Schneider Electric Launches Global Innovation Summit

Schneider Electric, the leader in the digital transformation of energy management and automation, today kicked off its Innovation Summit World Tour, emphasizing the need for immediate action and ongoing collaboration to accelerate the energy transition and tackle the climate crisis.

“In the wake of record-breaking global warming reported in 2023, we’re calling on the industry and businesses around the world to come together to drive meaningful change against the climate crisis. The technology exists today to dramatically reduce emissions and to bridge progress and sustainability,” said Peter Herweck, CEO of Schneider Electric. “Only through innovation and collaboration can we unlock new opportunities for digitalization, electrification and decarbonization that creates lasting impact. Because together, we can turn ambition into action.”

Herweck will address Innovation Summit Paris attendees today, calling on global leaders from across industries to accelerate their digital transformation journeys and embrace technology and partnerships to productivity and sustainability goals.

Inaugurated in 2016, Schneider Electric’s Innovation Summits showcase the company’s latest innovations, solutions, and partnerships that drive the future of automation, electrification, and digitalization. This year, it gathers customers, partners, and industry leaders in Paris for a two-day program of plenaries, breakout sessions, roundtables, deep dives, networking, and exhibition hall tours.

New Solutions for Greater Impact

Schneider Electric is unveiling new solutions designed to help companies strategize, digitalize, and decarbonize their operations, and accelerate sustainability commitments, including:

·         CONNECT: an agnostic, end-to-end, industrial intelligence platform that integrates engineering and operational data to provide visibility across the entire value chain and ecosystem. Connecting clients to Schneider Electric, AVEVA, etap, RIB and other third-party software providers, CONNECT leverages AI and the intelligent digital twin to empower businesses to unlock efficiencies and drive sustainability for responsible growth. 

·         Resi9 Energy Center: a retrofit, compact intelligent electrical panel for homes that integrates with existing panels, ensuring secure supply and distribution of electricity. As more homes are electrified and equipped with renewables like solar, EVs and microgrids—and as more homeowners are becoming prosumers, both producing and consuming energy— electrical panels are challenged with increased and complex loads. Resi9 Energy Center seamlessly integrates across home energy management systems to enable control and customization for greater home energy management and optimization.

·         eMobility portfolio expansion: While EV adoption is growing exponentially, only about half (51%) of EV owners worldwide have a charger at home. Schneider Charge offers a state-of-the-art home charging solution that is robust, cost-effective and simple to install. And for fleet and charge point operators, EcoStruxure EV Advisor and EVLink Pro DC 180 kW offer the latest in electric vehicle (EV) charging and management. EVLink Pro DC fast-charging station maximizes energy efficiency while minimizing electrical costs. EcoStruxure EV Advisor software-as-a-service helps to improve reliability and performance of charging points by providing operators visibility into charging performance, energy consumption, and operational efficiency. In combination, they offer customers across fleet, car parks, commercial and residential buildings a flexible, open source, end-to-end solution for EV charging.

Reliable charging infrastructure is critical to accelerating EV adoption, but it requires skilled labor to install and maintain it. Today Schneider Electric also announced the expansion of its North America partner, Qmerit, the leading provider of distributed workforce management for EV charging, to European markets.

Collaborations for Meaningful Change

Partnerships and collaboration across industries and supply chains will be imperative to tackling the climate crisis. Schneider Electric is uniting industry leaders and value chains to drive greater decarbonization and sustainability, through:

·         Sustainability impact: Schneider Electric's Sustainability Impact Award program recognizes partners, customers, and suppliers who are decarbonizing their own operations and that of their customers. By showcasing successes that reduce emissions, improve energy efficiency, and implement digital technologies, companies can learn from each other to drive wider impact and further innovation.

·         Supply chain decarbonization: An expansion of Schneider’s suite of supply chain decarbonization programs, Materialize aims to unite leading critical resources and materials companies to implement Scope 3 decarbonization strategies and facilitate the transition to a low-carbon economy. Suppliers can participate in utility scale, renewable power purchase agreements (PPAs) to reduce carbon emissions across global value chains, which typically account for more than 70% of a business’s carbon footprint. The programs continue to expand with Edwards, a global leader of vacuum and abatement solutions, joining Schneider's Catalyze program that seeks to decarbonize semiconductor value chains.

·         Data center partnerships: Schneider Electric and Digital Realty's new circular economy initiative builds on 20 years of expert data center partnership and is expected to help Digital Realty reduce 50%-70% of embodied carbon within its LV, MV, and three-phase UPS equipment over the next 3-5 years, while also reducing e-waste and Scope 3 emissions. In addition, Schneider Electric's collaboration with NVIDIA—world leader in artificial intelligence computing—is set to optimize data center infrastructure and drive advancements in edge AI and digital twin technologies.

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