Reaching Net Zero And Greenhouse Gas Emissions

Climate change has been a significant topic globally for many years, but the big question is, what are large corporations with a vast number of buildings doing to help mitigate greenhouse gas emissions? With the Race To Zero, which is a global campaign to rally leadership and support from businesses, cities, regions and investors for a healthy, resilient, zero carbon recovery that prevents future threats, creates decent jobs, and unlocks inclusive, sustainable growth, businesses across the globe are actively taking charge to help fight climate change.

Take Action Against Greenhouse Gas Emissions

With the goal of limiting global warming, The Paris Agreement was developed. It is an international treaty on climate change, and for the first time, a binding agreement bringing all nations into a common cause to combat climate change and adapt to its effects. In 2020, countries were asked to submit long-term low greenhouse gas emission development strategies and then starting in 2024, these countries will report transparently on the actions being taken and the progress they have seen in climate change.

One of the biggest changes that organizations have gone through is that efforts around sustainability went from a sort of purely voluntary activity to an expectation of stakeholders. And, once company leaders start vocalizing that they are making changes in the sustainability or ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) world, there is a tremendous premium on making sure that those statements are accurate.

Net Zero and Technology

Building owners and operators are constantly being asked to reduce energy consumption and carbon emissions to net zero levels, which can be challenging in itself. Throw legacy or older buildings into that mix and the challenges increase. In order to improve performance across an entire portfolio, stakeholders need full visibility into their sustainability KPIs. Honeywell Forge Sustainability+ for Buildings solutions connect buildings to the intelligent cloud and can help building owners improve enterprise sustainability through increased data visibility and autonomous control. The technology solution can help building owners monitor and analyze near-real-time conditions data and allows building owners to adjust HVAC set points helping you maintain efficiency around the clock.

"Our internal greenhouse gas footprint right now is about 2 million metric tons. And that's our own operations…just one of our products that we've innovated in this area, the solstice line of low global warming potential refrigerants, we estimate that that has avoided more than 260 million metric tons of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.”
– Honeywell Chief Sustainability Officer

With innovations driving key achievements in meeting the Paris Agreement objectives, technological developments related to sustainability are top of mind for organizations around the world. Machine Learning (ML) and autonomous control solutions can help alleviate some of the challenges that are typical with building sustainability and carbon emissions and help to take the ‘management’ out of energy management.

In the digital, connected cloud space, pulling energy consumption data can help enterprise leaders to make choices more effectively and more efficiently. With calculated optimal set-points through ML, autonomous energy management across a portfolio of buildings can help you ensure that internal systems are running more efficiently, even during unexpected disturbances.

With accelerating technological developments, carbon neutrality targets are becoming more and more prevalent in different countries, regions and cities. By rallying together in the race to net zero, sustainable solutions are pivotal to long-term organizational success.