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Industry Leaders Strengthen Presence in Sustainable Energy

January 13, 2022 by Stephanie Leonida

GE Digital, Emerson, and Schneider Electric make strategic moves to help make energy more efficient and sustainable.

GE Digital (GE) is an American multinational company that provides software and industrial internet of things (IIoT) services to industrial companies. As of December 2021, GE announced its agreement to acquire Opus One Solutions Energy Corporation (Opus One). The combined expertise of both companies intends to strengthen decision-making concerning integrating renewable energy and distributed energy resources (DERs) at scale across the electric grid for the utility sector

Additionally, Emerson announced a strategic acquisition of Mita-Teknik, a control automation expert in wind energy. This transaction also took place in December 2021. 

Another technological leader, Schneider Electric, is also taking the initiative to bring sustainable practices to safeguard Earth’s future. To do this, Schneider Electric released a comprehensive framework for environmentally sustainable data centers.

 

How renewable energy can help asset management, transmission, and distribution. Image used courtesy of GE Digital

 

The emissions from data centers are allegedly a significant contributor to climate change. This is because the servers in these centers use a lot of energy and produce a lot of heat, which needs to be cooled down. Cooling data centers makes it more expensive and consumes more energy. 

According to the International Energy Agency, data centers consume around 1% of global electricity demand, contributing to 0.3% of global CO2 emissions.

 

GE Digital and Opus One

Opus One provides real-time energy management software to manage microgrids. This enables customers to optimize energy planning, operations, and market management, contributing to more sustainable and connected energy networks. 

Together, GE and Opus want to help transition toward a more sustainable grid. The resulting combined technology and interoperable portfolios hope to enhance adopting renewables and DERs at all points on the grid, as well as help utilities forecast, manage, optimize, and trade renewables coming onto the electric grid.

 

Emerson and Mita-Teknik

For Emerson, Mita-Teknik brings its expertise in wind energy technology (including turbine design), proprietary controls for wind turbine management, and control software for improved cost savings for wind energy. Emerson’s acquisition of Mita-Teknik is set to expand its renewable power generation automation solutions into the wind power market.

 

Video used courtesy of Mita-Teknik

 

Emerson is a prominent advocate for digitalization. The company believes that acquiring Mita-Teknik’s renewable energy technologies will amplify its current power generation capabilities. The amplification intends to transform customers into smarter, more sustainable digitalized operations.

Additionally, Emerson has continued to drive renewable energy by recently helping validate integrating offshore wind power, natural gas, and hydrogen production at sea

 

Schneider Electric’s Sustainability-focused Framework

Its Energy Management Research Center developed Schnieder Electrics’ new framework for environmentally sustainable data centers with support from ESG (environmental, social, and governance) experts, sustainability consultants, data center scientists, and data center solution architects. The framework proposes five areas of environmental impact and 23 key metrics in the beginning, advanced, and leading categories.

Schneider Electric saw the lack of standardization for implementing, measuring, and reporting an environmental impact from data centers. Its framework is designed to standardize metrics, guide operators, improve benchmarking, and progress toward ecological sustainability.

As seen from these three industry leaders, sustainable energy might be a trend to follow in 2022.