Thursday 4 November 2021

COP26: ‘There’s no green without digital’

COP26: ‘There’s no green without digital’

“There’s no green without digital.”

That’s the striking claim from the CEO of Nokia, Pekka Lundmark, who spoke at COP26 alongside Schneider Electric’s President in the UK and Ireland, Kelly Becker.

“We need to start seriously digitalising some of the heavy industries of this world,” he said.

“So far about 70% of the ICT investment in the world has gone to industries that are typically considered being digital – computers, communications and media and so on – but now this is about to change.

“In the future, in the next 10 to 20 years, we estimate that actually 70% of investment will go to physical industries.”

“There is a massive potential and there’s no way we could achieve anywhere near any net zero or any other blah blah blahs, unless we seriously digitalise physical industries.”

Kelly Becker touched on the urgency of taking digital to the next level in order to tackle climate change: “We have to act now. We think the opportunity is there like never before to use digital, data and actually electricity much more to really push us forward and help hit goals.

“The technology exists. Both from energy efficiency and things that you actually use to solve buildings, all the way through to digital infrastructure to drive that. We’re big believers that actually just using less is ultimately where you really start.

“We talk about solar panels a lot and electric vehicles, all of these things that ultimately lead to using electricity and energy in a different way – but really let’s just use less.

“There’s technologies throughout all of the supply chains and every segment I mentioned that help companies do that and help governments and individuals do that. Now’s really the time, I don’t think we can wait any longer and I think that’s pretty well understood.”

Watch the full video to hear more of what both had to say in more detail.

Written by

Bruna Pinhoni

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