(Credit: Cognite)
US energy leaders believe companies are not backing up their sustainability initiatives, according to the new State of the US Energy Industry Report. Conducted in partnership with The Harris Poll, the report indicates that nearly half (47%) of energy leaders believe the US’s energy industry and environmental sustainability initiatives are nothing more than PR. And nearly all (82%) believe that in order for progress to be made, the industry must be more honest about the issues it faces.
Even when sustainability projects are in put into place, 68% of energy leaders believe their companies are not taking the proper steps to back up those initiatives.
Despite these challenges, 68% of energy leaders believe the industry can still reach net zero by 2050, according to the report — and they feel that transformative technology is the key accelerator needed to get there. In fact, 84% agree that technology is critical to making their company more environmentally sustainable.
Technology Challenges
But technology is not without its own challenges. Energy leaders surveyed for the report said that manual data collection continues to be a top struggle, along with data quality and reporting frequency.
While executives face the challenge of integrating data, more than two-thirds (64%) say that having perfectly integrated data could help their company better measure and understand how to reduce emissions. The biggest benefits of having integrated data include making information actionable, offering the ability to make decisions in real time, contextualization, and breaking out of legacy systems.
“Sustainability starts as a data problem,” says Dr. Francois Laborie, Cognite President/North America. “To be able to address carbon footprints, companies must liberate and contextualize data from legacy systems to make actionable decisions and ultimately streamline operations to address both sustainability and profitability. By harnessing the full insights of data and optimization technology, we can move toward a more sustainable future as an industry together.”
The State of the US Energy Industry Report was sponsored by Cognite and was conducted in partnership with Axios Studio.