- Peter Terwiesch, President, ABB Process Automation
Many of the industries that ABB serves are vast, complex operations that bring us the essentials that we depend on in our lives. They are also energy-intensive and require significant capital assets. The challenge to decrease their carbon footprint while increasing their clean energy usage is more pressing than ever.
While such challenges may seem daunting, we are fortunate to face them with the most advanced technology toolbox ever, and a growing understanding of how these tools can be deployed to the task. The electrical, automation and digital technologies that have vastly improved the way we live are increasingly being put to work to support a cleaner future, driven by the urgency of ensuring a sustainable path for the growing population of our planet.
Automation plays a pivotal role in this scenario because of the way it positively impacts the creation of the major building blocks of modern society: the mined materials needed for connected living; the life-giving water, food and energy; the paper that sustainably packages our products; the transportation that bring us what we use daily. We want to enable these industries to operate more sustainably by applying the best automation to their production processes – and this is what we do in our Process Automation business.
At the same time, the greenest energy will always be the energy that we don’t use. Many technologies to optimize energy efficiency are available, and major advances continue to be made at scale to increase these efficiencies even further. This is particularly important for energy-intensive industries. ABB has a long history of supporting major energy consumers (and producers) on their path to more sustainable and cost-effective operations.
Superior stewardship of essential resources is something that we all must collectively strive for, if we are to fulfill our responsibility to future generations. Ultimately, it is people who develop these technologies, and people who create opportunities for their deployment. Seeing our customers working with ABB employees to write the future together gives me hope. Side by side, we can make a world of difference.
