The technologies to combat climate change already exist. The next step is cultural: moving from operational silos to radical collaboration.
For most of us, checking our phone every morning has become an essential reflex: knowing if we will need sunscreen or an umbrella during the day. The applications that provide us with this information rely on a global system of interconnected devices. From ocean buoys to balloon-borne radiosondes to orbiting satellites, these devices continuously monitor parameters such as pressure, humidity, wind patterns and solar radiation. These global observation systems feed local control loops in real time, which converge on the World Weather Watch, the backbone of modern weather forecasting. This system works because 193 countries standardize and share their measurements remotely.
In the same way that standardized weather feeds transform global observation into local action, industrial data today provides the essential information to support sustainable growth — improving margins while reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Until recently, industrial data for each process or site was collected and stored locally, which limited access to data and analyzes to on-site teams. Today, both detergent manufacturers and renewable energy producers can synchronize their production lines across geographic borders and time zones.
Create a single source of truth
These decisions are based on a set of cutting-edge technologies. Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) devices, such as equipment sensors and asset trackers, collect industrial metrics and feed them into artificial intelligence (AI) analytical models in the cloud. Results are delivered to teams in near real-time: displayed alongside critical information from control systems, they bring teams together around a common thread of data — a golden data thread — which provides a single source of truth for the human experts tasked with interpreting and acting on this unified visualized data. This ability to interpret and act fully defines the concept of industrial intelligence.
In the same way that travelers in two different cities rely on the same weather forecast, this end-to-end visibility across the value chain enables dispersed teams to act together to tackle the world’s biggest challenges.
Perhaps the most important of these challenges is climate change — and the ability of companies to drastically reduce their emissions to meet net zero targets and limit global warming to 1.5°C.
Europe, for example, is on track to achieve a 55% reduction in emissions by 2030, recently highlighting the critical role of flexibility and innovation in achieving a 90% reduction over the following decade. Yet most factories lack the data frameworks needed to measure their progress toward net zero. This is why the digitalization of industrial processes is so important. Industrial intelligence not only gives companies a global view of carbon emissions across their entire value chain; according to Accenture and the World Economic Forum, existing digital technologies could also allow industries to reduce their emissions by up to 20%.
Pushing the boundaries of innovation
End-to-end lifecycle monitoring enables proactive action to accelerate the energy transition and push the boundaries of innovation.
Companies like Henkel, the German consumer goods giant behind brands like Persil and Surf, are leading the way. By mapping countless variables—weather factors, equipment efficiency, production throughput, and setpoint deviations—via a digital backbone, industrial teams gain a consistent, real-time view of production lines: how energy needs change from moment to moment, or how production varies from batch to batch. Across its global network, this perspective from the shop floor to the highest decision-making levels allowed Henkel to reduce its energy intensity by 16% in a single year, then repeat this gain for six consecutive years, with 8 million euros in annual savings.
To enable industries to combat climate change on a large scale, three elements must converge: reliable and standardized data flows (the “plumbing” of industrial intelligence), rapid decision mechanisms based on rules (the control logic), and inter-organizational trust and governance allowing operators, suppliers and network managers to act on common information.
Acting together for a greener planet
Only with the kind of institutional collaboration that made modern meteorology possible can we truly secure our future.
The foundation of this hyperconnected industrial ecosystem is based on IIoT, AI and the power offered by the cloud. Together, they offer us a shortcut to the greatest transformation of our time. But without transparent intelligence and joint action between industries, governments and technology companies, sustainable results will remain the exception.
Weather forecasting, for example, is based on decades of coordinated observation and common standards among scientists, observatories and nations. If the industry treats its operational flows with the same rigor — by bringing together standardized formats, trust exchanges and rules of action — then industrial intelligence will be able to fight climate change not only through prediction, but by transforming shared data into shared success.
Expanding this progress through common methodologies and ecosystem-scale approaches, while anchoring them in genuine cultural change management, is how we will transform advances into a sustainable shift towards a cleaner, carbon-neutral future.
