Sustainability At Scale with Ravi Srinivasan

Tim Verras (00:02):

Welcome to forging connections, a podcast from Honeywell about the convergence of it and operational technology for industrial companies. We'll talk about the future of productivity, sustainability, safety, and cyber security. Let's get connected. Hi everyone. This is Tim Verras, the host for forging connections. Today, I am sitting down with Ravi Srinivasan. He is our VP GM for industrial innovation here at Honeywell connected enterprise Ravi. Welcome to the podcast.

Ravi Srinivasan (00:34):

Hey Tim. Very good day to you. How are you doing today?

Tim Verras (00:37):

I'm great. I'm great. Ravi, just before we begin, what got you personally into sustainability?

Ravi Srinivasan (00:43):

So it's a good question, actually, you know, I had mentioned earlier, I've been assisting customers in this journey. I've been working for honey for a long time. Uh, and, um, I've been assisting the customers in the journey. What are the problems they may have? Um, and it's been very much a customer-focused, uh, it's me and my team. And when I looked at sustainability, especially in the last few years, there's been increasing temperature. I mean, I'm feeling the heat. I learned in the UK where the temperature has become unbearable, right? I mean, there's no air conditions are there, which also says that the temperature are significantly changed. And looking at the various reports, various, you know, the, the packs and various, uh, conferences that are being held, it's becoming the good thing that people are increasingly becoming aware.

Ravi Srinivasan (01:32):

The second thing is that people are wanting to take an action. So this is an area where I think each and everyone in the world needs to act upon. It's not about leaving to somebody else. So I also felt that, Hey, that could be something I could do in this space personally and also from the organization's perspective. So that kind of brought me into this space, working within, uh, Honeywell with the customers and all of the third party companies in this. This is something like where I always felt that one company does another complete solution. So it's all about working together, creating a positive impact, uh, which was driving me towards this particular space. So that's one of the reason has said, let me do something for the mother earth, uh, in, in a positive way and help the future generation. So that was one of the reason which drove me towards this space in terms of, you know, what I'm doing right now, working within the various business groups than Honeywell also with the customers and outside companies, uh, in this journey.

Tim Verras (02:28):

So let's talk about, uh, sustainability. So before we even dive in, what does a VP of industrial innovation do?

Ravi Srinivasan (02:36):

Yeah, very good question. Uh, you know, from the industrial innovation perspective, the innovation's, uh, the key to our livelihood, and it is a free ingredient of future success. Innovation actually helps to resolve key problems that we face as humanity, as customers, as industries, et cetera. Throughout my career, I've been assisting customers in various forms to solve their day-to-day problems so they can focus on achieving their goals here. Uh, in this current role, I'm looking into the future and trying to understand what issues are critical to our customers and also helping to develop new solutions to address the problems. So one of the areas that I've focused on is the area of greenhouse gas reduction. And this is a key problem that the world is S facing today. It's just not industries alone. It's, it's a global issue. And, uh, we are actually working with customers and enabling our customers to support them in the net zero journeys. So it's just one of the initiatives I'm looking at from the innovation perspective.

Tim Verras (03:30):

So Ravi, everyone kind of knows why sustainability is important, but, but why is it important in the industrial landscape, both for Honeywell and our customers?

Ravi Srinivasan (03:39):

Yeah, just to give a little, if you take a step back, uh, in terms of sustainably in terms of the climate change, we are all impacted one way other with the climate change. Uh, even if I really look at, in Atlanta itself, we going through a lot of heat waves, as many places extreme temperatures are becoming a norm with more draws, heat waves, and forest fires. We are at the risk of destroying the ecological balance in an irreversible way, right? So I, I, I kind of wanna quote, one thing, what Hugo once said, nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come. We at Honeywell are developing world-class tools and technologies based enable lean and green solutions, Venus investing a lot more to ensure a future for all of us. It is important that there's no planet B globally. We meet about 50 billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions. Each year. 50% of the emissions come from the segments that we serve in industrials, buildings, and aerospace. So in order to reach net zero emissions, we need innovations across many sectors. And this has become very critical, not only for us and also for our customers, uh, to actually support them and enable them to reach net zero or the time period that they, everyone is aspiring for.

Tim Verras (04:56):

And if we think about net zero emissions and, and the, the, that space, what kind of trends are you seeing out there when you go and talk to our customers

Ravi Srinivasan (05:05):

Considering this is a kind of major challenge that industry's facing. What we are seeing is that a lot of positive movements in the space first and foremost, people are recognizing we have issues. I think that's a fundamental thing to really advance into the next step. How do we, how am I going to address the issue? What have we been? What we've been seeing is a lot of advancements in technology and changing regulated requirements, our leading companies to be more sustainable than ever before, with a lot of new reporting, uh, such as the decent sec changes to include required climate change and EG emission disclosures, or investors, companies have an increasing need to measure, manage and reduce emissions. The CU country, various countries, and companies are on the various stage of maturity at this point in time. Additionally, the investment into new technologies like green, hydrogen, and software driven by a ML-based analytical tools and recommendation of helping companies to make progress towards the net zero goals. We see implementing and taking advantage of these new technologies and digital solutions as a crucial piece to help our customer customers to drive decarbonization and meet their requirements that's needed for today and also for tomorrow.

Tim Verras (06:15):

So Ravi, uh, in, in other talks and, and some things that I've read on our website and some other thought leaderships, I see a lot about scope one, scope two, and scope three emissions. And that seems to be a, a, a pretty critical part of the strategy going forward. So I'm wondering if you can just help us kind of understand what that means.

Ravi Srinivasan (06:33):

Oh yeah. Very good question. I think there's a fundamental. There are three different scopes that's been defined, uh, by the, uh, by the regulatory and other, uh, bodies is we call it scope on scope to scope three. The scope one is the direct emissions from a company's wound or control sources, just for example, the fuel combustion at the company facility suppose you're in having a boilers or heaters furnaces, the fuel that we consume and the ambitions that we, uh, generate from that is associated with scope one. The second, uh, for example, is indirect emissions from the generation of purchase energy. So in our facilities, we purchase energy from utility company. So that is equal to a scope two. Uh, these also includes steam, steam heating, and cooling, et cetera. The scope three is all again, indirect emissions, but not included scope two, but that occur in the value chain of the reporting company. So it's quite a, you know, the scope three is much more complex because you are looking into the insight and whatever we produce when you sell to a next organization or company that becomes that scope three as well. It's a little complex, and it requires a lot of, uh, you know, analytics, a lot of, uh, data crunching, uh, to make it a scope three factor. But if you're able to reduce scope one and scope two, and it'll have direct impact to the scope three as well.

Tim Verras (07:50):

Great. So when, when you sit down with one of our customers, Ravi, and they, you know, talk to you about the scope emissions or, or how they can, you know, reach a kind of a net zero carbon future, what are some things you tell them?

Ravi Srinivasan (08:03):

Yeah. Uh, there are various ways we can talk, uh, you know, when we speak to the customers, there are various, we can help them to get through that goals. Again, the word sustainability is, is everything under the sun. It's got a lot of things under, underneath when it comes from the industrial space or from the aerospace or the buildings. Uh, we look at some three key areas in terms of, uh, helping our customers. This could be from a new technology suppose they want to have a say green hydrogen or carbon capture, for example, or, or an operational excellence. Like how do we improve the operations, whether it's in a building or in the flight efficiencies, or whether it is in the, in the industrial space. The third part is the digital transformation, which is an enabler, right? I mean, there's a couple of them are, are talked about operational PS or the capital expenditures that you may need. But the third is the overarching, the software that can drive using AI ML, et cetera, how we can actually help our customers to try towards the digital, uh, transformation towards the net zero journey,

Tim Verras (09:05):

Ravi, what, what are some of those things that we're helping our customers do? Uh, and you know, I know we have a, like you said, sustainability is everything under the sun. So let's, let's kind of bucket it out a little bit. What are, what are like maybe five or six things that, that we go to our customers and do,

Ravi Srinivasan (09:19):

Oh yeah, that's a great one. Honeywell has been investing quite extensively in the space where to help our customers on net zeros journey. If you really look across Honeywell, whether it is an industrial space buildings, aerospace, I think, uh, the more than 60% in investments in the R and D spent they're all in the sustainable related stuff, which is very, very good because this actually helping our customers, uh, as we all have aware, the decarbonization is a Keystone in the net zero journey. And if you really look from the perspective in the last five years, we have actually done a substantial amount of projects, helping customers, whether it's industrial space, healthcare, commercial, transportation, et cetera, uh, in supporting customers, enabling them in this journey. So I just wanna highlight, that there are plenty of solutions available in Ville because we invested quite heavily in the last, uh, many years.

Ravi Srinivasan (10:11):

I just want to talk about a few things. The green <inaudible>, this is around the new technology that has come in recently is about splitting the water into hydrogen and oxygen. You see electrolysis methodology, and this pro produces zero carbon. So this is one of the purest form of hydrogen that you can have, which is used in the industrial fixities or various other applications. And for when we have this blue hydrogen, which is a traditional form, then we have, we have come up with a carbon capture technology that helps you to capture the C2 and of course, store it underground, for example. So that's another way of looking at it then, uh, in also the honey S develop sustainable aviation field, which is we call SAAF using biomass to produce fuel for the aircraft. And all three, there are some airlines who already gone in with that kind of a solution.

Ravi Srinivasan (10:59):

This helps helping the customers to reduce their emissions with the buildings we've been managing buildings for decades. And this is one of the core business that honey lands been. And, um, we've been helping our customers to operate a lower energy while providing the comfort the same time. It's. So sometimes we see it as a conflicting priorities, but Honeywell has been helping the customers to lower the energy within the building at the same time, providing the comfort that's needed. Uh, then we talk about in industrial space. We got plenty of solutions. So the whole thing is it comes in two buckets. One is to, in across all of these is about measure what emissions we have. Then once we measure there's a benchmark, and then we talk about a, in the industrial space, how, what using advanced process control or asset performance management or digital twin, we actually help to help to, uh, help our customers to improve energy efficiency and also help in optimizing the asset performance, leading to lower emissions.

Ravi Srinivasan (11:59):

If we really look at a couple of things, uh, the emissions, a result of how your plant is performing, uh, you know, in terms of control in terms of the process efficiencies, also in terms of how the assets are performing, if you're able to control and manage these, uh, assets and our process in a more efficient way, lower the emissions, it's going to be. So it's all about how we will control and optimize so that we can assist our customers in the net zero journey. So all along with that holistically, we have the enterprise emission software. We cut across industrial building in aerospace. So they'll be able to accurately measure, monitor and, uh, the emissions in real-time, so that we have a system record and we are able the ability to drive, uh, the, the strategy and help customers to reduce emissions. So, and also we are working with, you know, uh, internally to work on generating reports to meet regularly and the Compli requirements as well. So this kind of a solution, this is just definitely not the complete one. I just highlighted a few of them. Uh, uh, we have a very laundry list of items actually, uh, on, in terms of support that, or the solutions or technology that we have, we can help our customers in this journey.

Tim Verras (13:08):

So, yeah, I mean, it, it, it sounds like there's a lot there to tackle. Yep. Um, so, you know, if, if I'm putting myself in the customer's shoes and I'm trying to figure out where to even start with, with all of this, uh, what, what kind of framework do you sit down and, and use with them to help 'em kind of navigate this journey because it seems like it gets pretty complex.

Ravi Srinivasan (13:28):

You, you, it's a very good question. I think this is a well, something that we come across when we speak to customer, I spoken number of customers. Uh, we do see customers at various levels of maturity, right there. Some customers are really advanced that they kind of thought through, they figured out what they need to do. Some customers know what are the various buckets they have, but they don't know how to GoBoard it. Third is starting from scratch. Hey, just tell us how you want to GoBoard. So to, to get, to help our customers. So first and foremost thing is kind of creating a blueprint for our customers. Okay. What's a goal they have, because these are not something that you're talking about. The journey is for few years, correct. A lot of customers talking about whether 20, 30, 20, 35, up to 2050. Correct. So what's important just to understand what's the time blend they have and helping them to break it down into Ra pieces so that they don't, you know, it's like, um, helping them buy pieces to get to that, uh, net zero, uh, goal that they have kept.

Ravi Srinivasan (14:26):

So while we do the concerting, we also, uh, understand, you know, what are the module or more that boxes that's needed to help to get there. So once we do, once that is done, then we get, get into the seconds of activities. Okay. What are the low barriers of, you know, of, uh, hanging fruits, which we can help with the customers to get that implemented. Then we get onto the next stage, which has got the, you know, in terms of the journey, the complexities and all this stuff. So what's key here is that consulting is first. And while we do the consulting, I think the most critical part is to make sure people know how much they're meeting right. Estimations have been done, but what's important to measure the accurate emission. That's where we come in as Honeywell, in terms of, uh, helping our customers to measure the actual emissions.

Ravi Srinivasan (15:13):

Just give an example of a methane, an emission, which is a big, uh, issue, uh, globally, because got a higher warming potential compared to say, uh, uh, the greenhouse gases. So, uh, we have introduced a new methane sensor, uh, which can actually identify the leaks in the real-time. Uh, the currently the traditional methodology used in industries, they go and measure over a periodic time. It could be turn, it could be weeks or months. So by the time they identify the leak and take cardio action. So with a new technology where they can actually measure, uh, the leak in real-time, and you can fix the problem then, and there, which means that we can fix the Metin emissions issues, uh, so rapidly that it can have a very positive impact to the, to our environment. So measuring is very key then AC accounting, and doing the right calculation, just not be estimation, but accurately calculating a what is the emissions that the industry or the entity is actually emitting.

Ravi Srinivasan (16:10):

Then once you have that, having the right analytical tool, driving insight, what kind of decision support I can help the customers with, uh, to make sure they're navigating through the right, uh, set of, uh, issues and, uh, and getting to the right problems, then final part comes to the control on the optimization part help once you understand what issues are, we know what action needs to be taken, getting it implemented and making sure it is a close loop system, not an open loop system finally comes the, uh, reporting structure, whether it is for investors, regulatory requirements or voluntary, or non-voluntary disclosures helping the customers in the journey. So it's kind of a very close loop system, uh, and that actually as you progress, and you can continuously improve upon, uh, to deliver better, uh, you know, results for the organization,

Tim Verras (16:58):

Right? So, I mean, it's not just a technology solution. It really is kind of a holistic approach from, from consulting in the beginning to getting kind of boots on the ground to figure out what the problems are, and then adopting those technological solutions, but then on the back end reporting back out, because that reporting is becoming increasingly popular at least that we're seeing where it's not just enough to say you're sustainable. Now you have to prove it.

Ravi Srinivasan (17:20):

Absolutely. That's a great summary term from your side.

Tim Verras (17:22):

So Ravi, I think that's all I have for you today. Thank you so much for sitting down with me, uh, and, and kind of helping me understand a little bit more about what we're doing.

Ravi Srinivasan (17:31):

Thank you, Tim, uh, appreciate the opportunity here and I'm looking forward to the next one where we are talking about more use cases and references or customer success story. I would be happy to bring that up. Thank

Tim Verras (17:43):

You. Awesome. All right. Looking forward to it. Thanks, Ravi. This has been forging connections, a podcast from Honeywell. You can follow Honeywell forge on LinkedIn and download new episodes from our website@honeywellforge.ai. Thanks for listening.