Services
Sustainability Services
Ecosystem-led Approach to Power Your Sustainability Strategy
Highlights
As the climate emergency continues to build, reducing carbon emissions and adopting sustainable business practices remain a priority for many organisations.
Regulation around carbon accounting is putting further impetus behind their efforts.
Digital twins can help with both these priorities, identifying impactful changes companies can make to improve their sustainability.
They can also model the impact of environmental factors and human activities, enabling organisations to make better decisions on their resource usage, emissions reductions and energy efficiency.
On This Page
On This Pageinpage
Sustainability in focus
Record temperatures, wildfires and floods across the entire northern hemisphere are just some of the latest symptoms of climate change.
These events underscore, yet again, the need to double down on lowering carbon emissions and adopting more sustainable practices. Legislative initiatives such as the EU Green Deal will support this shift, soon requiring tens of thousands of companies to report on their sustainability performance and progress.
It means businesses will have to collect an unprecedented amount of data—internally and across their entire value chain. However, the biggest challenge will be figuring out the most impactful changes they can make to their carbon footprints. Digital twin technology can be instrumental in this process.
Using digital twins
Digital twins have many applications, but there are two significant areas where they can support organisations.
Firstly, by reflecting real-world ecosystems, they can accurately simulate what effect potential alterations or additions could have. This can reduce reliance on surveying and other analogue processes.
Secondly, they can help measure sustainability in value and supply chains. By creating a “chain of custody”, a digital twin can help identify efficiencies without physical audits.
Running in tandem with their real twin, which continuously feeds them data, digital twins can identify areas for improvement and propose solutions.
Already established in sectors such as manufacturing, they could become commonplace in business and society by 2035. That’s according to TCS’ latest Digital Twindex report which surveyed scientists, futurists and subject-matter experts from TCS’ networks.
Healthcare, mobility, and retail are the sectors most likely to adopt digital twins within the next three years, the experts predict. So the technology could soon be used to optimise the CO2 footprint of future hospitals, shopping malls and transport networks.
Lowering emissions
How can digital twin technology help with sustainability reporting and emissions reductions?
There’s no one-size-fits-all approach for organisations looking to improve their environmental performance. This is why virtually replicating and manipulating a business can create significant advantages.
Digital twins can model the impact of varying environmental factors and human activities, allowing companies to make more informed decisions on such as the best use of resources or cutting emissions most effectively. They can also help optimise energy usage and waste management.
In addition, the technology can simplify Scope 3 emission control across complex supply chains, using real-time analytics to “audit” all elements in the supply chain virtually.
Nearly two-thirds of TCS’ Digital Twindex panellists expect broad adoption of digital twins in a sustainability context within the next six years.
Energy efficiency
As one of the most established users of digital twins, there are many examples of how the technology has aided energy efficiency in manufacturing
The World Economic Forum reports that at the factory of a South Korean electronics company, a digital twin of an assembly line helped improve productivity by 17%, product quality by 70% and energy consumption by 30%. Similarly, a French company used digital twin technology to cut its energy use by a quarter, reduce material waste by 17% and lower CO2 emissions by 25%.
Digital twins can also affect sustainability by simulating real-world scenarios, such as the lifecycle of machines, to prevent failures and breakdowns that could lead to environmental damage or pollution.
Scenario planning
What are typical emission reduction scenarios that digital twins can simulate?
With data from the entire value chain feeding into systems, digital twins can unearth new routes for emission reductions and circular economies.
One example is energy management.
According to various Energy Council reports, commercial and industrial buildings consume 94% of the world’s total delivered energy and emit more than one-third of greenhouse gases. However, usage patterns are unpredictable, especially given the size and complexity of enterprise-scale operations and the continued growth of floor space.
An energy solution can have digital twin technology built in, so customers can use predictive data analytics to become more energy efficient, meeting sustainability and financial goals. The technology can adapt to new buildings coming online, fitting them into emission reduction strategies.
Sustainability strategy
Digital twins can support emissions abatement at scale by allowing organisations to simulate the impact of strategic decisions, such as where to locate new factories.
For example, could a company reduce emissions by siting a new facility close to customers, avoiding transport emissions? Or would a site further away but with greater access to renewable energy—despite increased transport emissions—be better?
As companies strive to improve sustainability in the face of the climate emergency and tighten regulation, digital twins can support strategic decisions that benefit business and the planet.
Healthcare, mobility, and retail are the sectors most likely to adopt digital twins within the next three years, the experts predict. So the technology could soon be used to optimise the CO2 footprint of future hospitals, shopping malls and transport networks.
