Instrumentation Excellence Awards: Meet the finalists
A RECOGNITION OF THE VITAL ROLE OF TECHNOLOGY IN SUSTAINABILITY
Andrew Sheward, head of HSE and Sustainability at ABB Measurement & Analytics, is nominated for “Industry Personality of the Year” in the 2024 Instrumentation Excellence Awards. Over his more than 20 years with ABB, Sheward has made his mark in this multi-subject field thanks to a unique blend of experience in chemistry, technology, R&D, environmental science, and business. We spoke to Andrew Sheward about his role and the significance of this nomination.
HOW DO YOU DEFINE SUSTAINABILITY? From a personal perspective, I think of sustainability as the actions we take today to protect the global environment for future generations. From ABB perspective, we recognise three main pillars in sustainability: enabling a low carbon society, preserving resources, and promoting social progress.
In terms of achieving a low carbon society, we are taking a rigorous net-zero targets approach in line with the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi). We are targeting scope 1 and 2 emissions reductions of 80 percent by 2030 and 100 per cent by 2050 versus our 2019 baseline. At the same time, we have established a new
net-zero-aligned target to reduce our scope 3 emissions by 25 per cent by 2030 and by 90 per cent by 2050. We are working with our suppliers to reduce emissions, for instance, by sourcing low-carbon copper. To preserve resources, we are embedding circularity in our products to reduce waste, conserving water and biodiversity, and use land responsibly. We take a life cycle approach to circularity to factor out waste, from design and sourcing to operations and use, to take-back and recycling. We are aligning our circularity approach with international standards and frameworks, such as the European Union Taxonomy for sustainable activities. Last but not least, promoting social progress is a priority for us. In Health and Safety, we are on a journey of moving from compliance to care - looking out for each other, be this employees,
contractors, customers or our neighbours. Our actions are guided by concern for human rights, working environments where people can thrive, and creating positive impact in our communities. We promote diversity and inclusion across ABB and integrity underpins everything we do.
IS THE NOTION OF SUSTAINABILITY LIKELY TO EVOLVE IN THE FUTURE? I believe that starting now and going into the future we will talk about the sustainability performance of an organisation based on a level of confidence and certainty we have with financial metrics today. Environmental management systems, energy management systems and audit assurance, as well as data robustness of such systems will become more prolific than they are today. We will also see a shift from decisions made from emotional and subjective evidence to ones based on objectivity. In many industries expectations on sustainability performance of products that can be compared like for like will increase. As Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) become more prolific, the ability for product comparisons will increase and thus decisions are likely to be impacted by such number-based comparisons.
At an organisation level, EU taxonomy will accelerate the quantification of an organisation’s sustainability performance. The objective of EU taxonomy is to promote the transition to organisations that can demonstrate the best of practices in sustainability and quantify against revenue. This will be another trigger that will healthily drive the attractiveness to sustainability
away from compliance to perhaps even one of competitive advantage - if done well.
HOW IMPORTANT IS THIS NOMINATION TO YOU? To me this is a recognition of the field I work in and of the technologies ABB is contributing to sustainability. It’s a recognition of the vital role of technology in sustainability.
ABB Measurement & Analytics has helped the industrial world for decades to reduce energy consumption and emissions. We have the technology to monitor greenhouse gases at extremely high resolution even from space. As we speak, ABB-built sensors are monitoring methane emissions from space. Several of our emissions monitoring technologies are nominated in the Instrumentation Excellence Awards. At the same time, ABB Measurement & Analytics manufactures instrumentation that is vital for monitoring process performance and identifying potential scope for reducing emissions. These instruments generate accurate data and help to make processes more efficient. I am very happy to see that several of these technologies are also nominated.
Never before has environmental performance been so central and seen by so many organisations as an improvement opportunity. I also see my own and ABB’s nominations as a recognition of the fact that every day we empower customers across the globe to optimise, electrify and decarbonise.
ABB
www.abb.com
instrumentationawards.co.uk
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