Carbon-heavy industries have traditionally been challenged with the difficult task to reduce emissions and manage profitability.

Due to increasing regulatory and industry pressure to reduce carbon emissions, heavy emission industries are bearing the heat. As technology becomes more available, there is a new ray of hope for organisations to substantially lower their CO2 emissions while increasing factory efficiency.

IoT and Edge Computing

In edge computing, data from sensors and devices are processed at an edge which simply means the data never has to leave the network to leverage insights. This approach reduces latency and mitigates the stress on the network bandwidth, speeding up time to insights in a bid to prevent downtime, improve worker safety and lower CO2 emissions.

Edge computing is a powerful realization that low latency response times can lead to halted assembly lines based on live data from the field. Achieving a lot more into proactively address decarbonization, by leveraging edge computing powered by ML and AI.

Reducing Emissions on the Edge

Oil and gas and industrial manufacturing organizations are increasingly feeling the pinch to reduce CO2 emissions. Decarbonization initiatives are easy to adopt into industries. For instance, commercial and residential buildings. But now the focus has shifted to industries which have a tough time to reduce emissions thereby increase the environmental concerns.

Edge computing, powered by ML, can provide visual and audio monitoring that revolve around illegal flares and eliminate the need for on-site personnel. Sensor fusion can correlate the flaring state for clarity in understanding the current events. Operators can then use this data to monitor flares This will increase regulatory compliance, and decreasing the emission of greenhouse gases.

Edge computing can help to drastically reduce scrap by leveraging ML models that determine the quality of the manufactured steel and ensures that the product meets standards. This further signals about any quality issues until the steel becomes scrapped, resulting in optimal energy used for production reducing wasteful emissions.

Edge Computing for IoT 

Global greenhouse gas emissions, of which a large portion is CO2 emissions, increased by ~20% between 1990 and 2014, while emissions from industrial sectors increased by ~70%. Technological breakthroughs have played a significant role in forging efficient decarbonization practices for buildings and power sectors. Yet for industrials, these efforts have been less successful. However, due to demographic and resource fluctuations, like growing constraints on critical resources and rapid urbanization, industrial players should reconsider their existing strategies.

In a crux, manufacturing efficiency introduced by edge computing can reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, even in industries where they are notoriously difficult to control. The applications of Edge and IoT are endless and include fleet and transportation, besides industrial manoeuvres that are traditionally a source of CO2 emissions. In summary, going forward, stakeholders in the energy market should be paying close attention to the massive transformational change bought by the edge and IoT.