Today, our consumption of resources is so great that we need 1.7 Earths to satisfy our demands. That’s like earning $100,000 per year but spending $170,000, and asking our children and grandchildren to pay our debt. Without a new way forward, this level of deficit can’t be maintained. So more than ever before, a circular approach to the way we do business is incredibly important.
What is circularity? Simply, it is a system where materials never become waste and nature is regenerated. We work towards it by shifting from a linear economy to one which reduces the consumption of primary resources. And more than that, it’s an operational shift in practice, too. ABB is here to help with this transition.
If the eighties and nineties were about building bigger, the last twenty years have been about design-to-cost. And, it couldn’t be more true that the twenty-twenties have brought into sharp focus the impact that global overconsumption is having on our environment, society, and supply chains.
One yearly occurrence is a stark reminder of this overconsumption. Earth Overshoot Day is the date on which humanity's consumption of resources for the year exceeds Earth’s capacity to regenerate those resources the same year. In 2024, we will reach this day on August 1.
Another startling statistic: today, less than 7.2% of the world's resources are circled back. The rest is inherently wasted.
However, if we use less, use smarter, use longer, and use again, then we can start to make a positive difference.
Countering the throwaway culture and linear processes that follow a ‘take-make-dispose’ model, a circular economy is defined by designing out waste and pollution, keeping products and materials in use for as long as possible, and reducing rare resource dependency.
The very concept of circularity aims to extract the maximum value from resources by sticking to that ethos of ‘use less, use smarter, use longer, and use again’, then recovering and regenerating products and materials when they reach the end of their useful life.
Taking the first steps to circularity adoption
Where to begin? What gets measured gets improved. Analyze your own systems with an Electrical System Health Check.
The check helps ensure the reliability of your system and helps avoid costly failures, mitigates risks, and offers access to best-practice advice. The process – which includes on-site and detailed walkthrough assessments – uncovers opportunities for circularity adoption. This includes roadmaps for upgrades, retrofit programs to extend an asset’s lifespan, expert spare parts advice, insights into equipment status, and finally, the identification of any production risks associated with the current framework.
In a similar way, a Power System Study looks at all the facets of your power systems – covering topics including short circuits, load flow, project coordination, protection relay programming, harmonics, current, voltage and the effects of starting motors. This can help support a move to circularity by enabling infrastructure expansion, system upgrades and planning for future load growth. Plus, this study can be particularly useful for older systems where institutional knowledge of its maintenance and operation has been lost, and it can be used on other manufacturer’s equipment and systems.
Both of these assessments can provide essential, practical advice and information, including:
- cost-benefit analysis
- recommendations and quick wins
- prioritization of best practices,
- easily implementable solutions to enhance the system performance, resilience and cost-effectiveness.
Building on a strong foundation
The fact is, running a piece of equipment to the point of failure could cost up to 10 times more than investing in an effective program of maintenance. So for those that are already in the process of adopting a circular methodology, a program of preventive and predictive maintenance is an important next step to take. Beyond avoiding the financial costs of failures, not to mention down time of delays and slow projects, there are a number of benefits to such an approach.
Typically, such a plan involves inspection and analysis, mechanical and operational checks, troubleshooting, and continuous monitoring for proactive maintenance planning. It’s involved, but the benefits are multiple, including maximizing performance, reliability and safety of equipment and systems, reducing maintenance costs and optimizing plant operations.
It’s true that predictive maintenance saves money when compared with standard scheduled maintenance strategies. In fact, this can be as much as 25% through extending maintenance intervals.
Predictive maintenance sits at the top of a tier of maintenance approaches: if a run to fail approach is the most costly, scheduled maintenance can be considered an improvement, condition-based maintenance better, but predictive maintenance is the most effective. This means it’s wise to incorporate real-time diagnostics of your assets.
Another avenue for potential benefits comes in the form of Augmented Reality-enabled remote support. This enables quick solutions faster, cheaper, and more sustainably. This is because our field service engineers – serving customers in some of the world’s most remote places – sometimes come to find that the customer’s team could have solved the challenge, with support, themselves. This is where augmented reality can be used as a tool for circularity via collaboration and interaction with ABB experts via dynamic and static AR, audio and video sharing, chats (with real-time translation), picture and file sharing, all through the use of devices such as smartphones, tablets and wearables. It’s just like how we use video conferences in the daily corporate work environment.
Extending electrical equipment’s life, and beyond
For components that are no longer feasible to be maintained or repaired – typically aged systems – more than 50% of the system can be reused. This means that the quickest, most cost effective and sustainable course of action in this situation is to retrofit active parts – like breakers and relays – to extend the lifetime of equipment up to 20-30 years.
Recycling in this manner is the last step to close the circularity loop. In a similar fashion to the purchase and ownership of a refrigerator, for example, there’s an expectation that the manufacturer will take back and recycle old parts. At ABB, we’re here to assist: we leave customer sites clean by taking back end-of-life components for refurbishment or recycling.
How long does it take to see results?
Companies who embed sustainability in their strategy and operations can expect improved performance and positive benefits, including, according to Accenture, 2.6x improved total shareholder returns, 3.7x higher operating margins, and 2x faster growth.
And, across the globe, the shift to a circular economy is estimated to offer an opportunity to avoid $4.5 trillion of lost economic growth, while at the same time assisting the planet’s natural systems.
How we walk the talk on circularity
When it comes to circularity, we’re putting our money where our mouth is.
We’ve started walking this path and we’ll continue to walk it. This is why we invite our customers to our sites, so they can experience our initiatives in action and see our path forward.
We aim to send zero waste to landfill while reducing waste generation by 2030. Our target is to cover at least 80% of ABB's products and systems with our Circularity Approach by 2030.
We also know that we need energy 24/7 but the sun does not always shine and the wind does not always blow. Therefore, we’ve developed Mission to Zero – our journey towards reaching net zero at our own sites whilst helping customers do the same.
Key steps to adopt circularity:
- Measure what you want to change – through either a Electrical Systems Health Check or a Power Systems Study.
- Invest in a program of maintenance – predictive maintenance is best, and anything is better than a reactive, run-to-failure approach.
- Consider leading-edge tech solutions such as AR to further reduce the emissions associated with the physical transportation of technicians.
- Understand which components in your electrical infrastructure can be reused and which can be upgraded. For those that need to be replaced, choose the cleanest methods of disposal or recycling.
Adopting circularity has clear long-term benefits for the health of the planet, which is a reward in itself. And for businesses that take on a circular approach, the benefits are more tangible and can be seen in the short-term, if not immediately.
Operationally, resource-efficiency programs immediately save costs and increase supply chain resiliency.
Basically, this means you can do more with less.
Ultimately, circularity has benefits for business, and benefits for the world.
Find out more about how you can adopt circularity today.
