Greener, more digital, and highly efficient thanks to IoT
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Use case: Companies need data on their energy consumption in order to achieve their sustainability goals. Increased energy prices and legal requirements are also forcing them to improve the transparency of consumption in production and buildings.
Challenges: Many companies have no transparency regarding their consumption of gas, oil, electricity, and district heating in their production facilities and properties. As a result, energy wastage remains undetected and potential savings are not made. Comprehensive, real-time reporting of consumption is only possible with considerable effort, and it is often incomplete.
Solution: Using an energy data management solution enables almost real-time monitoring of energy consumption. Non-invasive sensor technology is used to collect electricity, gas, heat, and water data. The automatic collection and provision of these data enable the implementation of environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) reporting in accordance with DIN ISO 50001. The collected data enable targeted energy consulting, the development of specific suggestions for improvement, and the monitoring of the success of the implemented measures. Dynamic contracting also enables companies to save money when purchasing energy.
Your benefits: Monitoring consumption data reveals potential savings of up to 30% and enables transparent documentation of sustainability key performance indicators (KPIs).
Use case: To reduce maintenance costs and optimise their energy use, companies need to ensure their properties and machinery are of the correct size.
Challenges: In the new work age, companies lack an overview of how many employees work in the office or from home and at what times. Oversized office space creates unnecessary emissions and costs. Maintaining too much machinery is also expensive, inefficient, and unsustainable.
Solution: Internet of Things (IoT) solutions make it possible to seamlessly determine the utilization levels of meeting rooms and workstations (smart buildings) as well as machines and vehicles (fleet management). With these data, work equipment can be dimensioned in such a way that it uses as few resources as possible but can still absorb peaks in demand.
Your benefits: Efficient and therefore resource-saving dimensioning of production equipment allows you to avoid downtime and underutilized or unused machinery and equipment that are cost-intensive and require high energy consumption to maintain. By enabling hybrid working models, you make yourself more attractive as an employer, and your employees need to use their cars less.
Use case: The transport sector is the third largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in Germany. As customers increasingly expect transparency regarding CO2 emissions, sustainability is becoming more and more of a competitive advantage.
Challenges: Manual recording of the CO2 footprint is almost impossible to achieve and can only be realized through rough estimates. Logistics companies and fleet operators therefore lack the data on vehicle usage, routes, and consumption that would allow them to tap into potential savings.
Solution: Fleet management solutions accurately record kilometers driven and fuel consumption, enabling a more precise evaluation of CO2 emissions. Intelligent route planning bundles paths, saves fuel, and prevents empty journeys.
Your benefits: Measures such as optimized route planning and improved order picking can save fuel and CO2 and reduce wear and tear on vehicles. This not only increases sustainability but saves costs at the same time.
Use case: The service life of a machine or building is an important sustainability factor: equipment that has to be decommissioned increases the mountains of waste, and its new production costs energy and causes emissions.
Challenges: Outside of maintenance windows, equipment such as vehicles, machines, and properties are not monitored. Wear and tear is therefore recognized too late and can cause subsequent damage that makes replacement necessary.
Solution: Our solution determines, monitors, and analyzes the current condition of an asset (e.g., vehicles or property). Anomalies that could lead to damage or the inefficient operation of the system are recognized in good time, and maintenance windows can be adjusted accordingly.
Your benefits: Monitoring and predictive maintenance enable longer operating times and thus lead to the sustainable and cost-optimized use of equipment.
Use case: Companies can increase the sustainability of their production by reducing waste and scrap. Not only do they generate less wastage, but they also save on costs.
Challenges: Inefficient processes and a lack of quality control of preliminary products lead to waste. It is almost impossible to monitor production chains manually.
Solution: Our IoT applications enable seamless, automated monitoring of process performance and better utilization of the materials used, for example, by comparing programmable logic controller (PLC), sensor, and process data.
Your benefits: Monitoring the processes results in better utilization of the materials used. This not only increases sustainability, but also reduces the costs for raw materials and disposal.
Use case: The social aspect is an important component of sustainability. Personnel are the most valuable, but also the most expensive, resource for most companies. Moreover, when there is a shortage of skilled labour, it is difficult to find qualified employees. Therefore, more attractive working environments need to be created.
Challenges: Stressful working conditions, such as noise or air pollution, can lead to dissatisfaction among employees. In addition, a great deal of time is lost traveling to and from maintenance or service assignments. Moreover, expertise is often unevenly distributed among employees. If a specialist with specialized knowledge is working for a customer, no other jobs can be processed at the same time.
Solution: Remote maintenance enables virtual on-site deployment: a highly specialized technician can be dispatched to different locations more quickly and efficiently. Access to specialized knowledge and remote support using technologies such as smart glasses can achieve a more even distribution of skills within the team. In addition, deployment in noisy and polluted working environments can be reduced. Various sensors and hardware products can be used to determine important factors for testing the environment, such as noise, CO₂, and radon exposure.
Your benefits: You utilize your employees’ skills more efficiently, make better use of their working time, and solve your customers’ problems faster.
Use case: Reuse, refurbishing, and environmentally friendly disposal processes for products and operating resources are not only sustainable but also reduce the need for raw materials.
Challenges: The logistics of collecting and processing the materials to be recycled can be challenging. As the fill level of collection containers is not known, they overflow or are approached even though they are not yet full. Containers or load carriers often end up at locations unknown to the recycling collection service. Separating the materials before recycling is often a time-consuming manual process.
Solution: Our IoT solutions support you in creating a sustainable and optimized disposal chain: sensors show the fill level of containers so that they are emptied at exactly the right time. Solutions for asset management processes track and coordinate the route of used containers. Automatic identification of the type and value of a material makes sorting more efficient.
Your benefits: Integrating IoT solutions into your recycling processes helps to increase resource efficiency, reduce costs, and minimize the environmental impact of your waste management activities.
Use case: In order to protect their employees and the public, companies must document compliance with limit values for the release of pollutants. Environmental parameters such as flooding, weather, and seismic vibrations also need to be monitored frequently to ensure the safety of plants and properties.
Challenges: Some industries require continuous real-time monitoring of emissions. This can be technologically challenging. In addition, companies need to manage large amounts of data and be able to provide accurate and timely reports on their emissions.
Solution: IoT-based emission monitoring provides real emission values without inaccuracies. In the event of incidents such as storms or flooding, environmental monitoring helps to take value-preserving countermeasures in good time. All sensor data are transmitted to the cloud in real time, analyzed, and processed in a backend so that reports can be generated at any time.
Your benefits: Precise monitoring of your company’s emission values not only protects the general public and your employees, plants, and properties but also gives you legal certainty. The clear preparation of the data makes it possible to precisely determine possible improvement measures.
Use case: Mandatory ESG reporting describes a company’s sustainability measures without an assessment. Only external, independent inspection bodies such as TÜV or DEKRA provide an assessment of the quality of these measures. Their certificates can be decisive in winning orders. This is because partners and customers can demand them to ensure sustainability in their supply chains.
Challenges: Collecting and providing ESG data to an audit organization can be time-consuming and resource-intensive. Environmental data can be complex, and manual collection can lead to errors or leave gaps in reports.
Solution: The use of IoT solutions generates continuous ESG data. This enables an up-to-date view of the company’s performance: a certification partner accesses the ESG reporting database that has already been collected and can issue a certificate after enriching any missing information.
Your benefit: You can easily fulfil the requirements of partners and customers for certified action and use independent certificates to communicate your sustainability measures to the public.
Find out more about sustainability with IoT
Devices connected via the Internet of Things (IoT) help us obtain data to better understand processes, allowing us to identify where inefficiencies and waste are occurring. The IoT therefore not only helps us to reduce costs and the consumption of raw materials, but also helps in cutting CO2 emissions and waste.
For example, a smart energy solution for buildings which only illuminates and heats rooms when they are in use significantly reduces owners’ electricity bills. It thus eliminates greenhouse gases that would be produced in power generation. Not only the owners of the building benefit, but also society as a whole.
According to an analysis conducted by the World Economic Forum, 84 percent of IoT applications currently or potentially support the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 2015 using similar methods. And according to a 2021 study commissioned by the digital association Bitkom, 34% of Germany’s climate goals can be achieved through the targeted and accelerated use of digital solutions alone.
Of course, such digitalization initiatives have their own carbon footprint: communications networks, data centers, and end devices generate greenhouse gases in their creation and operation. But as Bitkom’s calculations show, the positive effects outweigh the negative ones many times over.
These digital innovations not only cut greenhouse gas emissions and costs, but also enable completely new, sustainable business models, such as Call a Bike, as a carbon-neutral way of getting around.
IoT solutions for more sustainability benefit not only the environment, but also the companies that use them. End consumers are also paying more and more attention to sustainability and are choosing companies that meet their requirements.
IoT can help minimise the consumption of resources such as water, energy and raw materials. By networking devices and sensors, companies can closely monitor their use and take effective measures to optimise them. The resulting lowered resource consumption and reduced emissions ultimately mean reduced costs.
Sustainability can also be a basis for new business models. Reusable and circular systems, for example, offer opportunities to develop new revenue streams with a focus on greater eco friendliness.
Finally, IoT solutions for more sustainability increase competitiveness. Business partners are demanding more and more metrics from their suppliers to make their own supply chains sustainable in order to comply with the German Supply Chain Sourcing Obligations Act, which came into effect on 01 January 2023.
On both a national and a European level, legislators are currently expanding the legal framework to provide customers and investors with greater transparency regarding corporate sustainability. Additionally, they are aiming to create incentives for switching to sustainable technologies. Companies situated in Germany must therefore comply with the following legal framework on the subject of sustainability.
Obligation to report on sustainability
In Germany, the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Directive Implementation Act is currently in force, affecting publicly traded companies with upwards of 500 employees. In their annual report, they are required to provide information on the sustainability of their business activities. In doing so, they must specifically document the corporate strategy, climate-related opportunities and risks, sustainability targets, and progress in implementing climate management.
This reporting obligation is supplemented by the EU taxonomy, which is a set of rules for defining sustainability that creates a framework for classifying sustainable economic activities within the EU, making them comparable across sectors. The CSR reporting obligation and EU taxonomy are intended to provide investors and customers with a guideline for assessing the sustainability of companies.
However, the legal basis for sustainability reporting is set to change soon. The new Corporate Sustainability Report Directive (CSRD) will introduce extended reporting obligations for companies and is intended to give sustainability reporting a similarly important status to financial reporting. In the future, it will no longer be carried out separately, but will be an integral part of companies’ management reports. The CSRD will also affect all large companies with 250 or more employees which have either more than 20 million euros in total assets or 40 million euros in sales – regardless of their stock market listing. It will apply from January 2024 onwards and will thus affect reports for the 2023 fiscal year.
CSR reporting is not only a duty, but also an opportunity for companies. The progress achieved with IoT solutions can be used to create awareness of your company’s sustainable actions, facilitating your ability to provide information and build trust with capital providers, investors, and customers.
If require assistance in implementing your CSR reporting obligation, the German Sustainability Code can help you. This initiative provides companies with a reporting standard for sustainability aspects and gives them guidance on how the CSR reporting obligation can be implemented in practice.
Putting a price tag on CO2 emissions
In 2021, the German federal government introduced a tax on CO2 emissions generated as a byproduct of heating and fuels, such as heating oil, natural gas, gasoline, and diesel. This is intended to create incentives for the use of climate-friendly technologies such as heat pumps, electromobility, renewable energy, and energy conservation.
These certificates are issued by the German Emissions Trading Authority (DEHSt) at the Federal Environment Agency. They are traded via the national emissions trading system (nEHS). The German government intends to invest the revenue in climate protection measures or pass it on to citizens as relief. The CO2 cost has initially been set to 25 euros since January 2021. It will then gradually increase up to 55 euros in 2025. A prince range of a minimum of 55 euros and a maximum of 65 euros is to apply for 2026.
This national CO2 tax for heating and fuels supplemented an already existing European tax for the energy industry, energy-intensive industry, and intra-European air traffic. This is processed by the European Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS). The companies covered by the ETS are not affected by the national certificate trader DEHSt.
National and European CO2 taxation affects a large swath of companies – either directly, by requiring them to purchase emissions allowances, or indirectly, by passing costs on to them. IoT solutions for the smart heating of buildings or for fleet management can help reduce these costs.
There are two main ways for companies to objectively determine the impact of their production on the environment: life-cycle assessment (LCA) and the Greenhouse Gas Protocol.
Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)
Life Cycle Assessment evaluates the impact of a product on the environment throughout its lifetime. LCA takes into account greenhouse gas emissions, the depletion of natural resources, and other direct and indirect factors that affect the environment. The main international standards for conducting these LCAs are ISO 14040 and ISO 14044. In Germany, for instance, LCA is conducted by the Fraunhofer Institute Umsicht.
Greenhouse Gas Protocol
The Greenhouse Gas Protocol, or GHG Protocol, is a comprehensive framework for measuring and managing greenhouse gas emissions. It was created through the collaboration of international organizations and companies, providing companies and government agencies with accounting and reporting standards, industry-specific guidelines, calculation tools, and training. It is coordinated by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) and the World Resources Institute (WRI).
It divides emissions into three scopes:
Scope 1 measures direct emissions from sources that a company owns or controls. Examples include company vehicles and fuel combustion for heating.
Scope 2 includes indirect emissions from purchased electricity, steam, heating, or cooling.
Scope 3 includes other indirect emissions from upstream or downstream processes. This can include employee commuting, waste disposal, purchased goods or services.
More information can be found on the website of the Greenhouse Gas Protocol.
To increase the sustainability of your production, it is crucial to consider the entire life cycle of a product, from manufacturing to product disposal and recycling.
Design
Decisions made in the design phase of a product have an impact on its environmental footprint throughout its lifetime. A digital twin helps product designers and engineers to better understand their effects. This term refers to a virtual simulation of products or entire business processes that replicates their entire lifecycle, making it possible to better understand the impact of ideas and processes during the planning phase before physical resources are consumed. According to a study by the industry association Bitkom, 5 to 8 percent of the expected primary energy emissions for manufacturing processes in 2030 can be avoided using such simulations and optimizations of physical products or processes.
Manufacturing
At this stage, IoT deployment can help companies by having sensors monitor production equipment to report potential failures early on. This increases the lifespan of equipment, reduces energy consumption, eliminates visits by service technicians, and ensures that no faulty products are produced that would add to the amount of waste. Bitkom estimates that between 5 to 8 percent of emissions in manufacturing can be avoided by reducing manual intervention and optimizing processes using control systems, IT, and other technologies.
During the manufacturing phase, a lot of energy is also wasted in buildings when rooms that are not currently being used are heated or illuminated. Bitkom estimates that 9 to 12 percent of emissions caused by commercially used buildings can be cut using smart energy management solutions. Read more about the potential of IoT in facility management in this blog post.
Sales and distribution
An IoT route optimization solution that analyzes data from vehicle-mounted GPS trackers helps avoid empty runs and finds the shortest routes for delivery trips. Using this information, companies can reduce fuel consumption to lower their carbon emissions. For information on Telekom’s Drive & Track fleet management solution, click here.
When transporting goods, it is vital to avoid damage so as not to produce unnecessary waste. This can be ensured by IoT systems that warn when sensitive products are exposed to excessive heat, cold, or vibrations. This is particularly important when transporting food item, as food waste is a major source of greenhouse gases. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that 14 percent of the world's food is thrown away before it can be offered for sale. Reducing food waste is therefore also one of the United Nation’s sustainability goals.
Waste collection and recycling
Waste is also an indirect source of greenhouse gases. After all, energy was expended to produce the products that ultimately end up as waste, which is usually incinerated, releasing additional CO2. IoT technologies for paperless management can help companies save paper and plastic. Wireless sensors can also help operators monitor the level in waste disposal bins to plan the best time for collection. For example, waste management specialists Rhenus and Remondis were able to optimize their logistics with the help of fill level sensors from Telekom.
No matter at which stage of the product lifecycle you deploy your IoT solution, it will always need components which are perfectly aligned to ensure low energy consumption. Our IoT Solution Optimizer helps you find the best set of components in our catalog, combine hardware solutions, set application properties, and configure energy-saving features – and models the expected results within seconds.
If your company is determined to commit to reducing its greenhouse gas emissions, the Science Based Targets (SBTi) initiative is one way to get advice and exchange information on this process.
A Science Based Target is a climate goal that a company or community can set for itself. It is not set arbitrarily, but focuses on the number of emissions that must be reduced in order to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement – limiting global warming to 1.5°C.
The initiative provides companies with best practices that are in line with the current state of science and enables independent evaluation and validation of the targets. It also provides a public platform and regular review, advice, and feedback on the set targets.
For more information, visit the initiative's website.