merely the cost of a product or service. But in today’s world, ‘value’ references a firm’s reputation and behaviour as much as it does price tags.
ESG compliance is of monumental importance, with investors, stakeholders and customers all expecting best practice corporate behaviour in this area.
"We’re advocates of environmental stewardship,” says O’Dell, who has the task of ensuring compliance across the business. “This includes optimal use of natural resources and ESG management across business operations.” O’Dell also says ESG and diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) both shape relationships with suppliers.
“Providing equal access to all types of suppliers is important at a very human level, but it also has a profound socioeconomic impact,” says O’Dell.
She goes on to cite data suggesting that while women and those from marginalised communities are well represented in the realm of small firms, this is not the case in the wider business world.
“While 99% of US companies meet the definition of a small business, 50% of those are either woman or minority-owned — representing only 7% of the total revenue of all US businesses.”
Addressing this is critical for Black & Veatch and something it echoes through its engagements with its clients. Not only does this have an impact on underrepresented groups and brings small businesses into the fold, but diversity creates a more competitive supply chain — more resilient to industry disruptions — and breeds innovation among businesses.
The Sustainable by Design initiative is a commitment by Black & Veatch to develop long-term infrastructure in a sustainable way, in aid of improving quality of life while increasing economic activity sustainably.
Through the Sustainable by Design commitment, the company will adhere to various long-term objectives that shape its approach to an equitable, sustainable industry. Following the transformation of its organisational structure, Black & Veatch will leverage this to implement the framework to reach its goals:
• To utilise pre-qualification survey data to evaluate potential and existing vendors’ environmental, social and governance (ESG) practices, and ensure they adhere to Black & Veatch's sustainability vision
• To continuously update its sustainability policy to reflect its 2023 commitments
• Train its team of professionals on the corporate sustainability programme
• Establish feedback loops with clients to assess the value of the programme
• Drive sustainability as a mandatory practice across all projects
• Develop a leaner use of materials and increase recyclability
All professionals — engineers, consultants and construction members — will adhere to these objectives to ensure the longevity of its projects in adherence with the company’s climate goals. Black & Veatch recognises that, through this commitment, each and every individual within the organisation has the ability to contribute to a better world: preserving life, protecting the environment, and considering the lasting impacts of infrastructure.
To see the Sustainable by Design commitment in action, click here.
With its long track record of sustainability experience, Black & Veatch is well-placed to support clients on their ESG journeys.
The company’s Director of Environmental Solutions, Ajay Kasarabada, handles client-focused ESG strategy, helping businesses embed compliance into commercial processes.
“When it comes to sustainability on the project execution side, we can test on our own projects first, and then share what we learned with our clients,” says Kasarabada. “We implement our own policies and processes for designing and engineering projects, as well as how we procure equipment and use it in construction.”
AMANDA O’DELL CORPORATE SUSTAINABILITY MANAGER, BLACK & VEATCH
This provides Black & Veatch with firsthand insights to share, allowing its clients to leverage sustainable sourcing with a procurement and construction strategy that has already been applied in their industry. The result: manufactured goods are produced with lower carbon emissions, staff are treated fairly throughout the supply chain, and transport emissions are reduced.
Kasarabada also notes there has been a shift away from the previous industry strategy — cost optimisation and profitability — to a triple-bottom-line approach that also includes a social and environmental impact.
“This now comprises a major portion of our client process,” he says. “Profit is important, but there is more emphasis on the importance of having a sustainable mindset towards construction.”
He adds: “The biggest challenge is investment in sustainability and ESG. This does not directly result in a price increase of suppliers’ products, because price is dictated by market forces. They have to think about how they justify cost in terms of impact.”
“We’re advocates of environmental stewardship. This includes optimal use of natural resources and ESG management across business operations”Amanda O’Dell
TITLE: CORPORATE SUSTAINABILITY MANAGER
INDUSTRY: ENGINEERING LOCATION: UNITED STATES
Amanda O’Dell is a Corporate Sustainability Manager at Black & Veatch. She has worked as an engineer and sustainability specialist in the infrastructure industry for over eight
years. O’Dell develops and leads Black & Veatch’s corporate sustainability programme and ensures ESG goals are set, tracked and met. She provides leadership and diverse analytical support for Black & Veatch’s sustainability programmes and focuses on industry-specific approaches to implementing continuous improvement programmes in support of the companies’ sustainability commitments.
TITLE: ASSOCIATE VICE PRESIDENT AND DIRECTOR, ENVIRONMENTAL SOLUTIONS
INDUSTRY: ENGINEERING
LOCATION: UNITED STATES
Ajay Kasarabada is an Associate Vice President and Director, Environmental Solutions at Black & Veatch. Kasarabada has worked at the company for 23 years and brings in an ecosystem of experience, from planning to implementation, that comprises air quality and GHG emissions, distributed generation and renewable energy, electrification and decarbonisation road
mapping applied across various industrial sectors. The environmental solutions team’s vision is to bring their clients global experience and local knowledge to help create business value with innovative and right-sized solutions for their environmental, sustainability and
Cindy Wallis-Lage and Kristie Deiuliis of Black & Veatch on how resilience comes from an integrated approach to ESG Sustainability goes beyond ESG; it has become a staple for internal and external business operations. It is an ongoing process, one that relies on continuous outreach, education, and partnerships aligned with ESG goals.
As a trusted group of advisors and innovative thinkers, Black & Veatch’s approach to client support comes from
within the business as ESG takes precedence over all aspects of its operations.
“It's beyond just focusing on renewable energy and clean fuels as energy sources,” says Cindy Wallis-Lage, Executive Director, Sustainability and Resilience at Black & Veatch. “It also involves looking at water projects, broadband projects, smart cities, environmental projects and food production, such that we are holistically driving sustainability improvements.”
Sustainability is a corporate social responsibility, but resilience is something that companies can and should integrate into their operations. Black & Veatch offers its clients insights into how they can assess their value chains and make sustainable decisions in EPC with consideration for renewable energy and new technologies, all of which must integrate in alignment with sustainability principles to achieve costefficiency and long-term resilience.
“We have an incredibly strong value proposition and services and solutions that help our clients navigate the technology options before they commit to a path forward. An important role Black & Veatch plays in this exploration is to create a strategic and tactical fact base from which our clients can assess commercial viability, risk mitigation and opportunities to monetise their priorities,” says Kristie Deiuliis, Managing Director, Decarbonization Strategy & Planning at Black & Veatch.
The company has a key role to play in supporting its clients and devising its sustainability solutions in-house puts Black & Veatch in a great position to manage the onboarding and overall success. When it comes to making sustainable business decisions, Black & Veatch clients are made aware of the benefits of workforce alignment. This means alignment with their sustainability strategies and their ability to adopt new solutions to facilitate their company’s vision.
KRISTIE DEIULIIS MANAGING DIRECTORSTRATEGY & PLANNING, BLACK & VEATCH“We have an incredibly strong value proposition as well as services and solutions that help our clients navigate technologies”
“When you ask them to define sustainability, you will get many different answers because we all look at it through the lens of our own experiences,” says Wallis-Lage. To follow up, she explains that organisations must figure out how to “create a common understanding of what they’re trying to achieve at the high level, which is what I’m trying to make sure we’re doing at Black & Veatch.”
Black & Veatch emphasises and demonstrates the importance of a skills audit. Without the necessary skills in place within its clients’ organisations, implementing sustainability transformation will result in them being caught up at the first hurdle — meaning without the necessary skills in the workforce, they will struggle to put their visions in motion.
“To get people to align to sustainability goals, it is really important that we establish the purpose,” says Wallis-Lage.
“It involves an understanding of the ‘why’ and then making sure that we're providing all of the skill sets, knowledge and thought leadership that we need to help our clients achieve what they need.”
Over the next 12 months, Black & Veatch will help its clients in this area while leveraging new technologies to ensure alignment of focus across their teams and integrating sustainable principles into their everyday working lives.
Cindy Wallis-LageTITLE: EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
INDUSTRY: ENGINEERING
LOCATION: UNITED STATES
Cindy Wallis-Lage is an Executive Director at Black & Veatch. In September 2022, Wallis-Lage announced her retirement after 36 years of working for the company. She served as President of Black & Veatch’s water business and is a member of the board of directors. An active champion of water’s true value and its impact on sustainable communities, she has been focused on enterprise-wide client sustainability and resilience.
Wallis-Lage joined the company in 1986 and is well known in the industry
TITLE: MANAGING DIRECTOR - STRATEGY & PLANNING
INDUSTRY: ENGINEERING
LOCATION: UNITED STATES
Kristie Deiuliis is a Managing Director at Black & Veatch, leading decarbonisation strategy and planning initiatives. She is focused on business model transformation, investment strategies, regulatory impacts and technology implementation for Fortune 500 companies and energy asset owners/ operators across multiple industries. With 27 years in the energy industry, Deiuliis leads strategic initiatives, driving the development of economic policy,
for her expertise in the treatment and reuse of water and wastewater resources. Wallis-Lage has been involved in more than 100 projects globally in both the municipal and industrial sectors. She joined the Black & Veatch board of directors in 2012 and currently serves on the board of directors for the US Water Alliance and on the leadership Council for Water For People. WallisLage earned a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from Kansas State University and her master’s degree in environmental health engineering from the University of Kansas. She also serves on the Engineering Advisory Council at Kansas State University.
low-carbon fuels and technologies, and risk assessments for a broad range of global top-tier clients. Her experience spans energy industry domains, including wholesale and retail (regulated and competitive) markets, distributed energy resource business models, market entry and expansion strategies, and business case investment strategies for companies seeking to pivot or accelerate specific goals.
JC Alonzo of Black & Veatch explains why reactive sustainability is more costly than a forward-thinking approach
The built environment must become more sustainable. For this to happen, more consideration must be given to the design phase of every construction project. Then, design and construction firms can actively shape their industry's operations through a circular economy.
Climate change affects many facets of life, and the built environment is subject to increased risk of natural disasters. As a result, companies must first change their approach to consider the effects of building
design for efficiency, resiliency and social and economic impacts.
Organisations are often torn by the cost of sustainable development and stuck in the process of designing first and implementing sustainable initiatives later. Black & Veatch supports clients by encouraging a more proactive approach and puts responsible sourcing and design at the forefront of every project.
A reactive approach to sustainability costs time and money
Organisations struggle with implementation and timing of when to implement sustainability into their projects. JC Alonzo, Senior Environmental Sustainability Specialist at Black & Veatch, says when sustainable principles are applied at the beginning of a project to encourage
emissions reduction, localisation of material sourcing, and building energy efficiency, then long-term project costs are optimised.
“We help our clients mature. As their organisational impact awareness matures, they realise that they can incorporate environmental and resilience concerns into their project design and planning phases earlier to build better projects while simultaneously experiencing a minimal increase in project price,” Alonzo says.
Black & Veatch is committed to sharing this knowledge and helping clients preplan sustainability. Measurement against current and completed projects is one way of educating organisations on what they can
INDUSTRY: ENGINEERING LOCATION: UNITED STATES
JC Alonzo is a Senior Environmental Sustainability Specialist at Black & Veatch and aids clients with the implementation of environmental goals in sustainability, resiliency and comprehensive plans and programmes. Alonzo utilises a standards framework, Envision®, from the Institute of Sustainable Infrastructure, to integrate and measure sustainable indicators on infrastructure projects. He has led verified award-winning water, power and transportation projects through environmental impact discussions, planning, design and construction. In addition, Alonzo supports Black & Veatch’s internal sustainability programmes and works across the
As utilities around the world face the consequences of the climate crisis, Black & Veatch’s global advisory practice helped California’s San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E) establish an action plan to address the public and regulatory pressures driving governments, businesses and utilities alike to develop the most-viable pathways for economywide decarbonisation.
Black & Veatch provided technical advising, subject matter expertise, and economic and power market modelling services to SDG&E as that utility developed The Path to Net Zero: A Decarbonisation Roadmap for California to meet the state’s goal of achieving carbon neutrality by 2045.
The study’s creation can be broken down into two main portions followed by a third: demand-side modelling and supply-side modelling, followed by reliability testing. Modelling determined the cost-optimal mixture of technologies needed to satisfy the state’s increasing energy demand while meeting decarbonisation targets. This informed the plan for upgrades and development to the state’s infrastructure systems, which was tested multiple times against the industry standard for reliability to ensure it could hold up to real-world demands.
As SDG&E and California inch closer to their 2045 net-zero goals, this roadmap stands as a model for other utilities and states as they also work to upgrade power systems and lower emissions.
achieve — and it’s a clear goal for many of them — but to get to the heart of their goals, Black & Veatch targets ESG at the concept phase.
“Almost all of our clients have statements and reports that set out their goals and efforts, but few have mapped
all those goals to include their project impacts,” says Alonzo.
“We introduce them to Envision, an infrastructure rating tool we use to measure and track their resource use, to identify how they can cut their emissions and energy consumption, and then to focus on resilience both in the short- and long-term.”
Aligning projects to company ESG goals means reducing impact on specific classes of individuals, minimising the use of virgin natural resources, eliminating greenhouse gas emissions, and cutting the process of importing water. Also, it’s important to consider waste and the end-of-life procedure for materials as the circular economy influences project design.
“When organisations accept full responsibility for their impacts, I think we're going to see a hopeful, new normal,” says Alonzo. “While this doesn't necessarily end the world's problems, it will help us buy time to innovate and prepare for a future with fewer virgin resources.”
Maryline Daviaud Lewett from Black & Veatch provides her views on necessary developments in infrastructure and technology as we shift to e-mobility
The switch to battery-electric vehicles and fuel-cell technology is a global conversation right now, and both traditional organisations and newcomers in the transport industry are putting more resources into electrification as a strategy for sustainability. It’s important to understand that the effects of electric vehicles (EVs) apply to all industries beyond traditional automotive brands — much like the overarching topic of sustainability. Providing the necessary expertise to facilitate the switch for clients, Black & Veatch is working with clients to incorporate electrification into their daily
operations. All things are considered — including the challenges of long-distance transport on the ground, overseas and in the air — as well as the required infrastructure to support localised transport, which is transitioning towards a more systematic approach.
As Director of Business Development at Black & Veatch, Maryline Daviaud Lewett works with clients to advise on all aspects of transitioning to zero-emission vehicles, from financing projects to executing major infrastructure developments.
“We need to build the charging and clean fueling infrastructure to support the vehicles. Our clients are often surprised by how long that can take,” Daviaud Lewett says.
While electrification is paramount in the emissions crunch, the delayed delivery of EVs plays into the hands of developers as there is still work to be done before charging and infrastructure are ready for fully-electric transport.
“How long the infrastructure takes to build depends on the size of the hub and charging system, as well as how many hubs their fleets need. Eight-to-nine months is a minimum, ranging as long as 18 to 24 months. Access to power and adequate power supply are vital to EV charging
TITLE: DIRECTOR OF BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
INDUSTRY: ENGINEERING
LOCATION: UNITED STATES
Maryline Daviaud Lewett is a Director of Business Development at Black & Veatch and leads sales and partnerships in distributed infrastructure and sustainable transportation. Daviaud Lewett and her team have extensive experience in design and engineering, procurement and construction of electric vehicle charging infrastructure networks, fuel-cell vehicle filling station networks and behind-the-metre energy storage. She has over 20 years of experience in the cleantech, life sciences and software industries. Daviaud Lewett holds a master of business administration degree in sustainability management from the
In a time when data centres are multiplying rapidly—requiring significant water input while scarcity rises—developing technologies to mitigate water use in data centres is paramount. At the Port of Stockton in northern California, Nautilus Data Technologies’ (Nautilus) commercial floating watercooled data centre combines efficiency with resourcefulness in the use of its patented TRUE™ (Total Resource Usage Effectiveness) technology that mitigates wasted water and energy.
Black & Veatch conducted a third-party due diligence report and commissioning oversight for the seven-megawatt facility and verified that the cooling, electrical and machinery systems functioned as designed. By using recirculated water
from a nearby ocean, river or lake to cool the data centre environment, the water body becomes a heat sink. Therefore, the facility consumes no water, produces no wastewater, and requires no refrigerants or water treatment chemicals, cooling towers or computer room air handlers.
The technology uses less than one-third of the power that traditional computer room air-conditioning would use for cooling and has a low validated power utilisation effectiveness for a commercial data centre of its size. By siting the data centre on a barge, Nautilus also can reduce the facility footprint by up to 60%, and that modular build design allows Nautilus to deploy additional facilities in the same area, using the same connectivity and much of the backbone infrastructure.
COMMISSIONING FOR THE WORLD’S FIRST ZERO-WATER CONSUMPTION DATA CENTRE
sites and if not present, can take time to develop,” says Daviaud Lewett.
“More recently, material and procurement, in general, have experienced much longer lead times to get the necessary equipment on site.”
Taking care of electrification at the source Sourcing is a key factor in adopting alternative mobility methods. While the application of autonomous driving provides efficiency benefits, the underlying issue of decarbonisation is renewable energy. Sourcing renewable energy is a critical part of decarbonising the energy supply
chain and must be dealt with to ensure that charging is a truly sustainable solution. Alternatively, hydrogen shows major benefits for decarbonisation, particularly in heavy goods transport.
“We are looking at the future of zero emissions involving a mix of technologies,” says Daviaud Lewett. “There’s no single technology that will dominate; different technologies are applicable to different market segments.”
Technology is also a key enabler of decarbonisation, with applications in energy management and the distribution of fleet charging. Energy management through technology means reliance on automation and artificial intelligence (AI) to manage the vehicles on the road and their energy usage. Charge distribution is displayed through lastmile delivery and software solutions provide welcome benefits to logistics firms as they make the transition to electric.
Sustainability brings industries together in ways they never knew coincided. To make actionable progress toward fulfilling sustainability goals, businesses must also ensure partnerships are strong and targets are clear.
Organisations must consistently re-evaluate their supply chains to ensure that all emissions are measured and analysed, they account for all waste products, and that this data proves useful in design and planning of major infrastructure.
Through industry expertise, experience with first-of-a-kind projects with some of the world’s largest companies, and collaboration with stakeholders, Black & Veatch helps businesses reach operational goals and create an enduring sustainability framework.
Kelly Manthey's journey from ‘employee number one’ to Global CEO of leading digital transformation company Kin + Carta has been meteoric.
Manthey joined Kin + Carta (then Solstice) in 2006 after a decade at Accenture, along with former Kin + Carta Global CEO J Schwan. She took over as CEO of Solstice in 2018 which evolved into her current position as Group Chief Executive Officer for Kin + Carta, Americas in 2020.
Manthey was instrumental in building a growth-minded business with a strong, diverse, and progressive culture, accounting for 70% of Kin + Carta’s revenue, and growing the US headcount from 400 people when she took over to 1,100 today – not bad at all when you consider that growth was set against the backdrop of the pandemic.
In an exclusive interview with Sustainability magazine, Manthey shares her personal take on motherhood, the need for more women leaders (not just in tech), being a B Corp, and more.
Tell us about your 25-year career journey so far – what have been the highlights?
Too many to count! By far the best part of my journey is that a career in consulting has expanded my network faster than I would have in any other career. I’ve been able to partner with and serve a wide variety of businesses in a range of sectors solving their most strategic problems with emerging technologies. This work has introduced me to some of the most innovative and strategic minds. From each individual I’ve met along the way, I’ve learned something new. If you have a restless, curious mind like mine, this is gold.
Your time with Kin + Carta began in 2006 as employee number one and now you are global CEO – did you ever imagine that would happen?
I started in the business that became the foundation for Kin + Carta Americas’ business. When I started I was just hoping we’d keep finding interesting work, build
Kelly Manthey, CEO of digital transformation company Kin + Carta, shares her journey from first employee to Group CEO in a tech industry dominated by men
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Through the expertise and creative power of our people, DuPont Mobility & Materials is innovating solutions to challenges aligned to the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Plus, we are collaborating with customers and the supply chain to help industries transform toward a low carbon and circular future.
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strong client relationships, and maintain a culture we were all proud to be a part of. But a funny thing happens when you lean into opportunity. We did do all of those things I mentioned but as new doors opened I kept walking through them. When you are presented with things that are interesting and see challenges as opportunities to grow personally and professionally more of these doors open.
What makes Kin + Carta different from other digital transformation consultancies? What makes you the best? Two things set us apart – our focus on client enablement and our focus on continuous innovation. Enablement in the form of coaching and empowering our clients alongside working together. And innovation in the form of being ahead of where technology is going. It’s not just technology but also the responsible use of technology. Operating as a certified B Corp means we bring a sustainability, accessibility, and social responsibility lens to the solutions we partner with our clients to create.
I see you list ‘Mom’ as one of your ongoing roles, is it still harder for women to build a long-term career with family commitments than it is for men?
I think it’s hard for anyone to give as much as they’d like to all the things – career, family, friends, and self – at the same time. Everyone’s situation is different, I can only speak from my own experience. I talk to a lot of women in our business and the theme is the same – a sense of disappointing others – a colleague, a spouse, a child, themselves because ‘good enough’ wasn’t
“Balance is a myth, focus on the highest priority that day (career, family, self, friends), ask for help for the rest, and settle for good enough in the other areas in the short-term”
good enough in their mind. I feel it too sometimes. As it relates specifically to being a working parent, it’s been my experience that navigating family commitments are a constant negotiation and renegotiation with first yourself some days on what the highest priority is and with a partner/spouse/ support network to make it work. And that’s assuming you have a partner and the flexibility to do so.
Women, especially, put a lot of pressure on themselves to find this mythical balance or beat themselves up internally for not being able to be all the things people need from us. Balance is a myth, focus on the highest priority that day (career, family, self, friends), ask for help for the rest, and settle for good enough in the other areas in the short-term.
of our workforce are female in Kin + Carta Europe
Much is made of the need to have more female CEOs – why do you think this is important and why should women aspire to the role? I subscribe wholeheartedly to the saying ‘you can’t be what you can’t see’. It’s the women I saw throughout my youth, into college, and early in my career that showed me what was possible. When you see someone who is a reflection of you or what you hope to be, it builds confidence and gives you a sense that there is a path. This is why diversity in business and leadership roles is so important.
Do you think the role of the CEO is changing, and is it becoming more suited to women? While I do think that opportunities for women CEOs are gradually increasing, truth be told, I have never felt the role to be ‘unsuited’ for women!
That said, I definitely think the role of CEOs is evolving. In the past few years,
we’ve seen radical changes to the ways in which we approach work, manifested in new approaches like Work-From-Home or hybrid work arrangements, or even The Great Resignation and ‘quiet quitting’. This means today’s CEO needs to be a lot more tuned into his or her employees’ needs and requirements. Empathy, therefore, is one of the most important tools in a modern leader’s toolkit.
Of course, balance is essential – business leaders can easily err on the side of caution when it comes to empathy and become too ‘fluffy’. True empathy is about seeing and understanding – and honesty. Saying to your people, “I see you, I understand you”. It’s about leaders being candid and giving permission to your people to be who they are, to say “this is me”. Ultimately, it’s about creating safe spaces for employees.
Another change is the general pace of a CEO’s work life. A common adage in business is that you shouldn’t ever sit still. If you stop, you’re dead. However, sometimes it is as important to slow down
Kelly Manthey led Kin + Carta’s Americas business through the Great Resignation while still ensuring the company earned multiple accolades for Best Workplace, including Fast Company’s Best Workplaces for Innovators, Consulting Magazine’s Best Large Firms to Work For, and Fortune Magazine’s Best Places to Work.
She is a contributor to Forbes, founder of the Women in Technology forum at Kin + Carta and a member of the Board of Directors for both Skills for Chicagoland’s Future and Illinois Technology Association. She has also been named in The Consulting Report’s Top 25 Women Leaders in IT Services, Crain’s Chicago Business Tech 50, and is an active advocate for inclusion, diversity, and raising the visibility of women in the technology sector.
“Today’s CEO needs to be a lot more tuned into his or her employees’ needs and requirements. Empathy, therefore, is one of the most important tools in a modern leader’s toolkit”
KELLY MANTHEY CEO, KIN + CARTA
to speed up – leading to a more sustainable competitive pace.
These are unprecedented times with a recession on the horizon, inflation, war, and cultural and political upheaval adding to the challenges faced by business leaders. This speed awareness becomes critical during such times when CEOs are walking a tightrope. By slowing down, you are able to take a step back, reconsider priorities, have a better understanding of what is in front of you and adjust accordingly. Then you can move at pace again but in a more controlled and sustainable way.
How does Kin + Carta address the talent shortage? How are you retaining and attracting talent? Our people are the lifeblood of our business. We put great focus on evolving and bringing our Employee Value Proposition to life so that we are attracting, training, retaining, and growing the best talent. We are committed to remaining nimble and responsive to adapt our policies that fill gaps for our people, like we did with the recent roll-out of our
medical travel allowance and transitioning at work policies.
Our B Corp certification is a great talent attractor. More and more people are looking to work for a socially responsible business that can help make a difference in the world.
We are also at the front end of innovation and our employees have the opportunity to do interesting work, with emerging tech and for great brands on a daily basis. That will always be attractive.
The company wins many awards for workplace culture, how much focus have you placed on that, and how is the workplace changing? We are a people business, so we place a strong focus on culture. We foster social bonds at various dimensions of the business, giving people many sources of ‘belonging’ – the location they live, the project they are on, the practice they are in, the affinity groups they choose to join, the social channels they subscribe to (i.e run club, animal lovers, parents). We communicate via Slack predominantly, but we encourage
“Our B Corp certification is a great talent attractor. More and more people are looking to work for a socially responsible business that can help make a difference in the world”
KELLY MANTHEY CEO, KIN + CARTA
getting together live – key meetings, social events, and philanthropy.
You are a certified B Corp – how has that affected the business in terms of how you operate? Has it made you more successful, and what does success look like?
We strive for balance not perfection. Certified B Corporations work toward reduced inequality, lower levels of poverty, a healthier environment, stronger communities, and the creation of highquality jobs with dignity and purpose. As businesses, B corps consider not just shareholder value, but the impact on all stakeholders — employees, customers, society, and the environment.
We manage the business to a triple bottom line – to strike a balance between People, Profit, and Planet. We are first and foremost a digital transformation consultancy and we derive our own success through the success of our customers. We
manage the decisions we make as business through the lens of People, Profit, and Planet so that we can use our business as a platform for greater change in the world.
What are the downsides of being a B Corp? B Corp has made us rethink many of our processes and forced us to make difficult changes. However, we don’t see this as a downside. The B Corp guidelines have pushed us to challenge our thinking, uphold higher standards, and drive more accountability throughout our organisation.
The company won the Microsoft US “Sustainability Changemaker” Partner of the Year Award for 2022, beating 800 nominations from across the US. How important is that recognition? It’s always great to receive recognition for the positive impact we are making. We look at these awards as an opportunity to not only recognise what we are doing but also to be
increase in the representation of our ethinic minority Kin in the US.
“We build mission critical applications for some of the most recognisable brands in the world. Our capabilities live at the centre of data, technology, and digital experiences. When speed, depth of expertise, and agility matter, we partner with clients to help them innovate, modernise and optimise existing applications, and enable our clients by giving them the tools, modern delivery practices, and teams to scale.”
an example for other businesses. With more awards and businesses earning recognition to point to in this space that says that there is real momentum in driving change and shows other businesses what is possible.
What is the best piece of advice you have received on your career journey?
Early in my career I received advice from one of my managers at the time – that if I had a seat in a meeting I should use it. I learned from them to be deliberate and to play an active role in conversations, to add value and not just take up space or assume a notetaking role. I have paid that advice forward to every individual I interact with ever since.
If you could go back and change one decision you have made as CEO, what would it be?
If I could go back, I would be myself sooner. When I became a Group CEO of Kin + Carta Americas, I spent my first few months trying to act and lead in the same way my predecessor would. This generated some friction with employees as they could see my leadership wasn’t completely genuine. And they were right! If I had been more authentic from the start and leaned on my own leadership style faster, it would have been a smoother transition for everyone. In my new role as Global CEO, I have learned to trust myself and lead with my own authentic style.
“Two things set us apart – our focus on client enablement and our focus on continuous innovation”
KELLY MANTHEY CEO, KIN + CARTA
PRODUCED BY: LEWIS VAUGHAN WRITTEN BY: GEORGIA WILSON
Acelebrated pioneer in the sustainable development of ICT services, CSC is committed to promoting climate targets across its entire operations. As such, through supporting the green transition, reducing its carbon footprint, and achieving positive green growth, CSC aims to minimise the environmental impact caused by its activities.
The company is working in collaboration with UPM and AMD enhancing its data centre in Kajaani/Finland to offer worldclass energy efficiency. “The key to energy efficiency is for all the energy consumed by data centres to be spent on meaningful activities i.e. computing power with low PUE. And the waste heat generated by the DC operator is used sustainably. This also lowers the energy cost significantly,”
Jukka-Pekka Partanen, Hannu Havanka, and Andrew Dieckmann discuss their collaboration in Kajaani to create a safe, secure, and energy-efficient ecosystem
explains Jukka-Pekka Partanen, Data Center Ecosystem Director in CSC - IT Center for Science.
A modern business park in Kajaani, based on an old UPM paper mill, hosts more than 40 customers including data centres. Kajaani Data Center Program has ambitions to further grow its customer base with both national and international clients.
“We want to create a synergy of benefits within the ecosystem for the data centres and the companies related to them. We also want to expand and deepen the knowledge on invocation of data, machine learning, and artificial intelligence (AI), as well as support Kajaani and the wider Kainuu region’s visibility, reputation work, internationalisation and business,” explains Partanen.
Founded in 1971, CSC - IT Center for Science is a Finnish centre of expertise in information technology. It is owned by the Finnish state and higher education institutions. CSC’s mission is to provide high-quality ICT expert services – internationally – for higher education institutions, research institutes, culture, public administration, and enterprises.
CSC’s Kajaani Data Center Program was created to attract new national and/or international data centre customers to Kajaani, as well as create synergy benefits as part of its ecosystem for the data centres; expand and deepen its knowledge on invocation of data, machine learning and artificial intelligence; and support Kainuu’s visibility, reputation work, internationalisation and business.
Founded in 1996, UPM is a large Finnish forest industry company. UPM provides a variety of products made from wood. Due to the structural changes in paper making, many of the organisation’s paper mill facilities are
empty. UPM aims to implement new ways of operating on these premises. UPM Is dedicated to creating a future beyond fossils.
While its core business isn’t real estate, after closing its paper mill activities, UPM has grown dedicated to developing its real estate into locations suitable for other usages.
Founded in 1969, AMD has driven innovation over 50 years in high-performance computing, graphics and visualisation technologies–the building blocks for gaming, immersive platforms and data centres.
AMD employees are focused on building leadership high-performance and adaptive products that push the boundaries of what is possible. Billions of people, leading Fortune 500 businesses, and cutting-edge scientific research institutions around the world rely on AMD technology daily to improve how they live, work, and play. For more information about how AMD is enabling today and inspiring tomorrow, visit the AMD (NASDAQ: AMD) website, blog, Facebook and Twitter pages.
Creating a safe, secure, and energy-efficient ecosystem
Working collaboratively, CSC has developed a strong partnership with UPM and AMD to develop a safe, secure and energy-efficient data centre ecosystem to Kajaani.
“AMD believes strongly in environmental sustainability and energy efficiency improvement efforts. We have announced an ambitious goal to achieve a 30 times increase in energy efficiency for AMD processors and accelerators from 2020-2025,“ says Andrew Dieckmann, Corporate VP & GM for the Data Center GPU Business Unit at AMD. “We are also dedicated to creating a future beyond
COMPANY: CSC
LOCATION: KAJAANI, KAINUU, FINLAND
Jukka-Pekka Partanen works at CSC - IT Center Ecosystems and is based in Kajaani. He has been at CSC over 10 years and, before that, spent almost 20 years at Nokia Mobile Phones.
Partanen has been involved in the Finnish data centre industry for the past 10 years, being one of the founds of the Finnish Data Center Forum association and an active board member until recently. In that role, Partanen has worked with a range of colleagues on the global research infrastructure scene, as well as with major international data centre operators and investors.
Most recently, Partanen has been focusing on growing the Kajaani Data Center Ecosystem, where LUMI - one of the most powerful supercomputers in the world - is leading the way. The Ecosystem programme is supported by the city of Kajaani, the Kainuu Region, and local partners.
“The waste heat generated by the DC operator is used sustainably. This also lowers the energy cost significantly”
ANDREW DIECKMANN CORPORATE VP & GM FOR THE DATA CENTER GPU BUSINESS UNIT, AMD.
TITLE: CORPORATE VP & GM FOR THE DATA CENTER GPU BUSINESS UNIT
COMPANY: AMD
LOCATION: GREATER SACRAMENTO
As general manager of the Data Center GPU team, Andrew is responsible for the overall business management, Product Management and Strategy, Product Marketing, Business Development and Business Operations teams. Andrew has spent his 20+ year professional career defining and building products for the data centre market, including compute, memory and storage solutions that help to power many of the leading cloud services and data centre technology platforms. The data centre GPU team at AMD is focused on providing the world’s leading accelerator solutions, powering the world’s biggest AI clusters and HPC supercomputers enabling new scientific discovery and AI advancements that will provide tools, capabilities and innovation previously not thought possible.
“AMD believes strongly in environmental sustainability and energy efficiency improvement efforts”
fossil fuels. Sustainability is at the core of our company,” adds Hannu Havanka, Vice President of Real Estate in UPM Kymmene Oyj.
As part of their joint efforts on this front, the three are supporting the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking, which harnesses and develops top-of-the-range supercomputers to boost Europe's scientific excellence and industrial strength, and to support the digital transformation of the EU's economy.
One such supercomputer is located at Kajaani. “LUMI was ranked third on the Green500 list, published on 30 May 2022. The supercomputer was built on world-class environmental sustainability and costefficiency criteria. It helps the European ICT sector to drive the greener, more costefficient operations necessary to reach the EU’s ambitious climate targets and pave the way for the green transition. With the smallest possible environmental burden and lowest cost for European taxpayers, LUMI is beyond compare,” says Partanen.
The LUMI system leverages a coherent CPU and GPU interconnect using AMD Infinity Fabric™ technology, which offers high-speed, low-latency interconnect, a unified memory for applications and boosts efficiency.
“Applications using HPL code leverage this coherent interconnect to run the serial portions of the code in the CPU, with the parallel portions of the code on GPUs ensuring an efficient use of both the high performance of the AMD EPYC™ CPU cores and AMD Instinct™ GPU compute units. This also helps intelligently manage the data movement, thus simplifying programmability and easing the adoption of GPUs for HPC applications,” explains Dieckmann.
He continues: “The LUMI system also has a downstream NIC directly attached to each
of the Instinct MI250X GPUs that operates at 25Gbps, permitting low-latency messaging from GPUs to off-node, helping to overlap computation and communication, thus efficiently using the system and improving overall performance. These innovations are critical to deliver a system that can deliver 152PF of peak and 62.7 GFlop/W, achieving the #3 spots in both the Top500 and Green500.”
Partanen adds: “The LUMI supercomputer is a really unique data centre investment in Kajaani. It is a top modern and efficient project that was completed in the agreed timeframe and budget. Kajaani is a proven location suitable for data centres and data centre ecosystems. As a proof, LUMI data centre has already won three international competitions in the most innovative project category.”
HANNU HAVANKA
TITLE: VICE PRESIDENT REAL ESTATE COMPANY: UPM LOCATION: VANTAA, UUSIMAA, FINLAND
Hannu Havanka is the Vice President Real Estate of UPM Kymmene Oyj, a Finnish-based listed forest company acting globally. Mr. Havanka is an experienced realestate professional and has, through his career, worked as a developer, investor and corporate real estate in global perspective including investments and workplace development projects.
“We are also dedicated to creating a future beyond fossil fuels. Sustainability is at the core of our company”
HANNU HAVANKA VICE PRESIDENT REAL ESTATE, UPM KYMMENE OYJ
A unique data centre ecosystem with world-class solutions and services, CSC, AMD and UPM strongly believe in the capabilities of the Kajaani site and the opportunities it can provide to drive business growth.
“We have a proven data centre ecosystem at Kajaani. There is plenty of room for those in the data centre business sector to grow in our park facilities, where we offer world-leading speed-to-market delivery – thanks to the brownfield site – and a smooth permitting and planning process,” says Havanka.
As both interest and visibility grow in the Kajaani area, CSC is dedicated to growing businesses related to its programme, finding new operators that can benefit from hosting a part of their footprint in the Kainuu region, Finland.
Such benefits and opportunities of operating in the Kainuu region include:
• Cost efficiency - inexpensive electricity and reimbursement from waste heat utilisation.
• World-class references - such as the LUMI EuroHPC project.
• One of the most eco-effective data centres in the world - small carbon footprints and surplus amounts of renewable energy are in increasing demand.
• Data - extremely effective connection.
• Supply of HPC environments - CSC has strong knowledge alongside a track record of reliability and excellence in this area.
• Unique ecosystem - offering professional partner expertise, dedicated education, and RDI.
“We want everyone to understand the opportunities and benefits that can be gained from housing their data centres at our base in Kajaani. Our data centre ecosystem with the LUMI EuroHPC supercomputer as its public reference significantly strengthens Finland's – and especially Kainuu’s – role in the European and global high-performance computing ecosystem,” says Partanen.
He concludes: “At the same time, it will strengthen the national and international status of Kainuu’s ICT and Data Center services. Kainuu now has the opportunity to take advantage of the new prospects and build its data centre ecosystem to a new improved level. Now is the perfect time to attract new operators, to establish their presence as the world’s best data centre location.”
CSC:
AMD: UPM:
Volkswagen is the latest major manufacturer to launch a flying car concept, but is this mobility technology sustainable, and who would use them?
WRITTEN BY: SCOTT BIRCHThe original 1982 sci-fi classic Blade Runner was set in a dystopian ‘future’ of 2017. In that movie, flying cars abound, darting between neon signs and soaring skyscrapers that would put Vegas and Dubai to shame.
The reality of urban mobility in 2022 is very different. Not only has air and land transport changed little since the 1960s, we are still highly reliant on fossil fuels for our daily commute.
Yes EVs are taking off, but not literally. That is, unless you follow the handful of projects that have moved beyond prototype into workable, autonomous, flying taxis. And while it is easy to dismiss some of the hundreds of projects as
gimmicks destined to fail, there are some serious multinational players entering the flying fray.
Like Volkswagen. Recently the world’s second largest automobile manufacturer (it held top position until overtaken by Toyota in 2020) unveiled the Flying Tiger –a drone-like electric Vertical Take-Off and Landing (eVTOL) vehicle from the group’s China division.
“The launch of this stunning validation model is the first of many remarkable milestones on our exciting journey towards urban air travel, and a perfect example of our ‘From China, For China’ mission,” says Dr Stephan Wöllenstein, CEO of Volkswagen Group China.
The company says it will pitch Flying Tiger as a premium product for high-net-worth customers in China with a penchant for technology who wish to use the aircraft for VIP air shuttle services. In many regards, it’s a straight replacement for a helicopter – but could these autonomous, pilot-less drones really replace the motor car? And if they did, what impact would that have on the panet?
Airbus – the world’s largest aircraft manufacturer in terms of revenue and number of deliveries – certainly sees a place for these eVTOLs, and has done more than most when it comes to a proof of concept. In fact, Airbus has quietly spent years researching and developing not one
but two flying demonstrators (CityAirbus and Vahana), and is now working on a new CityAirbus NextGen. This fully electric vehicle is equipped with fixed wings, a V-shaped tail, and eight electrically powered propellers. It is designed to carry up to four passengers in zero-emissions flight for multiple applications, has a range of 80km and top speed of 120km/h.
A recent report from McKinsey entitled Advanced Air Mobility in 2030 discusses the future of air mobility, and the potential for these flying electric vehicles to replace taxis, not just helicopters.
One of those report authors, Robin Riedel, says we will have aircraft that are much smaller than today’s aircraft, and they will be much more accessible. They’re going to land in your neighbourhoods. You might take a short car ride or a micro mobility scooter ride to get to the vertiport, and you’ll go through there just like you do at a taxi stand today. You’ll get on an aircraft that will take
“While electric flying taxis, and air shuttles, are a mid mile, not door to door, they are very energy inefficient compared to other midmile electric options”
GARY VERMAAK CONSULTANT AND ECOSYSTEM DEVELOPER
you quite rapidly across the city or to the next city or anywhere within a 100- or 150mile radius.
Could these overgrown kids toys really change the way that we move around our towns and cities?
Gary Vermaak is an advisor, consultant and ecosystem developer focusing on renewable / sustainable energy, logistics, mining and mobility. A self-proclaimed futurist and practical climate warrior, he says he aims to find the best available, commercial technologies to solve real problems. He also serves as the Secretariat, and Africa Chapter Director, for the Drone Logistics Ecosystem, with members in 21 countries.
“It's unlikely that regulators will permit the carrying of passengers over urban areas any time soon, other than in very controlled flight lanes over open areas like rivers or rights of way,” he says.
“While there are no pedestrians and fewer obstacles in the air, flying in the ‘concrete jungle’ poses similar challenges due to wind channels and turbulence caused by large buildings, not to mention the risks of bird strikes. One must also remember that unlike an autonomous road or rail vehicle, an aircraft cannot be brought to a controlled stop by cutting the power or applying emergency brakes.”
Regardless of the restrictions and regulatory hurdles (which are going to be far more stringent in the US and Europe than in other geographies), just how sustainable are these vehicles anyway? Many of the manufacturers are positioning them as a sustainable, zero-emissions solution to road cars, taxis, or even trains and buses for short intercity journeys.
“While electric flying taxis, and air shuttles, are a mid mile, not door to door, they are very energy inefficient compared to other midmile electric options, like trains and buses,” says Vermaak. “They will complement, not compete with, getting people out of their (autonomous) EVs. For urban air mobility (UAM), trips under 100km, even a winged 4/5 seated eVTOL, is less efficient than a Tesla Model 3 per passenger mile.”
One of the projects with a longer pedigree and backing from Google co-founder Larry Page, is Kittyhawk. This is a single-person, remotely-piloted electric aircraft that hopes to make flying taxis affordable, ubiquitous and eco-conscious. Founder Sebastian Thrun aims to build an aircraft that can be mass produced at automotive scale and cost, and the H2 can fly up to 100 miles on a single charge, at 180mph.
As Kittyhawk says, “if you want the greenest electric aviation measured in power used per mile, be small, have a wing, don’t have an onboard pilot and land anywhere. That’s the Kittyhawk model!”.
Vermaak comments that while the single seater Kittyhawk claims to be more efficient than a Tesla Model S, it would not be more efficient than a comparable EV, such as an electric motorbike.
“The technology will keep improving and we are certain to see the first autonomous civilian cargo aircraft operations in Europe and the US, and we may see the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) allowing commercial passenger flying taxi operations in dedicated UAM flight lanes in some Chinese cities,” concludes Vermaak, while adding that public perception will be a significant barrier to uptake.
That may be true, but consider these facts. The aviation industry has a target to reach net-zero emissions by 2050, but there are currently no commercially available methods to do this. In 2019 the sector produced around 1Gt of CO2e, accounting for 2% of annual global CO2 emissions. That number is set to more than double by 2050.
While the answer to how the aviation industry meets the public’s insatiable appetite for travel while meeting net-zero targets is a multi-layered one, UAM could provide a slice of the solution.
“The technology will keep improving”
GARY VERMAAK CONSULTANT AND ECOSYSTEM DEVELOPER
72 October 2022 WRITTEN BY: JOSEPHINE WALBANK
PRODUCED BY: LEWIS VAUGHAN
The drive towards net-zero CO2 has ignited innovation across every industry sector, but none more so than the world’s data centres.
Today, the dual demands of high performance and improved sustainability standards mean the risks for data centres are higher than ever, as those that do not match the pace of the rest risk being left behind.
In conversation with David Craig, the CEO of Iceotope, we discussed how Iceotope’s cooling technologies offer a long-term, seamless aid to sustainability targets.
Readily scalable, holistic solutionswhat Iceotope brings to the cooling market Iceotope’s precision immersion cooling solutions are a prime example of data centre technologies aligning with the ever-expanding and ever-changing nature of the industry.
“I would describe our difference as: we definitely set out to understand the customer’s problem and create a solution that fits,” says Craig.
“If you look at the liquid cooling space today, there are two very dominant technologies in cold plates and tank immersion. Our approach was to say, ‘This cannot just be a technology; this must be a solution that is scalable and serviceable’.
“So, by being in racks and chassis, we fit customers’ integrator models, and we're incredibly serviceable – actually achieving slightly better serviceability than air cooling.”
Iceotope’s high-performance cooling solutions are precisely engineered to help data centres achieve the dual demand of rapid growth done sustainably
Alongside this, the technology also offers a simple, efficient way for data centres to improve their sustainability standards.
“We use a fraction of the raw materials, and we use a fraction of the amount of dielectric coolants – it's cheaper, it's simpler, it's lighter. We don't need to worry about spills, we have superior thermal performance, and we’re able to deliver a better holistic performance to the customer overall.”
Craig explains how Iceotope’s technology makes heat management infinitely easier.
“Today, everything to do with heat in computers is a problem to manage. And actually, adopting our technology removes that altogether, because you're not really cooling anymore. What you're actually doing is capturing heat. So, computers run better, they run in more places, they run more inexpensively, but also, you can do useful things with heat, depending on where you are.
“Fundamentally, what we have done is deliver a scalable, serviceable, deployable
“ I think this is one of those times that occurs once in a generation, where incrementalism becomes potentially quite dangerous”
solution which – by being able to retrofit and scale down to one, as well as up to many –means that the customer doesn't have to go for this ‘all or nothing’ type of approach.”
For Craig, we are only at the cusp of the change that the data centre industry will witness. He asserts that, in the very near future, the usual quick-fix air cooling methods will not be able to keep pace with the technology being deployed.
“I genuinely think that, in five years’ time, we will be in the midst of an avalanche of change. People will be accelerating towards those more holistic understandings and solutions – and customers will be driving that demand much more significantly.
“The young generation, who really care about sustainability, will be budget holders.”
TITLE: CEO LOCATION: ILKLEY, ENGLAND
David Craig is CEO of Iceotope. Having worked his way up through Unisys and IBM in global procurement roles, he moved on to lead the commercial integration of Prudential Assurance and Scottish Amicable. Moving on from the merger to turnaround a leading British refrigeration company and start a consultancy, which he sold three later to Amey. He was then invited to join a late 1990s tech boom disaster, which then became Scotland’s third
As the younger generations rise to positions of higher influence, ESG as an industry priority will only increase. By this point, as Craig asserts, the companies that have not successfully met these standards will struggle to survive, simply because they waited too long to innovate.
Sustainability and high performance - the competitive edge of immersion cooling As you can imagine, an instrumental factor driving Iceotope’s technological innovation is sustainability. Iceotope’s step away from air cooling has allowed it to achieve green standards that knock its competitors out of the water.
“Everything in data centres, today, has been designed to be cooled by air.
“As a result, it's pretty low density and horrifically inefficient – servers typically run at pretty low utilisation rates to prevent them from throttling. So, they use up large amounts of land, as well as huge amounts of electricity and water resources.”
In comparison, Iceotope’s technology can improve environmental performance across a number of key areas.
“If you just think about data centres, if our technology was deployed across the majority of the industry, we would reduce the usage of billions of litres of water. The industry consumes enough water to hydrate 10% of the world's population today – that could be returned to people who could drink it.
“However, the impact becomes broader when you step right outside it. If the whole industry got about 30% more energy efficient, you're dealing with the levels of 50MT-of-carbon-a-year reduction.”
To that end, Iceotope’s technologies deliver sustainable cooling in adaptable, bespoke and highly practical solutions. They offer cooling solutions that can be tailored to meet each site’s specific needs, balancing sustainability with optimal performance.
“We have a whole set of benefits that the technology itself delivers: less space, less cost, less energy, and less water – and people get that.
“The key thing that we do to help is actually engage with, listen to and deliver the solutions that they need, as opposed to saying, ‘This is what we've got, here's your fridge, where would you like it? It’s white’. Instead of trying to bend them to us, we are bending us to them.”
“When you do that, you are much more aligned with the customer. It means that we listen to them, and we adopt their thinking into what we develop.”
Improving cooling solutions may sound like a small step, but alleviating the restrictions imposed by air cooling can reap huge rewards. It promises to not only help data centres achieve a more efficient way of
“
I really think there is a moral case for growth, but we have to conduct growth in a moral way”
operating, but to drive higher performance across countless global industries.
“As businesses start to understand how much cheaper and more effective life can be in a chassis-based liquid cooling world, they will accelerate towards it. You paint a picture of a world in which you are using a quarter of the physical space to do your processing, plus half of the energy and virtually no water.”
Beyond the immediate benefits that this will bring in terms of sustainability and business costs, adopting advanced cooling solutions also has the power to transform the way that data centres are run, modelled and implemented, in an increasingly technologically-advanced world.
“If your processes are completely silent or you're not deafening your staff, you can run data centres in city centres. You can run them on the 33rd floor of an office block. You can transform the type of land that you use – using more brownfield than greenfield – fibre can be where the people are, and the data can be processed as close to people as possible.”
As well as the practical advantages, this shift opens up huge possibilities for data and its utilisation.
“We can accelerate the rate and pace at which we adopt AI and those kinds of technologies. And, if you think about the onset from there, adopting AI in healthcare will massively enhance the rates of survival and early diagnosis; it will massively reduce the amount of time that nurses waste on triage and A&E.”
And that’s just one example. This technology can enhance all industries, expanding their capabilities, increasing their efficiencies and making our vision of smart cities a reality.
“
In five years’ time, the young generation who really care about sustainability will be budget holders. And I think you'll see a whole set of people struggling to survive, because they just waited too long to innovate”
“The more that we can transform perceptions of high-performance computing from a wacky thing in the corner to a mainstream high performance that’s powering smart cities, autonomous vehicles, advanced healthcare, advanced retail, then you start to really move forward.”
Alongside this, another benefit of Iceotope’s technology is that servers can be made much smaller than conventional air coolants.
“If they're much smaller, they're also much cheaper with fewer precious metals,
fewer raw materials, fewer component placements, and fewer inventory movements,” Craig explains.
“Actually, the whole supply chain becomes much simpler and much cheaper, while also adding value and margins back in for those who make the devices.”
According to Craig, data centres at large continue to use a completely extractive model.
Iceotope’s cooling solutions achieve up to 40% less CO2 emissions 96% less water 40% less power usage (per kW of ITE power)
“Most of what has been done is quite incremental – and that's understandable, because there's a lot of risk in the business; you don't want your data centre to fail or to go down, and changes are expensive.”
“It’s totally understandable that you have that kind of constraint sitting there. But I think this is one of those times that occurs once in a generation, where incrementalism becomes potentially quite dangerous, in the sense of actually what the impact could be on our competitiveness. Because there is no
DAVID CRAIG ICEOTOPE TECHNOLOGIES“
You cannot cost-reduce your way to success. You have to manage costs carefully, but if you're just cutting, you won’t have the space and time for innovating. And it's the innovators that drive things forward”
doubt that ESG is going to be a very, very strong factor in the future.”
In short, adopting sustainable technologies is no longer a choice.
“There's a rising generation of people half my age and less, who really passionately care about the environment. They will be making buying decisions and they will be consumers. And I think they will hold greenwashers to account.
The global drive for sustainability –and the responsiveness of the global data centre industry – has effectively set a pace of change. If not followed, data centres are risking nothing less than the future of their business.
“If we stay in this incrementalist, safe world where we're not joining the dots, it's a dangerous place. Joining the dots and grabbing that vision is what the companies who’ll make a serious impact on the future will be playing towards.”
So, as we look to a hugely promising future for data centres and their increasing role within economies, businesses and societies, Craig has high hopes that the demand for innovation will actually make data centres a solution to aid the world’s net-zero targets.
“I really think there is a moral case for growth, but we have to conduct growth in a moral way.
“We have an obligation to go beyond the balance sheet and do these things because they will make fabulous, fabulous differences to our future. So more technology, moving faster, please. And I think that's why those who remain afraid to change will be caught in a set of perfect storms.”
Ageism in the workplace is not only prejudice, it damages businesses through lack of diversity. Three experts share their insights and how to tackle ageism
WRITTEN BY: SCOTT BIRCH
With organisations at pains to showcase their DE&I credentials, there remains one area of discrimination that is only expected to get worse as recession hits – ageism.
The forgotten factor when it comes to workplace diversity, older workers can expect to be hit by a triple whammy as the economic climate toughens.
As companies look to trim salaries, it is often the typically higher paid, more experienced staff that are the first to be fired. Secondly, this same age group are also the last to be hired – with companies instead taking advantage of hungry graduates desperate to get a foot on the corporate ladder. And thirdly, with digital transformation accelerated by a decade during the pandemic, often older workers find themselves lacking the skills expected from prospective employers who have seen their own goalposts shift.
Companies that pursue this strategy are not only missing out on the diversity benefits of a multi-generational team, but also risk breaking the law (Denmark is the latest country to adopt anti-ageism regulations when it comes to recruitment).
We spoke to three ageism in the workplace experts to get their take on the challenges and also advice on how companies can benefit.
A modern network must be able to respond easily, quickly and flexibly to the growing needs of today’s digital business. Must provide visibility & control of applications, users and devices on and off the network and Intelligently direct traffic across the WAN. Be scalable and automate the process to provide new innovative services. Support IoT devices and utilize state-of-the-art technologies such as real-time analytics, ML and AI. And all these must be provided with maximum security and minimum cost.
This is the power that brings the integration of two cloud managed platforms, Cisco Meraki and Cisco Umbrella. This integration is binding together the best of breed in cloud-managed networking and Security. cisco.com cisco CiscoSecure CiscoSecure
Carl Honoré is a writer, broadcaster and two-time TED speaker. Published in 35 languages, his books on the Slow Movement and ageism have landed on bestseller lists around the world.
Recognising a gap in the market for a brand that answers the call of the ‘betyour-ass-I-can’ over-50s, Lyndsey Simpson set up 55/Redefined to fly the flag for those who may be getting older but have no intention of slowing down.
Is age the forgotten factor when it comes to workplace diversity?
CH: Definitely. We've gone a long way towards embracing people of different races, religions, genders and sexual orientations. But ageism remains rife in the workplace.
Older employees are routinely passed over for promotion, discarded first in hard times or fobbed off with unfulfilling work. Job interviews are harder to come by after you hit middle age.
Mark Zuckerberg once said “young people are just smarter” and nobody batted an eyelid.
LS: 100%. For the last 15 years, the diversity, equity & inclusion movement has gathered significant pace, but the mechanism that employers have focused on to generate change, is targeted measures
Rachel Lankester is the founder of Magnificent Midlife, an online hub celebrating and empowering women aged 40+. She is the author of Magnificent Midlife: Transform Your Middle Years, Menopause and Beyond and host of the Magnificent Midlife podcast.
around specific niche characteristics such as gender, race or disability. Often these are in competition with one another as the priority agenda. Age is the only leveller across all the niche characteristics, as we are all getting older, and as a workforce, at an alarming rate. Many workplaces have failed to understand or address this at all in their diversity strategies.
RL: Yes, age is often forgotten as a criteria for diversity. Ageism is also still a socially acceptable prejudice. These issues won't fundamentally improve until we change the way society feels about ageing and we start to recognise what is positive and powerful about it.
What do older workers bring to an organisation apart from experience?
CH: Ageing can make us more socially adroit. We often get better at reading people, cooperating and negotiating, at putting ourselves in others’ shoes, finding compromises and resolving conflicts. No wonder productivity rises with age in jobs that rely on social smarts, as more and more do.
As we age, we get better at seeing the big picture, weighing multiple points of view and spotting the patterns that unlock solutions to thorny problems.
We also get better at turning risk into reward. Despite the fawning media coverage lavished on the Zuckerbergs of this world, studies show you're more likely to create a successful start up in middle age or beyond.
Embracing older workers is also the only way to build multigenerational teams, which tend to be more productive, more creative and better at solving problems.
LS: A worker in their 50s is 200% less likely to take a day off work sick than a worker in their 20s. Their drivers for work change –salary/financial rewards drop out of the top three reasons to work, thus stabilising wage inflation across a business. Overall happiness increases in your 50s and 60s thus enabling this age group to cope better with stress and have a more positive approach overall. There is also often a keenness in this age group to help others develop, thus the focus on upwards career progression, turns into focusing on purposeful activities that add value such as mentoring and coaching less experienced colleagues.
RL: Older workers bring so much to an organisation as well as all that experience - wisdom, knowledge about interpersonal relationships, clarity, understanding, and often a calmness of approach that can be
LYNDSEY SIMPSON FOUNDER, 55/REDEFINED
incredibly valuable. They are often able to see the big picture and understand team dynamics better than anyone else.
How important is experience?
CH: Hugely! It allows us to spot patterns and join the dots. We can draw on past knowledge to make better decisions. Experience can also fuel creativity. That's why history is studded with people doing triumphantly creative work in later life, from Michelangelo and Matisse to Beethoven and Bach. It's also why companies with suggestion boxes report that older staff generate more good ideas, with the best ones often coming from the over-55s.
Maya Angelou was right: “You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.”
LS: Massive. And not just from a technical/ professional stance of experience in a role or industry, but in life overall. Negotiation
skills have been honed not just at work but by negotiating with a toddler to eat broccoli! Personal lives have been touched by bereavement, disability, joy and despair enabling a level of empathy and understanding with colleagues and customers who are going through these experiences themselves, often for the first time.
Sadly, there is an army of 50+ professionals leaving industries with massive sustainable skills gaps in their wake. A chronic underinvestment in bringing people through year after year has created a cliffedge for many sectors that relied on this group of professionals who are all now in their 50s & beyond. The good news is this cohort want to stay working and a number will need to continue to work into their mid-70s which means we have time to reverse this underinvestment and train the next group coming through, but only if employers are prepared to embrace and flex to keep older workers in their workplaces for 10 years longer than they planned for.
RL: I believe experience is very important and often gets overlooked in our youthcentric society. We need all ages, but there is a lot to be said for the experience of older people.
What are the main barriers when it comes to recruitment for older workers?
CH: The chief barrier is ageism. Animated by the cult of youth, companies are disinclined to hire older workers. Which is especially absurd at a time when so many jobs are going unfilled.
The expectation that older workers must be paid more is another barrier. People should be paid based on what they bring to the job, not on how many years they've been doing the job.
“SADLY, THERE IS AN ARMY OF 50+ PROFESSIONALS LEAVING INDUSTRIES WITH MASSIVE SUSTAINABLE SKILLS GAPS IN THEIR WAKE”
LS: We commission research into this exact topic last year to examine workplace ageism and found that in relation to recruitment, the key barriers were:
•
65% of employees feel the jobs market is closed to them applying for roles over the age of 55 and they are right, as only 30% of employers were motivated to hire in this age category.
• Dated stereotypes about health and energy were also prevalent with 37% of employers citing they wouldn’t hire an older worker through fear of them getting ill. 21% of employers thought they lacked energy.
• Worryingly, the major new evidence our study uncovered was that the most biased function and biggest blocker to hiring older workers was the HR & Recruitment function. The individual age of the person in the hiring position in this function created massive bias – if the recruitment/ HR lead was aged 46-50, 63% of them were very motivated to hire older workers. If the recruitment/HR lead was aged 25-30, then only 24% of them were keen to hire this age group, creating a 39% swing on attitudes to hiring older workers simply on the age of the person doing the hiring.
RL: Ageism is the main barrier. Older workers are often seen as not so valuable. Their experience may be dismissed in favour of younger workers. There are so many preconceived ideas and misconceptions about older people, which are often made worse by the media and society at large. It is difficult for older workers to be seen for who they actually are, given all the negative stereotypes about older people in general. Anticipated higher wages for older people
can also be an issue. But this may not necessarily be the case as older workers may be happy to accept the salary for the position itself, rather than going in with an idea of what level of pay they should be at.
Is there an imbalance with older employees tending to be in more senior positions? Is that a problem?
CH: There is an imbalance. But that is not an entirely bad thing. After all, it's often easier to play a senior role when you can lean on the experience, social acumen and other strengths that come with ageing.
“WE'VE GONE A LONG WAY TOWARDS EMBRACING PEOPLE OF DIFFERENT RACES, RELIGIONS, GENDERS AND SEXUAL ORIENTATIONS. BUT AGEISM REMAINS RIFE IN THE WORKPLACE”
CARL HONORÉ WRITER, BROADCASTER AND TWO-TIME TED SPEAKER
That said, older people should not have a monopoly on senior positions. Some people are more than ready to lead when they are young. The aim should always be to fill senior positions with the best people, whatever their age.
LS: It differs between industries. If you are a bank, then yes there is definitely a lean to older employees occupying the most senior roles. However, if you are a supermarket, the reverse is true. It is a problem when the reason for the imbalance is a false stereotype that older workers are more expensive. 92% of this age group will take a pay cut to retrain into a new role or industry.
RL: Senior positions often come with experience so I don't see any imbalance here as necessarily being a problem. I think it of course depends on the type of organisation and the experience required at a senior level. Where I do see an imbalance is the lack of older women in senior positions. The higher up most organisations we go, the more white and male the team is. Organisations need to enable older women to both stay in the workplace and progress in it.
What should organisations be doing right now to tackle this?
CH: Nothing shoots down stereotypes like getting to know the people being stereotyped, so get the generations mixing more within your organisation. You can do this through reverse mentorship schemes or mixed social events.
Remove ageist language from your recruitment material. If older people read that you're looking for a "geek" or a "rock star" or someone who is a "recent graduate" they won't apply.
Trumpet the successes of your older employees, tweak your recruitment algorithms to remove all ageism prejudices, and make your workplace physically comfortable for older bodies (younger workers will love this too).
LS: Understand the topic. We host a free, cross-industry, Age Pioneers Action Panel for HR Leaders keen to learn more from each other. This
includes the likes of Unilever, EY, Capita, Dentsu, Boots etc and allows industry to create a coordinated response to an ageing population and thus ageing workforce. Look at their data. How many employees over 50 do they have? How many were hired in that age group vs just long service? How many have received training/re-skilling? Where do they drop out of the recruitment process?
Create an Age Diversity strategy. What actions do they need to take to attract, engage, retain & retrain over-50s talent and where do they want to move from and to as their strategic ambition to create a sustainable workforce.
RL: I think organisations would benefit from looking at the age range of their workforce and seeing where there are gaps. Ageism can be bad for both men and women but it is usually worse for women. Gendered ageism can be very damaging. Are women staying in an organisation as they age? If not, why not? Is the organisation hiring at all ages? If not, why not?
Does the organisation itself actually undermine older workers? Is there a youth culture? Do older workers get ignored or included? What is the water cooler chat about older workers? All too often there can be open prejudice against older workers that would be completely unacceptable if it were around race, gender, sexual orientation, disability etc. Ageism is still a socially acceptable prejudice.
Companies of all sizes in all industries are making real changes to the way they operate to integrate more sustainable practices into their business. Not only does this have a positive impact on the environment, but businesses with sustainable practices reap a number of other benefits, particularly as statistics show green initiatives grow businesses 28 times faster than average companies.
Additionally, it has been found such initiatives lead to an up to 20% increase in sales revenue. With a robust and holistic approach to sustainability, technology company Siemens is leading the way as it solidifies its environmental, social and governance (ESG) strategy and drives a number of climateconscious initiatives.
At the helm of these strategies is Jenny Bofinger-Schuster, SVP of Sustainability and Operational Excellence. With a passion for sustainability and the company, BofingerSchuster takes a great deal of inspiration from Werner Von Siemens, who founded the company 175 years ago.
“He changed, in a very brave way, how he innovated many, many super important technologies,” says the SVP.
“If you look at Siemens today, we have more than US$60bn in revenue, we have more than 300,000 people all around the world that are very much driven by purpose, by inventing the big things that change the world for the better. We transform the everyday. One of the things we really want to enable though, is the move to a net-zero world,” adds Bofinger-Schuster.
Siemens’ Jenny Bofinger-Schuster shares the importance of a holistic approach to sustainability as the company strives to create an equitable world
To facilitate the move to a net-zero world, Siemens is developing a number of different technologies to help reduce carbon emissions, but more importantly, the company is dedicated to setting an important example of how businesses should respond to the climate emergency.
“When you think about ESG and sustainability it's always a very holistic perspective that you need to take. A year ago, we launched our new sustainability strategy, DEGREE. Each letter in DEGREE stands for one of the topics and areas that we believe matter most,” Bofinger-Schuster explains.
Representing Siemens’ priorities when it comes to ESG, its DEGREE strategy focuses on decarbonisation, ethics, governance, resource efficiency, equity and employability.
“It's also called DEGREE because ultimately we know that we need to achieve the 1.5° target we have set and we also
believe that, in terms of the degree of ambition, we can do more,” she continues.
Siemens knows the importance of decarbonisation and, to do this properly, the company offers a number of technologies that help customers decarbonise.
Although decarbonisation is key, and incredibly important in the fight against climate change, with DEGREE Siemens acknowledges that there is more to do as we strive for a healthy planet.
“When you think about ESG and about sustainability it's always a very holistic perspective that you need to take”
JENNY BOFINGER-SCHUSTER SVP OF SUSTAINABILITY & OPERATIONAL EXCELLENCE, SIEMENS
Jenny Bofinger-Schuster is globally in charge of driving and shaping the company’s sustainability and operational excellence activities. Her passion is to bring the best together in the company to be even more sustainable, digital, and resilient, always with the purpose to bring innovative solutions to the customer making the world more livable, sustainable and inclusive. Her responsibility covers the company’s global sustainability programme and its implementation, setting strategic ambitions for the benefit of all stakeholders on the key topics of environment, social and governance and ensuring the integration of ESG aspects throughout the company. This for example encompasses resource and energy efficiency, sustainability management and reporting as well as the Siemens’ Business to Society approach. Additionally, since 2021 she heads Operational Excellence driving this corporate initiative across all businesses, regions, and functions in sales, service business, product lifecycle management and innovation.
“Most people understand by now that decarbonisation is crucial, but that's just one piece of ESG. There's much, much more in the pipeline and they are all equally important. We make sure we take care of each element with the same regard.”
“We need to have a fair way of dealing with each other. We need to have trust — that’s why ethics are so important. Trust is also a super important topic the more digital we get. We need to ensure that we are a leader in cybersecurity because, particularly when we combine the digital and the physical world, we need to ensure there is trust and a super high standard on anything that is concerning cybersecurity,” notes Bofinger-Schuster.
Governance is also high on Siemens’ agenda as the company ensures all initiatives are founded on the right processes and structures. “This is key and absolutely crucial to ensure that we also hold all these promises and that this is coordinated in the right way. And, now that we are moving to a more circular world, it's particularly important that we use digitalisation as a key means to reduce the materials that we apply - this is why resource efficiency is such a priority for us,” says Bofinger-Schuster.
“Most people understand by now that decarbonisation is crucial, but that's just one piece of ESG. There's much, much more in the pipeline and they are all equally important”
JENNY BOFINGER-SCHUSTER SVP OF SUSTAINABILITY & OPERATIONAL EXCELLENCE, SIEMENS
Diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) is also essential at Siemens, and the SVP explains this is why equity and employability are pivotal in its ESG strategy. She notes: “For us, it's super important that our people come to work the way they are. We call this a feeling of belonging because we know that diverse teams are better.”
“Equally, we want our people to be resilient. We are in times where there's a lot of change and therefore it's our responsibility to ensure our people stay relevant. We have very strong training efforts and programmes to make sure that everyone is also upskilled for the future in the right way,” she adds.
With all the sustainability expertise the company has gained over the years, Siemens knows the importance of a comprehensive approach to sustainability if the company wants to deliver on the targets set by itself and also under the Paris Climate Agreement.
“The real trick is that sustainability is an integral part of our business, so there is not one sustainability programme but everyone who has responsibility for a business, function, a team, country or region is responsible for taking care of all sustainability matters in this field,” explains Bofinger-Schuster.
“Of course there are still some flagship programmes that we would then also coordinate on a corporate level and where everyone is then participating. Here, I would quote our decarbonisation programme,” she adds.
One key initiative the company is driven by is the Science-Based Targets Initiative (SBTi), which is designed as a clearly-defined path of emissions reduction in line with the Paris Agreement goals.
This 1.5°C target means reaching net-zero global emissions no later than 2050, in order to limit global warming to a manageable level.
“That's really the gold standard for our company, because it means that if all companies would act as we do we would still be able to achieve the 1.5 degree target. It is closely linked with our DEGREE initiative as well — we want to hit that target and our ESG goals will help us succeed,” comments Bofinger-Schuster.
“The SBTi targets then also cover Scope 1, 2 and 3. So, it's really about making sure any emissions related to the business activity are covered in the right way,” she continues.
Clearly, with initiatives within departments, as well as the overarching company target, sustainability is nothing new for Siemens. Even before the Paris Agreement in 2015, Siemens had already set itself an ambitious emissions target and began its decarbonisation efforts in 2014.
“We already said we want to be carbon neutral by 2030 and we were really one of
“We bring our supply chain together and speak about what needs to be done. By doing so, I'm very positive that we will also achieve these targets”
JENNY BOFINGER-SCHUSTER SVP OF SUSTAINABILITY & OPERATIONAL EXCELLENCE, SIEMENS
the first industrial companies doing so. Since then we've progressed a lot and we have managed to reduce our own CO2 emissions by more than 50%. This is also particularly key for us because we are also applying our own technology in our carbon-neutral programme and we want to ensure the right technologies are out there to decarbonise,” explains the SVP.
Securing suppliers’ commitment to Scope 3
With the right tech on the market, Bofinger-Schuster knows the landscape has never been better for sustainable development and sustainable practices within the business.
“I see many opportunities and markets that are changing for the better. If you ask me about being responsible for sustainability, I think the biggest challenge right now is the dynamics. The dynamics are great and they are super positive while ensuring that we stay ahead, that we are fast enough. That's a challenge that we are all undergoing and tackling together.”
As the challenge is something to be tackled together, Siemens is also dedicated to building a robust partner ecosystem with the right partners and suppliers to spread awareness of the importance of sustainable business while ensuring Scope 3 is dealt with.
“Partnerships are key as we work together towards a common goal. I am very active in our partnership with the World Economic Forum. We are also a member of the UN Global Compact, as well as other groups,” says Bofinger-Schuster.
“We have 65,000 suppliers all around the world, so we do have a strong, global supply chain and it's very important that we handle the supply chain with responsibility and care. We set clear targets on the supply chain,” she adds.
Ensuring Scope 3 emissions are reduced is an integral part of Siemens’ commitment to the SBTi. But on top of this commitment, the company plans to reduce its CO2 emissions in the supply chain by 20% by 2030 and has also committed to a carbon neutral supply chain by 2050.
“I believe it's key to speak with the suppliers to have an active dialogue. Again, we are also offering many technologies that can help to lower the CO2 emissions. Our supply chain team, they have a very strong dialogue with the suppliers to see how we can also decarbonise our supply chain,” explains Bofinger-Schuster.
In September of this year, the company is actually hosting a supplier day, and the SVP comments: “We bring our supply chain together and speak about what needs to be done. By doing so, I'm very positive that we will also achieve these targets.”
Siemens is wholly committed to cracking down on its Scope 3 emissions and as part of this commitment, the company believes its suppliers will align with its dedication to sustainability.
“Every supplier needs to sign the code of conduct and this gives a very broad understanding of different topics that they have to then also adhere to. It's about
positively influencing, speaking with each other, and ensuring that we find that reduction in CO2,” explains Bofinger-Schuster. Concluding, she says: “I strongly believe Siemens has a key role in showing the world that there are technologies out there that will help us create a more sustainable world. Also, when we are speaking at conferences or big fairs, it's super important that we show that it's possible, that there are the right technologies and that helps us also to support our suppliers.”
Vasee Rayan , senior vice president, product strategy, intelligent spend and business network (ISBN), SAP on providing sustainable supply chain solutions
The When it comes to understanding the pressures on procurement right now, Vasee Rayan senior vice president, product strategy, intelligent spend and business network (ISBN) at SAP agrees that now more than ever the function is in the spotlight – and sustainability is sharpening that focus.
“I think resiliency is key,” says Rayan. “Customers are really feeling the pressure, primarily because of global events in the last three years, and sustainability is increasingly important for most companies as well.
“It reflects on their brands and they recognise the importance of
zero emissions, zero waste, and zero inequality. Everyone is looking for answers or solutions to help them with that.”
And that is where SAP Business Network comes in, bringing its supply chain expertise to help organisations of all sizes mitigate risk and build resilience.
“This is where we are providing solutions that are focused around helping improve the resiliency of the supply chain,” says Rayan. “For example, SAP Business Network allows companies to find alternate sources of supply when you have an issue with one supplier, such as supply disruption, and you need an alternative that you can turn to. That's where the network comes into play –being able to provide that access.”
Vasee Rayan has been with SAP for about 22 years and in his current role since December 2021, where he is responsible for ensuring that the strategy across the ISBN product portfolio, including SAP Ariba, SAP Fieldglass, SAP Concur, SAP S/4HANA procurement and SAP Business Network solutions, is aligned and has the right product prioritisation.
Organisations need visibility in their supply chains Resilience is one thing, but organisations are increasingly demanding visibility in their supply chains, to be sustainable and to tackle scope 3 emissions as well as providing essential business information that could impact the supply chain.
“We have a capability within the SAP Business Network which supports supply chain collaboration,” says Rayan. “Through such capability in the Network, companies can extend beyond their own four walls and
share their forecast with trading partners. This allows those trading partners to have visibility of your forecast and respond in real time. That is critical to identify any constraints in your supply chain and act accordingly.”
“
SAP BUSINESS NETWORK ALLOWS COMPANIES TO FIND ALTERNATE SOURCES OF SUPPLY WHEN YOU HAVE AN ISSUE WITH ONE SUPPLIER, SUCH AS SUPPLY DISRUPTION, AND YOU NEED AN ALTERNATIVE THAT YOU CAN TURN TO ”
Speaking to Sustainability magazine at the SAP Sapphire event, Rayan is keen to discuss some of the latest announcements and enhancements impacting ISBN and supply chain.
The first is the launch of new product sourcing solutions from SAP for the discrete manufacturing companies of highly engineered products. This is typically automotive and some industrial machinery and component manufacturing companies.
These new solutions were designed with input from a council of leading automotive manufacturers and their suppliers. What they do is help manufacturers manage the highly complex process of direct materials sourcing for highly engineered products that typically have hundreds or even thousands of component parts. The customer outcome is accelerated time to market, improved compliance, automating critical price renegotiations, and improved product sustainability.
Secondly, there are some working capital initiatives that SAP supports with the help of Taulia – a fintech company acquired by SAP in March 2022.
“When trading partners on the Network need to manage their cash flow, they have a solution now with Taulia that can allow for extending capital to help with the crunch that they have,” says Rayan.
“There are actually multiple ways we do that. With Taulia, we offer working capital management solutions that help with early payment through supply chain finance, dynamic discounting and accounts receivable finance. Receivables financing, for example, is focused on providing flexible financing opportunities for the suppliers. With supply chain financing, based on the approved invoice, you can extend credit to your suppliers and give them cash sooner than their payment terms.”
VASEE RAYAN SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, INTELLIGENT SPEND & BUSINESS NETWORKS PRODUCT STRATEGY, SAP
“
CUSTOMERS ARE REALLY FEELING THE PRESSURE, PRIMARILY BECAUSE OF GLOBAL EVENTS IN THE LAST THREE YEARS, AND SUSTAINABILITY IS INCREASINGLY IMPORTANT FOR MOST COMPANIES AS WELL”
SAP also introduced a new feature for suppliers on SAP Business Network to complete a human rights self-assessment to help demonstrate compliance with human rights due diligence laws, such as the German Supply Chain Act, which goes into effect in January 2023. Suppliers complete the questionnaire only once and then any buyer on the network can access it at any time.
Rayan returns to the tricky issue of emissions and the complexities involved with dealing with potentially thousands of suppliers. SAP is helping organisations rise to the challenge.
Rayan says resiliency is all about not just knowing about the immediate suppliers or visibility to the immediate suppliers but also about tier 2 and beyond. How much of a challenge does this represent in terms of visibility?
“It's probably the most difficult problem to solve, to be honest,” he says. “One thing we have already done is introduce a blockchain solution to trace multi-ingredient products all the way to the farm from which the material or the raw material is sourced.
“Material traceability is something we introduced within the SAP Business Network, which allows not only the manufacturer or the brand owner, but also the different material and raw material suppliers, to share information about what they are supplying as part of that value chain.
“A lot of companies are starting to realise that if they have control over the data that they are willing to provide, and you give them authorisation to manage that effectively, they are willing to do that. We
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THIS IS WHERE WE ARE PROVIDING SOLUTIONS THAT ARE FOCUSED AROUND HELPING IMPROVE THE RESILIENCY OF THE SUPPLY CHAIN ”
are seeing a lot more openness in some industries to share information that benefits the entire supply chain.”
SAP working with EcoVadis Rayan talks about a crowdsourced approach to sharing this information in a consistent way, and technology is crucial to that process and the success of supply chains.
He also highlights SAP’s expanded partnership with Ecovadis, that was announced at the Orlando event which brings sustainability ratings into SAP’s supplier profiles on SAP Business Network,
thereby enabling buyers to make more informed decisions. Taulia is also partnering with Ecovadis to incentivise suppliers with more favorable financing terms based on ESG ratings and performance.
Looking ahead, Rayan says SAP Business Network will provide a more effective way for enterprises to work with their ecosystem of trading partners.
“It's no longer about a linear supply chain,” he says. “It's all about how you bring them all together to work collaboratively in real time leveraging the SAP Business Network. And that's where SAP has the answers.”
Lumen is a multinational technology company that enables companies to capitalise on emerging applications and power the 4th Industrial Revolution (4IR). This revolution is redefining how we live and work, creating an unprecedented need for an advanced application delivery architecture –designed specifically to handle the complex and data-intensive workloads of next-gen technology and businesses.
“We integrate network assets, cloud connectivity, security solutions, and voice and collaboration tools into one platform that enables businesses to leverage their data and adopt next-generation technologies,” says Annette Murphy, who joined the company in 2021 and leads the strategy for the EMEA and APAC region.
“I have witnessed the company’s evolution into one that is very much a part of the technology ecosystem and aligned with the interests of other large technology companies, like those of our strategic partners – Microsoft, Amazon and SAP,” she explains.
Annette Murphy, Regional President of EMEA and APAC at Lumen Technologies, discusses the company’s approach to sustainability and use of technology
“WE KNOW FROM OUR WORK IN THE INDUSTRY THAT OUR INFRASTRUCTURE SOLUTIONS ARE ENABLING SIGNIFICANT PROGRESS ON SUSTAINABILITY”
MURPHY REGIONAL PRESIDENT OF EMEA AND APAC, LUMEN TECHNOLOGIES
VMware Zero Carbon Committed providers have set goals to power their data centers with 100% renewable energy or achieve carbon neutrality on or before 2030.
These providers are also VMware Cloud Verified – using the full VMware Cloud infrastructure to provide unparalleled cloud services to their customers.
Guy Bartram, Director Product Marketing & Go-To-Market Specialist at VMware, reflects on its partnership with Lumen Technologies
Founded in 1998, VMware is a leading provider of cloud computing and virtualisation technology, headquartered in the US (California). “We believe that the software we deliver has the power to unlock new opportunities for people and do good for the planet,” says Guy Bartram, Director of Product Marketing & Go-To-Market Specialist at VMware.
He continues: “We are providing the next wave of innovation for our customer base, as well as building a more sustainable, secure future by integrating environmental, social and governance (ESG) goals across the company and aligning them to our core business strategy, especially with our supply chain cloud providers.”
For many years, VMware has been in a long-standing partnership with Lumen Technologies from edge computing to workspace and security, VMware has helped Lumen Technologies in many different areas.
“More recently, we’ve worked on delivering a private cloud with the VMware cloud foundation and the Luman private cloud,” says Bartram. Hosted on VMware’s Cloud Foundation ™ , Lumen Technologies’ private
cloud service delivers a public cloud experience that’s encapsulated in a secure and private cloud footprint.
Bartram comments: “Our validated solution offers a consistent operational experience across multiple cloud environments for our customers, as well as having easily replicable blocks that can be customised and builtto-order to meet the specific customer requirements. The solution provides fantastic coverage and a complete solution for customers.”
VMware plans to continue in its collaboration with Lumen Technologies to drive better outcomes for customers that are looking to move to the cloud, with a particular focus on edge computing and more secure solutions.
“The Lumen Technologies partnership has been very successful, providing a great combination of solutions and capabilities required for customers to transform business processes and customer experience by utilising computer network data services for lower latency and secure applications.”
“The Lumen Platform is the fastest, most secure platform for next-gen business applications and data, integrating global network infrastructure, cloud connectivity, edge computing, connected security, voice, collaboration and enterprise-class services into a seamless experience. Our reach and our ability to impact the world is significantly bigger than when I first became involved in the technology space.”
For Lumen Technologies, sustainability is an integral aspect of its mission and purpose as an organisation. “Annually, we express
the different ways that our organisation enables sustainability including diversity, equity, inclusion, governance, environmental sustainability, and commitments to science-based targets,” says Murphy. Whilst sustainability has been a part of Lumen Technologies’ core operations for many years, Murphy has seen the opportunities surrounding the movement increase significantly. “Our customers are increasingly focused on how they can leverage the capabilities that we provide to acquire, analyse and act on data in a way that can improve sustainability performance.”
“What used to be a lower priority for many of our customers has now become a top priority, as they set their own targets
“OUR CORE MISSION IS TO FURTHER HUMAN PROGRESS THROUGH THE POWER OF TECHNOLOGY”
ANNETTE MURPHY REGIONAL PRESIDENT OF EMEA AND APAC, LUMEN TECHNOLOGIES
for emissions reductions, and work to understand how they can collaborate with partners across their supply and value chain to meet those targets. Our platform’s role in this has become crucial to driving these outcomes,” she explains.
When it comes to the sustainability strategy at Lumen Technologies – and the company’s ESG strategy as a whole – Murphy explains that the company has taken a “multi-level approach”. Within this approach, unlocking sustainability through innovation and transparency are core tenets.
TITLE: REGIONAL PRESIDENT OF EMEA AND APAC
INDUSTRY: IT SERVICES
LOCATION: LONDON, UK
Annette Murphy is Regional President for Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) and Asia Pacific (APAC) at Lumen. She is responsible for leading the EMEA region and business results in EMEA and APAC.
Murphy brings more than 20 years of experience in the telecoms and technology industries to her role, which includes all aspects of the company’s strategy, go-to-market and customer experience in EMEA and APAC.
A people-first leader, Murphy is passionate about fostering a diverse, inclusive and collaborative company culture. She currently serves as the Executive Sponsor for Lumen’s EMEA Women Empowered employee resource group.
Previously, Murphy was Managing Director, EMEA at Lumen. Prior to Lumen, she held several senior executive roles at Zayo leading sales, commercial and product teams. She also held senior management positions at Geo Networks and BT.
In March 2022, Murphy was named in Capacity Magazine’s 20 Women to Watch power list, which celebrates noteworthy women from across the wholesale telecoms and tech sector.
“Over the course of the last few years, customer focus has been on somewhat simpler indicators of sustainability performance and ambitions, such as GHG emissions. More recently, however, customers have gained a broader, more sophisticated understanding of the different ways that businesses and the value chain can be sustainable,” says Murphy.
“An example of this within our business can be seen in our stakeholders’ prioritisation of network resilience, as well as the ability to ensure the security and privacy of data, and drive our own digital transformation. These issues weren’t traditionally a part of the sustainability conversation.
“What used to be a narrower conversation around a small set of environmental topics has become a much broader conversation around environmental, social and governance topics. People are realising that sustainability needs to be woven into their business and needs to be a part of how they think about not just their values, but how they create value.”
“We know from our work in the industry that our infrastructure solutions are enabling significant progress on sustainability,” says Murphy. “This can be seen in the growth of universal communications and collaboration during the COVID-19 pandemic. A lot of businesses required those services to sustain their business, so we knew that our fibre platform would play a big role in sustainability.”
Similar to fibre, Murphy highlights the significant benefits of migrating applications to the cloud from a sustainability standpoint. “Running your IT infrastructure and operations in a cloud model allows for data consumption to be controlled much better, and for the optimisation and governance of your infrastructure to be much more sophisticated and robust.”
The next level up from infrastructure solutions is collaborating with companies to deliver sustainable solutions that are tied to applications such as smart cities, where the solution is designed with the intent to enable a particular sustainability benefit.
“Examples would be the use of IoT and sensors to enable: reduced energy consumption in buildings; reduced water consumption in agriculture; or reduced waste in manufacturing processes. The solutions that we're designing in coalition with our alliance partners and customers are key enablers of sustainability,” explains Murphy.
“There are also strategic interventions, aspects that we can influence that might not be directly related to our business. These include the ability to support the decarbonisation of our energy systems with the use of Industry 4.0 technologies such as AI to optimise the use of renewable energy by dealing with the persistent challenges of intermittency and storage.
“In these cases, there's a lot of collaboration that needs to happen with
“Our core mission is to further human progress through the power of technology,” explains Murphy. “One of the great things about our mission is our individual ability to interpret it in our own way.
“For me, further human progress could be enabling customers to optimise their use of infrastructure one day and enabling a startup to deliver a new service the next. There are so many applications that are part of the fourth industrial revolution and equally as many ways technology can be used to improve human lives to create a better, more connected world.”
other companies. To support the digitalisation of those platforms is a great example of how technology enables sustainability across a range of different industries.”
When it comes to partnerships at Lumen Technologies, Murphy explains that the general ethos is a “‘better together’ story”.
“Our partnerships with cloud providers are a great example of ‘better together’,” says Murphy.
“Most customers going forward will have a hybrid IT infrastructure for the foreseeable future, and cloud will be a big part of that. Having multiple partnerships with cloud, hardware and platform providers gives us the ability to take operational control, providing optimisation and governance across the entire hybrid IT infrastructure.
“Those partnerships ensure that we're able to apply best practices across a range of different areas and use data to drive better business decisions. With these partners, we are seeing tremendous value delivered to our customers.
“One of our most important partnerships is with VMware,” establishes Murphy. “Their technology enables a number of different solutions that we provide to both our network and cloud space.
“VMware is a key enabler of our edge solutions, as well as the foundational platform for our private cloud solution. But, more recently, we've been working with VMware to understand how their technologies on our platform address emerging issues around data sovereignty and reducing the carbon footprint of IT infrastructure and operations.”
“Those same issues that we tackle with VMware are also what drive our partnership
with companies like SAP and IBM,” says Murphy. “Their customer engagements are driven by the need to develop new business systems and accounting systems to support carbon accounting and other emerging issues.”
She adds: “Our platform enables them to deploy those solutions at scale, in a way that's more cost-effective and better integrated with existing systems.”
“Finally, our partnership with HPE is also very valuable. We want to ensure that the hardware that we use has the least environmental impact possible over the course of its entire life cycle,” says Murphy.
“Our partnership with HPE ensures that we have not only the best hardware going in, but that our hardware also contains a relatively low level of embedded carbon, can be easily recycled and repurposed, and has a very long life that can be extended to keep the hardware out of the waste stream as long as possible.”
“TO SUPPORT THE DIGITALISATION OF THOSE PLATFORMS IS A GREAT EXAMPLE OF HOW TECHNOLOGY ENABLES SUSTAINABILITY ACROSS A RANGE OF DIFFERENT INDUSTRIES”
ANNETTE MURPHY REGIONAL PRESIDENT OF EMEA AND APAC, LUMEN TECHNOLOGIES
Scott Birch picks his Top 10 sessions from the main stage at Sustainability LIVE London hybrid event, featuring leading CSOs, analysts and ESG innovators
Here is an interesting question: One planet is enough, so why do we continue to use more than one? That was the driving theme of this fascinating session from Adam Muellerweiss, Chief Sustainability Officer at Clarios. He explores the problems of over consumption or, as he puts in in business terms, “we are over budget, we are over leveraged”. We are consuming at the rate of around 1.5 to 1.7 planets and “living on borrowed time”. Muellerweiss delivers a thought-provoking keynote on the promise and
WATCH: ADAM MUELLERWEISS
Dr Pippa Bailey is head of climate change and sustainability practice at Ipsos. Leveraging her background in consumer psychology, she collaborates with research experts across Ipsos to help clients navigate and address the insight challenges and opportunities that sustainability presents.
Discussing ‘The Road to Sustainability – Citizen Understanding at the Core’, Bailey examines the geographical variations in sustainability priorities while also digging deeper into demographics such as generational attitudes. Fascinating, and eye-opening.
Adam Muellerweiss
Capgemini’s Global Head of Environmental Sustainability, Jame Robey has been at the forefront of the group’s sustainability efforts since first setting carbon reduction targets in 2008. Here, he outlines the 5 Macro Trends Shaping the Future of Corporate Sustainability and – despite some technical issues with his presentation slides that he expertly navigates – this is essential viewing for all sustainability leaders.
Jenni Adams is Deputy Head and South Regional Director for HSBC UK’s Business Banking - Portfolio Managed division. Her role is primarily focused on supporting start-ups, entrepreneurs and small businesses to grow their businesses and achieve their ambitions. In addition to this, Jenni lleads HSBC UK's strategy to support SMEs to transition to net zero. This session explores the challenges facing SMEs as they strive to be more sustainable and the solutions and pathways available.
Jenni Adams HSBC
WATCH: JAMES ROBEY
In his fascinating update Green Shipping – Can We Get There?, Oistein Jensen, Chief Sustainability Officer at shipping giant Odfjell, showcased the steps the Norwegian company is taking to improve sustainability in the shipping industry.
Jensen explained how data is being analysed and interpreted to improve efficiency, how hydrogen or nuclear power could help reduce emissions, and how digitalisation is impacting decarbonisation
Shipping is essential to global trade and Jensen shared his views on carbon offsetting, the EUs Emission Trading Scheme and the future of the industry.
WATCH: OISTEIN JENSENMusidora Jorgensen joined the Microsoft UK Senior Leadership Team in February 2022 as Chief Sustainability Officer, with accountability for driving sustainability outcomes for customers, partners and internally.
Jorgensen is passionate about Diversity & Inclusion and particularly in supporting more women in the STEM industries, and that passion came across in this packed session. She explains how it is not just tech giants like Microsoft that can make a difference, and the steps required to create and deliver on a net zero strategy from scratch.
Discussing ‘Our Fastest Route to Net Zero’, Steve Smith made a welcome return to the Sustainability LIVE stage. Smith is Head of Global Marketing – Energy Management Thought Leadership and Communications – at Schneider Electric, the consulting company regularly voted as the world’s most sustainable business.
Smith discussed the role iof hydrogen in the future energy mix and Schneider’s view of Electricity 4.0 – plus the greatest barriers facing energy today, and in the near future.
WATCH: STEVE SMITH
There was another packed auditorium for Sidharth Mishra’s session entitled Impact Tracking and Accelerating Operational Decarbonisation. Sidharth leads the Energy and Decarbonisation practice for Wipro, and advises clients on energy transition and sustainability solutions. Sidharth shared his extensive experience in digital transformation for energy and process industries, followed by a standing-room-only workshop session alongside James Patton of AWS.
Sidharth Mishra
Data centres may not be on everyone’s radar when it comes to sustainability – but they should be. This point was illustrated by Travis Wright who said the data centre industry has more environmental impact when it comes ot emmissions that the aviation industry, at pre-pandemic levels.
Wright went on to outline some of the initiatives that QTS has invested in, such as providing clean drinking water via World Vision. Sustainability and ESG efforts such as this helped set QTS apart – a differentiator that was good for business as well as good for the communities that benefitted.
He explained that buy-in from senior management was crucial, and that QTS leadership were immediately on-board in a bid to ‘do good’.
A BizClik Brand
Few people understand supply chain disruption better than Geraint John, who leads the Interos Resilience Lab team – generating data-driven insights, research and analysis on supply chain disruptions, topical issues and best practices for supply chain risk management.
A former journalist and Gartner advisor, John’s fireside chat highlighted recent major supply chain disruptions caused by
drought in China and Europe, and Russia shutting down natural gas supplies. He discussed how to assess these events from a supply chain risk and sustainability perspective, plus the key challenges that supply chains face when it comes to ESG.
Looking to the future, John raised Taiwan as a red flag that could have extensive impacts on supply chains – even greater than the COVID-19 pandemic.
WATCH: GERAINT JOHN
