The World Meteorological Organization’s recently published 2023 climate update report warns that global temperatures are likely to increase above the 1.5-degree Celsius level specified in the Paris Agreement between 2023 and 2027, which presents implications that are bound to affect everyday life as we know it – including, but not limited to, more extreme weather events happening more often, food security issues, public health and other risks.
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One greenhouse gas that’s especially concerning is methane, which is 25 times more potent at warming the atmosphere than carbon dioxide over a 100-year period, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency.
According to the International Energy Association’s 2022 Global Methane Tracker, methane emissions are responsible for about 30% of the global temperature increase since the Industrial Revolution, and around 40% of methane emissions from human causes come from the energy sector – including companies and operations that produce oil, gas and coal.
Most of today’s decision-makers in the business world agree that making their company’s operations more sustainable is a good thing both for the planet and business, but one of the barriers is that many companies, specifically in the industrial sector, have struggled to accurately measure their own emissions.
Today, there are technologies on the market that are making emissions management more approachable than ever – allowing businesses to reach their goals, comply with new regulations and make their sites safer for people and the planet.
The state of emissions management
With recent government regulations that call for emissions reduction, such as the US through the Inflation Reduction Act, companies have more reason than ever to analyze their operations’ greenhouse gas emissions and take actionable steps to reduce them.
The reality is that you can’t start to manage emissions until you can measure them accurately.
One challenge with emissions management is that industrial organizations have historically lacked a single system that measures their emissions across multiple plants, factories and other facilities.
Additionally, industrial companies have historically relied on manual methods of detecting gas leaks and periodic measurement – including personnel using handheld equipment to detect invisible leaks at plants or other facilities. Not only are those methods putting workers at risk – but they lead to estimations, not accuracy for demonstrating credible and transparent emission reductions.
The good news is that technologies available in the market today, including end-to-end emissions management solutions that Honeywell provides, enable companies in the industrial and manufacturing sectors to measure, monitor, report, and develop actionable insights that can help prevent and efficiently reduce emissions.
Breakdown: Approaches to emissions management
No matter where you’re at in your journey to net-zero, know that emissions management is not a one-time project with a start and end date.
Future-focused organizations looking to meet their carbon neutrality goals and comply with carbon-reduction regulations should approach emissions management as an always-on cycle of monitoring for gas leaks and potential problem areas.
Knowing the steps of the emissions management process is a good place to start. At Honeywell, we view emissions management as an end-to-end cycle enabled by a suite of technologies that enables measurement, monitoring, reduction and continuous improvement.
Measure and monitor
There are two ways to describe technologies designed for companies to continuously measure and monitor emissions: bottom-up and top-down sensor-based technologies.
Bottom-up emissions management involves technologies that detect a specific source of emissions, such as from a piece of equipment or a specific area of interest at a site.
Top-down emissions management technologies include drones, aircraft and satellites, and continuous monitoring from Gas Cloud Imaging systems which are designed to monitor and detect gas leaks over a wide area – such as at an entire facility.
Once you’ve gathered the data, it’s time to analyze it. Gone are the days of relying on manual data collection methods, which could leave gas leaks unattended and potentially impact workers’ safety, or cause equipment outages or production delays.
The future of effective emissions management involves a combination of continuous sensing technologies along with a unifying digital platform like software-as-a-service (SaaS) technologies to centralize the data in one place and create a consolidated system of record.
One example we have available at Honeywell is the emissions management application powered by our industrial-grade software Honeywell Forge, which collects data from a company’s sensor-based technologies like gas detectors and provides site and enterprise-wide analysis and visualization of emissions, including Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions.
With digital tools, the right people – from facility operators to health, safety and environmental officers and executives – all get the same actionable insights to inform their next decisions, whether it’s stopping a gas leak or making plans for repairs.
Reduce emissions and predict the future
With a baseline in place, companies can thoughtfully identify the opportunities for emissions reduction that make sense in their operations, from battery energy storage systems that store energy generated from renewable sources like wind and solar and hydrogen-ready burners– which will be increasingly important as the world progresses in its energy transition – to carbon capture, which can help industrial companies in their decarbonization journeys by capturing and storing carbon dioxide from industrial processes, preventing it from entering the atmosphere.
Energy efficiency tools like predictive insights can also assist companies in their always-on efforts to manage emissions. For example, digital twin tools can help companies simulate processes and conduct “what if” scenarios to make predictions about their sites or assets and prepare accordingly.
The opportunity to significantly reduce human-caused emissions from industrial sites is an opportunity that’s addressable now – for companies at all stages of their carbon neutrality journeys – and has the potential to help mitigate the impacts of climate change.
