Businesses across all industries are currently prioritizing efforts to achieve net zero emissions. However, such initiatives require more than good will and action. Any company that wants to achieve true carbon neutrality needs to have strategic resources in place that will simplify the logistic processes that support such an effort.

When Breitling, a producer of luxury watches founded in 1884, began its net zero journey, it relied heavily on manual processes for data entry, which had resulted in excessive complexity as the company drew information from multiple sources and had to undergo time-consuming and laborious carbon accounting. To address this and smooth the road to carbon neutrality, Breitling decided to introduce the Salesforce Net Zero Cloud (NZC), which offered a solution compliant with the Greenhouse Gas Protocol standard, in an effort to simplify data management processes.

After having conversations with Salesforce about the cloud platform, the watch maker concluded that it would be best served by bringing on an additional implementation partner. Such an organization needed technical expertise with Salesforce solutions to ensure that the solution supported the business’ long-term net zero vision. This brought Breitling to ��ѻ��ý and the partnership had its origin.

Rolling out the cloud platform

Working collaboratively, Breitling, ��ѻ��ý, and Salesforce began the implementation project. This started with the creation of a roadmap that defined the scope of available data as well as the actions needed to make the NZC a collaborative and centralized system.

Once Breitling and ��ѻ��ý agreed on a scope and implementation plan, they launched a series of three sprints that built towards the final launch of the solution. Each sprint followed a similar general format wherein the project team collected carbon emission data in units or spend, transformed and calculated appropriate emissions factors with tools already included in Salesforce NZC or received those factors directly from suppliers, and built a more effective reporting dashboard. The sprint covered all available data related to direct emissions, such as company vehicles, facilities, and purchased energy, as well indirect upstream and downstream emissions.

By the end of this process, Breitling had a thorough understanding of the emissions across the entirety of its business activities and possessed a new selection of tools that streamlined future data collecting, monitoring, and reporting processes. With the Salesforce NZC, the company standardized its methods of gathering and organizing critical data. In addition, the partners automated the mapping between existing data sources and the NZC, improving data accuracy and reducing the amount of time needed to enter data.

Building towards carbon neutrality

Moreover, the Salesforce NZC centralized Breitling’s emissions factors while simultaneously automating their calculation so that the company could view the results based on scope, location, or market. Finally, through its global vision reporting dashboard, the solution provided a substantially higher degree of visibility into the company’s emissions data. It enabled synthesis reporting for carbon accounting and enabled Breitling to monitor the entirety of the carbon data lifecycle.

Now that the watch maker has standardized and centralized its emissions data tracing with the Salesforce NZC, the company is prepared to take the next recommended steps on its path to true carbon neutrality. Breitling will continue to collect carbon data at scale throughout its entire value chain and fine-tune its measurement accuracy while also creating a carbon data management system to report on the business’ overall carbon footprint.

All of this will support the company’s engagement with stakeholders responsible for downstream emissions as part of a decarbonization program while Breitling continues to expand the capabilities of the NZC. This will involve the inclusion of new features, such as Science Based Targets to set and track the company’s progress towards Net Zero, supplier engagement with a link to Ecovadis (a rating program for suppliers), and Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) report generation.

Net zero is a lofty and important goal. With Salesforce NZC and its partnership with ��ѻ��ý, Breitling is now poised to make substantive progress towards full carbon neutrality as part of its vision for the future.

To become more effective and relevant in its approach to customer outreach and to enhance its agility, the company undertook a widespread transformation by launching several major projects intended to enhance the customer experience, and improve the effectiveness of its operating model. Through these initiatives, the company envisioned a marketing strategy focused on a more one-to-one approach driven by a central decision authority that would manage continuous engagement during moments of need rather than scheduled campaigns.

To ensure the success of this endeavor, Wind Tre partnered with ��ѻ��ý in search of a solution and end-to-end support. This engagement brought a substantial amount of industry knowledge to bear from both parties while unifying Wind Tre’s vision of the future with ��ѻ��ý’s technical and transformational expertise.

Identifying and developing a best-fit solution

The project kicked off with a thorough examination of the company’s existing systems and technology as well as potential solutions. Through a series of workshops that hosted various stakeholders from around the business, Wind Tre laid out precise goals and expectations for its overall architecture and the customer journey that would be supported by the new system. While the transformation had originally focused on marketing, the partners soon realized that the solution would need to support a wider range of processes and go beyond out-of-the-box features.

As a result of this collaborative investigation, the project team was able to develop a high-level design that would provide tailored solutions for each client and support inbound and outbound customer communication. Using these needs as a guideline and taking into account the various technical requirements established by Wind Tre, ��ѻ��ý then presented potential options that would fit the organization’s expectations and support its ambitions. This collaborative process led ��ѻ��ý to select Pega’s Customer Decision Hub (CDH), Adobe Experience Cloud and Google Analytics as the best fit for the project.

To develop the solution in line with the established objectives, the project team followed a sliced delivery plan that kept the transformation journey simple while applying tight control to the project’s scope by splitting it into narrowly focused stages. Throughout this process, Wind Tre and ��ѻ��ý worked with Pega, which provided subject matter expertise to ensure that CDH was developed and implemented effectively.

Meanwhile, the project team also established a plan for changing the way of working and supporting all key stakeholders in familiarizing themselves with the new technology. This ensured that once the solution was in place, Wind Tre would get up to speed and fulfill its stated goals as quickly as possible.

Enabling a Next Best Action customer experience

The project team completed a successful implementation of PEGA CDH, Google Cloud and other components, all of which was built on the foundation of a standard solution architecture and accelerators that can be used as part of future projects. With CDH functioning as the central brain of Wind Tre’s contextual marketing automation stack, the company could support marketing campaigns that continuously engaged customers and that could be adjusted and contextualized in real-time for any kind of interaction.

This solution enables Wind Tre to tailor its communications while working more quickly than ever before. More than 100 AI models contributed to every single decision while the company processes more than 1000 events per second and delivers 100 million decisions per day across its various channels. As a result, Wind Tre has seen its inbound and outbound communications become more effective. In addition, the platform provides support for increasingly advanced scenarios with real-time, context-based offers and event-based strategies.

The resiliency and scalability of the entire solution is guaranteed by best of Google Cloud services like Google Kubernetes Engine, Cloud SQL Enterprise, Cloud Pub Sub, Cloud Functions and fully integrated with customer data platform on BigQuery.

In this way, Wind Tre has vastly improved its ability to communicate with and support customers, all while preparing itself for future innovations.

A leader in the aviation industry

MTU Aero Engines is Germany’s leading engine manufacturer and an expert in the development, production, and maintenance of civil and military engines. Its innovative engine solutions have been shaping the aviation industry for more than 85 years.

A model-based way of working will be crucial for MTU’s entire value chain in the long term. Starting from their own development and production, it is expected to be the standard for collaboration with partners and suppliers in future aerospace programs.

Shifting to a model-based value chain

Like most of today’s manufacturers, MTU was facing major challenges regarding rising product and program complexity, shorter development times and costs, and increasing collaboration with partners and suppliers. At the same time, the rising number of IT enterprise systems on the one hand and manual processes on the other hand caused a high amount of system and media breaks as well as data redundancies, which affect overall efficiency and costs.

To reduce this complexity and accelerate product development, it was crucial for MTU to build up a unique, authoritative, and consistent stream of information running across their product life cycle – a model-based value chain.

From use case selection to implementation

Together with ��ѻ��ý Invent, MTU identified the model-based value chain as the first step towards a digital twin. As part of this approach, the company implemented a 3D digital master, also known as model-based definition (MBD), as a single source of truth with digitally connectable data throughout the entire value chain.

The project started by selecting a reference product for which to develop the first MBD. The analysis of legacy, end-to-end processes of the reference product involved internal stakeholders and experts who identified media breaks in the value chain. With support from Siemens Digital Industries Software and BCT Technology as software providers, multiple model-based use cases were verified for technical feasibility. In parallel, business cases were calculated in close cooperation with management.

After a successful validation with both internal stakeholders as well as partners and suppliers, the productive implementation is currently ongoing within MTU’s PLM transformation program INTEGRATE. Using a scaled agile framework, the prioritized use cases are translated into features and functionalities that are continuously delivered in 3-month cycles.

The new way of working is a comprehensive paradigm shift for MTU. To guarantee its acceptance, a fundamental change management concept has also been elaborated. In combination with regular reviews from end users and management, a core team of experts has been selected to function as multipliers of the technology in the organization.

Optimized communication and high-quality data

MTU has already achieved major milestones to enable a model-based value chain. The company expects its overall process chain to become more efficient as it implements validated and prioritized use cases. Once created in the design phase, data and specifications defining the MBD can be reused downstream in all processes without requiring duplicates. This has already enabled MTU to improve internal and external collaboration and communication, avoid data transfer errors, and introduce automation to process machine-readable information.

The partners created MBD within MTU’s established CAD system NX from Siemens. Together with product and manufacturing information (PMI), the MBD is directly synchronized with Teamcenter, the PLM backbone system. Within Teamcenter, PMIs are directly linked to and visible in the MBD. At the same time, this information is assigned an independent lifecycle and can be consumed in downstream processes and workflows to ensure information consistency and avoid data redundancy.

Driving aerospace innovation together

The cooperation between MTU, ��ѻ��ý Invent, Siemens, and BCT Technology will continue as a part of the INTEGRATE program. Next, the partners will focus on identifying uses cases that will achieve the greatest positive impact, which will require the companies to leverage the closed loop manufacturing process and validate results with partners and suppliers.

In a world increasingly focused on sustainability and environmental responsibility, companies across all industries are under growing pressure to minimize their carbon footprint and maximize operational efficiency. Siemens, a leading global provider of technology and infrastructure solutions, recognizes the need to reduce CO2 emissions in its IT data centers, hyperscalers and third-party services as part of its overall commitment to sustainability.

As a pioneer in technology and engineering, Siemens recognizes the importance of proactive measures to reduce environmental impact and ensure regulatory compliance. Therefore, the company’s IT infrastructure and portfolio service unit made the strategic decision to launch a project to reduce CO2 emissions in its IT data centers while improving operational efficiency.

The consequences of inaction were obvious: without proactive measures to reduce CO2 emissions, Siemens risked falling behind its competitors in the sustainability race and facing potential regulatory penalties. Siemens recognized these risks and decided to lead by example instead of waiting for external pressure on the company.

When choosing a partner for this ambitious project, Siemens opted for a company with a proven track record in sustainability consulting and technological innovation. ��ѻ��ý, known for its expertise in both areas, proved to be the ideal match and enabled a partnership based on a shared vision of sustainability, innovation, and a commitment to delivering tangible results.

Proactive collaboration drives sustainability

By leveraging ��ѻ��ý’s consulting and digitalization expertise and its own deep domain knowledge, Siemens Corporate IT developed a comprehensive plan to guide its in-house data center sustainability efforts. The challenge for Siemens was to gain transparency on and reduce CO2 emissions in their in-house data centers while maximizing efficiency and ensuring regulatory compliance. Siemens also aimed to automate sustainability data management to reduce manual workload.

To meet this challenge, Siemens Corporate IT and ��ѻ��ý developed a detailed and scalable data collection framework for its in-house data centers, hyperscalers, and third-party providers. The partners worked together closely to pilot this framework, creating transparency into CO2 emissions and energy efficiency. Through data analysis of the resulting baseline and stakeholder interviews, potential optimization measures were identified, including a methodology for standardizing energy and CO2 data, and supporting a balanced IT hardware procurement process for the in-house data centers.

“The sustainability expertise and commitment of ��ѻ��ý are remarkable. With excellent results we create added value for all stakeholders and can meet regulatory requirements. With this project, we supported Siemens Corporate IT in consolidating its role as a frontrunner in data center sustainability.”

Matthias ReineckeProject Manager Sustainable Data Centers
Siemens IoT and Platform Services

The collaboration between Siemens and ��ѻ��ý serves as an innovation hub, promoting best practices and continuous improvement. The piloted approach to sustainability in data center operations sets a benchmark for the industry, demonstrating how proactive collaboration can drive significant and lasting change.

A strong foundation for the future

With the developed solution, Siemens Corporate IT has set a remarkable foundation for its in-house data center sustainability efforts. The company now operates with improved visibility into CO2 emissions and energy efficiency, enabling decision-making for optimized operations and ensuring regulatory compliance. Meanwhile, the automation of sustainability data management has been targeted with a tooling evaluation to significantly reduce the manual workload, allowing employees to focus on more strategic tasks.

Siemens benefits from the increased operational transparency and strategy to leverage cost savings, which is the result of streamlined processes and optimized resource utilization. In addition, the reduced carbon footprint is in line with the company’s climate goals and strengthens its reputation as a sustainability pioneer in the manufacturing and IT industries. The collaboration between Siemens and ��ѻ��ý has not only fostered innovation and best practices but also laid a strong foundation for future aspirations.

Looking to the future, Siemens is ready to continue its sustainability journey by building on the success of this project. The company is well equipped to take the next steps to further reduce its environmental impact and drive continuous improvement. To do so, Siemens and ��ѻ��ý will continue to drive continuous innovation and create even greater value. The future holds exciting prospects for Siemens as the company continues to lead the way in sustainable data center operations.

As companies around the world and society at large continue to reckon with the impact of business operations on the environment, clarifying the exact effect has become a significant challenge. To find a proper balance and ensure that cherished habitats are protected, technological innovation must work in unity with and support human willpower to find new solutions that bring together Indigenous and modern knowledge.

ShagowAskee, a group of Indigenous Elders, Knowledge Keepers, and trappers from Northern Alberta, Canada, understands this challenge and has set out to address it. In particular, the group is focused on protecting a culturally significant, endangered, genetically unique, herd of wood buffalo as part of its general effort to reconcile the relationship between mankind and nature. As the non-profit organization strives to defend local habitats, sustain Indigenous knowledge and ways of life, and protect biodiversity within the context of modern society, it needs new technology tools to make its argument more effectively.

“It’s one thing to talk about how much logging and other business practices are impacting the land and the wood buffalo herd that lives there,” says Sugu Thuraisamy, Managing Director at ShagowAskee.

“But it’s quite another to be able to visualize and quantify the effects on a specific habitat. And without doing so, the case for serious policy and on-the-ground changes becomes much less tangible. We want to give policy makers, operators, and communities clear evidence of how these habitats have changed over time and how they’re continuing to transform today.”

In seeking to further its mission and expand its options for communicating how modern practices have impacted habitats and biodiversity in Canada, ShagowAskee turned to AI, data, and analytics to provide a new approach. However, while the organization possessed extensive knowledge that could contribute to such an endeavor, it did not have a background in the required technologies. To address this concern, ShagowAskee contacted Sogeti, a part of the ��ѻ��ý Group.

“It was a really ideal match, because we’ve got a ton of experience working with the kind of technology that could help them make their case,” explains Marcus Norrgren, Data and AI lead at Sogeti Sweden. “And they brought the vision and the drive to actually build a direct connection between that technology and support for biodiversity.”

Getting a bird’s eye view

Once the partnership began, ShagowAskee and Sogeti wasted no time before looking for a solution that would fit the project. After a review of the various options, the partners settled on Geographical Information Systems (GIS) technology and Geo Satellite Intelligence (GSI), which would apply AI and data to analyze satellite imagery in order to identify damage done to local vegetation and species by business activity and wildfires in the area. In combination with open datasets, these images provided an overall summary of the cumulative impact on the landscape and habitats of vital animals such as the wood buffalo.

“It was exactly what we were looking for: a way for technology to give us a new perspective that could visually articulate what is happening to the land in Canada,” Thuraisamy describes. “With GSI, we can much more easily support the facts with evidence going back to the 80’s that shows how badly we need to improve environmental practices and policy.”

With a solution chosen and success clearly defined, the project team began a custom delivery of a readymade solution and collated multiple data sources, which enabled habitats to be thoroughly profiled. With GSI and its partnership with Sogeti, ShagowAskee gained access to a diverse collection of tools, scripts, pre- and post-processing, and AI models that could track the progress of ongoing logging and the severity of change to the land base over time. Supported by Amazon Web Services (AWS) Simple Storage Service, otherwise known as S3, and Sentinel imagery, the solution quickly assembled this data so that the forests in questions could be rapidly and repeatedly analyzed.

“This was all about putting together a visual description of what we know has been happening for decades now,” says Thuraisamy. “Being able to point to images, data, and even a movie was incredibly helpful. All of it contributed to the story we needed to tell people and policy makers in order to achieve meaningful change.”

Protecting the present for future generations

Using GSI, ShagowAskee was able to illustrate the cumulative impacts of wildfires and logging on the land since the 1980’s. This demonstration clarified the ways in which business in combination with the greater intensity of natural disturbances due to climate change can alter landscapes, damage ecosystems, and impact species, such as wood buffalo. ShagowAskee can now show what was logged and where, which it can then use to demonstrate the immediate and knock-on effects of such activity.

Of course, GSI doesn’t represent the end of ShagowAskee’s efforts to preserve and restore the land and Indigenous history and culture. Using all this information, the organization can now more clearly communicate with provincial and community leaders to influence practices and policy to achieve a greater balance between human and environmental needs.

“This is just a step in a process to improve practices that will restore the land and the wood buffalo herd, and keep the history attached to both alive,” explains Thuraisamy. “We need to integrate forest management, wildland wildfire management, and Indigenous knowledge to put into practice the spirit and intent of existing policies and legislation which protects biodiversity and Indigenous rights. With clearer visual evidence, we hope to see tangible empathetic change so that eventually balance on the land is achieved.”

We acknowledge the many Frist Nations, Métis, and Inuit who have lived in and cared for the Land for generations. We are grateful for the traditional Knowledge Keepers and Elders who are still with us today and those who have gone before us. Thank you to everyone for working together to protect what we cherish most and helping echo our voice to the world.

Written with the ShagowAskee Foundation

Within Jungheinrich’s sustainability strategy, climate neutrality plays a special role. Jungheinrich wants to reduce CO2e emissions in intralogistics and support its customers in achieving their climate targets. Therefore, Jungheinrich aims to become climate neutral. In order to achieve this, Jungheinrich wanted to gain comprehensive transparency on emissions drivers within the organization. Transparency and measurability are one of the first steps in determining a granular corporate carbon footprint and identifying emissions hotspots.

Generally, emissions occur all along the value chain. It is therefore necessary to consolidate heterogeneous data from a wide variety of sources and translate it into emissions data. To achieve this, Jungheinrich partnered with ��ѻ��ý Invent in order to combine its industry knowledge with sustainability strategy expertise.

A further focus of Jungheinrich’s sustainability strategy is its ambition regarding eco-efficiency and the circular economy. Therefore, the leading solutions provider of intralogistics partnered with ��ѻ��ý Engineering to assess select product lifecycles.

Determining the Corporate Carbon Footprint (CCF) in three steps

To achieve comprehensive transparency and measurability, Jungheinrich and ��ѻ��ý Invent calculated the CCF for the entire value chain from raw materials to the end-of-life disposal of products. The CCF was determined in a three-step process (screening, data collection, and calculation) in accordance with the Greenhouse Gas Protocol.

In the screening phase, a CCF was extrapolated on the basis of rapidly available central data, which provided a rough estimate. Afterwards, the team collected holistic data and linked it with granular, specific emission factors, resulting in a precise CCF.

Life Cycle Assesment (LCA) highlights product-specific emissions

In parallel, Jungheinrich and ��ѻ��ý Engineering examined selected products in LCA to enable an evaluation at product level. In the LCA, concrete products were analyzed regarding environmental impact indicators – from raw material extraction through production and use to the end-of-life. The specific products were modeled in terms of their material and energy flows.

Milestones for a high-impact sustainability strategy

The in-depth CCF analysis enabled the identification of emission hotspots. These act as a basis for the effectiveness of future reduction measures. Going forward, the Jungheinrich team can continue data collection and evaluation processes for CCF surveys in the future.

By implementing LCA, Jungheinrich has calculated product-specific environmental footprints for products in accordance with DIN EN ISO standard 14040. The LCA modeling of material and energy flows enables concrete detailed analyses and the identification of optimization potential in individual products.

Making a strategic commitment an operational reality

Today, it’s more important than ever for organizations to overhaul their strategies to face the challenges of sustainable development. However, doing so requires extensive knowledge that can only be achieved through specific training. So, when Crédit Agricole’s Consumer Finance (CACF) and Leading & Factoring (CAL&F) teams approached such sustainable transformation, they knew that the managers of the latter would benefit from a clear understanding of the impacts it would have on their processes.

Doing so would require offering a common base of knowledge to an international group of around 120 people. By extension, the teams would need to align the approach and decisions of these managers so that they could collectively function as a driving force on sustainability within the organization and their teams. And considering the seniority, limited availability, and diverse responsibilities of this target audience, the education program would pose a significant challenge.

“There is an urgency to take action and this training will help us to spread this urgency to innovate throughout the company in support of our corporate and individual clients, who are facing a complex world, or to offer them solutions so that they achieve carbon neutrality and can turn to more sustainable products.”

Cédric Postel-Vinay
HR Director, Crédit Agricole Consumer and Personal Finance

A tailor-made program, combining academic knowledge and professional expertise

Building a tailor-made training program called for two distinct sets of expertise, both of which would require partners. First, Crédit Agricole engaged  ��ѻ��ý Invent, in order to anchor the training in the reality of banking professions based on professional expertise. Second, the company worked with the ESSEC Business School in order to provide an academic background and offer a high-level certification course.

Together, the three organizations worked together to co-create the “Sustainable Leaders” program, which would then run over a six-month period. Among the themes covered were sustainable development, climate risk, net zero strategies, banking sector regulations, mobility, and the circular economy.

“We were really keen to launch an innovative program in a fairly complex international environment. We tried to build impactful training adapted to the target audience of leaders with very constrained agendas. We led the community of learners for six months with moments of collective exchanges and co-development sessions.”

Aurélie Scharff
HR Project Manager, Crédit Agricole Consumer Finance

The starting point for widespread education

By the end of the program, many participants expressed very positive feedback, emphasizing that they had become aware of the scale and urgency of environmental issues. The educational program armed this group of managers with a broad array of knowledge, concepts and vocabulary related to ecological transition, and a clear understanding of the issues and their impact on different roles. In the aftermath of the program’s completion, some participants formed a dedicated community to extend their knew awareness into business roadmaps.

Based on the favorable response, the program has already been replicated for other teams within the Crédit Agricole Group as an accelerator of the organization’s CSR strategy. As a result, Crédit Agricole will expand the company-wide awareness of its sustainability objectives as well as the impact they will have.

“We have designed our program according to a “head/heart/body” philosophy, which means that we provided elements of knowledge (head), elements that aroused emotional engagement (heart), and elements linked to practices (body).”

Alexandre Regat
Managing Consultant for Sustainable Finance, ��ѻ��ý Invent

Itron helps utilities and cities in more than 100 countries deliver innovative energy and water infrastructure solutions safely, securely, and intelligently through a portfolio of networks, meters, endpoints, sensors, and software.

Climate disruption has a significant impact on Itron stakeholders, and investors want more transparency around sustainability risks. New regulatory reporting requirements, and companies’ own net-zero ambitions, are also making ESG data more critical.

However, businesses working to drive more sustainable practices often use manual processes and spreadsheets to track the data – and that has real limitations. In response, Itron is collaborating with ��ѻ��ý to perform a market analysis on decarbonization and ESG opportunities for utility systems. The company is also working to build an ESG dashboard that will use information from next-gen smart endpoints to deliver better sustainability data and support more sustainable decision making.

“Decarbonization is a common goal across utilities and cities, and, because we serve such a large number of these clients, our sustainable solutions will have a huge impact, not just for cities and utilities, but for all the customers they serve,” says Luke Scheidler, Senior Product Manager, Itron.

Unleashing the potential of AMI 2.0

Using data is the key to sustainability and managing energy. Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) 1.0 provided more data to utilities than ever before. While that is a benefit, it also creates new challenges. How can companies get access to all this information, and then create value from it? Data access is a key challenge for ESG reporting, decarbonization, and distributed energy management.

Next-generation AMI features endpoints with embedded Linux computers that can sample data thousands of times per second and perform local processing, which enables them to not just measure total energy consumption but also analyze behind-the-meter loads and generation. This means these new systems go well beyond “AMI” to create true grid edge intelligence – including knowing how and when to shift loads to benefit the grid or to capitalize on periods of low carbon intensity. Itron’s goal is to make this information more accessible to drive sustainable innovation.

“Grid edge solutions provide better data and computational ability that allows us to analyze everything that is happening at the grid edge and make the appropriate decisions to control distributed energy resources accordingly,” Scheidler says. “Making the data available to end customers, third parties, and utilities can help them make better system-wide decisions and create more efficiency.”

ESG value for every stakeholder

��ѻ��ý and Itron are targeting four main stakeholders for grid edge data: utilities, businesses, ESG service providers, and financial institutions. ��ѻ��ý is bringing its deep expertise in decarbonization and ESG, as well as experience in AMI and grid edge computing, to develop a comprehensive picture of what the market needs.

“��ѻ��ý is a long-term Itron partner and helped develop the business case for AMI 1.0,” Scheidler says. “Now, with this new generation of distributed intelligence endpoints, there is a much broader space to explore, to create additional value. ��ѻ��ý is excellent at quantifying the value of AMI investments.”

The consumption data from smart endpoints can be translated into a more accurate measurement of emissions, which is valuable information for consumers and businesses. If a company sees the environmental impact of production levels at different times during the day, it can make more sustainable decisions.

For utilities, this data can also indicate where to invest in a new renewable energy farm or how to optimize distributed energy resources, because the downstream data on consumption allows them to match the supply of energy with the demand, including the emission impacts.

Financial institutions and ESG providers often depend on aggregations of imprecise and backward-looking data, and investment funds are often forced to rely on data scraped from websites. Getting auditable and accurate data and forecasts directly from utility sources will provide more specific emission details for reporting and investing purposes.

“We are trying to introduce a better granularity of data from the smart endpoint itself and provide emission data that is location, time, and industry specific,” Scheidler says. “For companies with locations in different cities, this is a much more accurate picture of their emissions.”

Better data, better ESG reporting

Itron is working with ��ѻ��ý to unlock value for multiple stakeholders. The ability for utility customers to decarbonize depends largely on the utility’s own decarbonization trajectory. Itron is working with utilities to help them understand how their decarbonization activities are impacting specific customers and industry segments. A utility that invests heavily in solar, for instance, does not actually result in decarbonization for industries that use the majority of their electricity at night. This same information, if made available to ESG service providers and financial institutions, can help them understand which industries in which regions might have a faster or slower path to decarbonizing.

The result of better processes is the energy ecosystem has more accurate reporting and insights into emissions to help build a more sustainable go-forward plan.

The world faces a foundational learning crisis. Today, 251 million children around the world are out of school and nearly 70% of 10-year-olds in low and middle-income countries are unable to read or understand basic text. Tackling this gap in foundational learning is essential for achieving the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goal 4 on ensuring inclusive and equitable education and promoting lifelong learning opportunities for all.

To address this challenge, ��ѻ��ý partnered with UNESCO and our ongoing collaboration with AWS to develop a solution based on Generative AI capable of analyzing large-scale learning assessment data, which provides rich insights but is often underused, in particular in low- and middle-income countries due to their constraints in time, expertise, finance, and infrastructure. The collaboration between UNESCO and ��ѻ��ý has the potential to enable countries to interpret the wealth of learning assessment data, facilitating evidence-based decisions that enhance learning outcomes, in this case, children’s reading capabilities.   

Driving innovation with competition

This project was a perfect fit for ��ѻ��ý’s Global Data Science Challenge (GDSC). By crowdsourcing the development process, the participants brought a tremendous variety of backgrounds and expertise while driving innovation with the power of competition. This approach had previously proven its value with successful efforts to apply AI for protecting biodiversity and studying oceanic environments.

“Every year, we’re excited to bring our collective experience to bear on an essential challenge,” says Niraj Parihar, I&D CEO, ��ѻ��ý. “Focusing in on education, we saw the potential Gen AI had to process data and help leaders around the world make more informed decisions when it comes to education policy.”

In the seventh Global Data Science Challenge (GDSC), participants were tasked with building an AI education policy expert capable of analyzing and providing insights from the PIRLS 2021 dataset, one of the world’s most comprehensive studies of children’s reading literacy. Almost 1,500 participants joined the challenge and developed AI systems that could intelligently answer complex questions about educational trends, student performance, and teaching practices.

By leveraging advanced large language models and agentic systems, the teams created solutions that could process and interpret data from 400,000 students across 57 countries to make sophisticated educational insights accessible to policymakers, educators, and researchers. The winning solutions demonstrated the ability to provide data-driven answers about everything from COVID-19’s impact on reading habits to 4^th graders’ reading habits and achievement, ultimately supporting UNESCO’s mission to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education for all.

Across ��ѻ��ý, teams used AWS technology, including Amazon Bedrock and SageMaker, to explore the possibilities. While learning to use the latest technology, teams collaborated and competed with each other to develop, train, and test their models.

 “UNESCO believes that AI, and, in particular, generative AI – if developed and deployed with a strong ethical foundation and a human-centered approach – can be a powerful tool to support policy makers, school leaders and educators in providing targeted assistance to learners,” says Borhene Chakroun, Director for Policy and Lifelong Learning Systems at UNESCO.

Breakthroughs in AI for education policy and practice

By the end of the GDSC, a panel comprised of representatives from UNESCO, AWS, and ��ѻ��ý selected a winning team after a thorough comparison of numerous models against the stated objectives. The chosen agentic AI solution demonstrates how to query and understand large datasets, combine this information with other verified sources of data, and explain the result both visually and as text.

“The teaching and learning experience are absolutely vital for the future of our planet and for global peace,” explains Mike Miller, Senior Principal Product Lead, Generative AI, AWS. “Throughout the competition, we’ve seen how generative AI can help make education more effective around the world and enable our global community to commit to more sustainable development.”

The winning team, insAIghtED, developed an innovative solution aimed at enhancing educational insights using advanced AI agents. Their model leverages the PIRLS 2021 database, which provides structured, sample-based data on reading abilities among 4th graders around the world.

However, recognizing the limitations of relying solely on this dataset, the team expanded their model to incorporate additional data sources such as GDP, life expectancy, population statistics, and even YouTube content. This multi-agent AI system is designed to provide nuanced insights for educators and policymakers, offering short answers, data visualizations, elaborated explanations, and even a fun section to engage users. 

The architecture of the solution involves a lead data analyst, data engineer, chart preparer, and data scientist, each contributing to different aspects of the model’s functionality. The system is capable of querying databases, aggregating data, performing internet searches, and preparing elaborated answers. By integrating various data sources and employing state-of-the-art AI frameworks like Langchain and crewAI, the insAIghtED model delivers impactful, real-world insights that go beyond the numbers, helping to address complex educational challenges and trends. 

“We’re unbelievably proud to be a part of this project. The GDSC is always an exciting opportunity, and this time was no different,” says Niraj Parihar. “The collaboration between ourselves, UNESCO, and AWS has showed the positive potential of Gen AI and taken a step in the advancement of a more data-driven decision-making in education.”

Already, this Generative AI solution can make data-based insights accessible to everyone, offering guidance previously available only to experts. This democratization of data and what it reveals has the capacity to guide action all over the world as policymakers can instantly access insights and evidence that help them make informed decisions about education.

Furthermore, UNESCO and ��ѻ��ý are committed to improving learning outcomes worldwide by releasing the solution under an open-source license. This will allow for global adaptation and use, contributing to a shared public good.