“Sustainability teams can and should use AI in their daily work as it can accelerate and scale sustainability efforts,” said Sophia Mendelsohn, Head of Sustainability and Business, SAP.
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Attracting the international community to address global climate issues is a herculean task. Fortunately, it United Nations Conference on Climate Change has been an ongoing consortium of the brightest minds working together to create actionable steps towards building a greener and cleaner future.
Now in its 29th year (hence, COP29) and taking place in Baku, Azerbaijan from 11-22 November, this year’s event is being positioned as a “stand and deliver COP”, according to the UN Executive Secretary on Climate Change Simon Stiell. who spoke in one The Brookings Institution’s latest event.
According to Stiell, humanity cannot afford a world of “clean energy haves and have-nots,” which is why trillions more are needed to turn this losing proposition around.
“Doing so is an essential investment to protect the global economy and will be part of the costs that every nation will pay if we allow the climate crisis to continue to run rampant, destroying more and more lives and livelihoods every year. daily, weekly, monthly. and every year. “International climate finance needs to grow, grow and grow, to meet this momentum,” Stiell said.
How can we take the next steps to ensure that more countries and companies benefit and where all peoples and communities are protected?
Data-driven solutions to meet the moment
As a long-term COP participant, enterprise software provider SAP is committed to encouraging governments to agree on impactful and action-oriented outcomes at COP29, building further on United Arab Emirates Consensus with speed and scale.
Recommendations for governments and the global community to focus on include:
Creating coherent, reliable and predictable policies, standardization and ESG disclosure frameworks, and trusted investments and partnerships to get on track to halve emissions by 2030.
Accelerating the green and digital transition, based on a consistent carbon accounting framework to ensure the same accuracy as for financial data. This is essential for carbon transparency across supply chains.
Harnessing the potential of AI AND maximizing the benefits of AI-driven climate action while designing and deploying it responsibly.
“We also seek to contribute to global climate action with our goals to achieve net zero emissions in our company’s operations and throughout our value chain by 2030,” said Matthias Medert, Global Head of Sustainability, SAP SE . “This includes reducing emissions and waste, as well as empowering our customers with the development of digital solutions that help them achieve their sustainability goals.
According to Sophia Mendelsohn, Head of Sustainability and Business, SAP SE, technology can be a critical enabler to make the net zero economy a reality, helping to save 20% of global CO2 emissions by 2030, as well as increasing climate preparedness with data. guided solutions. But for Chief Sustainability Officers (CSOs) to gain broader buy-in from the business to invest in sustainable technology solutions, the following areas need to be unlocked to prove there is ROI:
- Present real-world examples of AI
- I agree about a lingua franca
- Build a green book
Present real-world examples of AI
While AI cannot solve all of the world’s problems, it has proven to be a key factor in the fight against climate change. The more CSOs can sample and pilot AI technology, the faster they can accelerate and scale.
“NGOs are already used to understanding complex industrial and natural systems,” Mendelsohn said. “Applying AI to what a CSO is already good at opens up the ability to process multi-modal data, identify patterns and strengthen relationships.”
This capability also equips CSOs and other change makers to track change, predict outcomes, and improve system behaviors in previously unthinkable ways. today, AI models trained on datasets of material properties classify billions of possibilities. For example, Route Optimization can take advantage of AI algorithms to analyze historical and real-time data for transport route optimization and load optimization. And Emission Factor Mapping with AI is also available today thanks to the latest solutions like Managing the SAP sustainability footprint.
“That’s why I’m optimistic that sustainability practitioners will be able to create a return on investment from their AI energy consumption,” Mendelsohn said. “Sustainability teams can and should use AI in their daily work as it can accelerate and scale sustainability efforts.
I agree about a lingua franca
Another one An important area where the global community can create climate action is throughout the supply chain. Great synergies can be realized through a single format and network to effectively communicate the product’s carbon footprint.
“The carbon footprint of the product is definitely more useful information than a cost-based Scope 3 estimate,” said Gunther Rothermel, Product Chief and Co-GM for SAP Sustainability, SAP SE. “Moving from corporate to product and evaluation to current, I can finally stop goal 3.”
A standard bill of communication materials through that product, in addition to the PACT Methodology, will help accelerate progress.
“PACT is a global standard for calculating and sharing consistent, comparable and reliable Scope 3 emission data across value chains,” said Rothermel. “That’s why SAP is building PACT into our solutions to create product carbon footprints and pass product carbon footprint data through a sustainability data exchange.”
Build a green book
A green book is where sustainability information is calculated across a company’s business lines and stored within financial records. Essentially, a green book gets the Chief Sustainability Officer and the Chief Financial Officer on the same page. Solution as SAP Sustainability Control Tower creates automated, accurate and auditable data on emissions, including reporting to the EU CSRD.
“Together, these three unlocks ease data readiness concerns and put businesses on the right transformation trajectory for a truly sustainable future,” said Mendelsohn.
Learn more about SAP’s sustainability strategy here.