Drive resilience and responsible emissions management with the IBM Maximo Application Suite.

Embracing responsible emissions management can transform the way your organization impacts the health and profitability of its assets. This opportunity is undeniable. CEOs who successfully integrate sustainability and digital transformation have higher average operating margins than their peers, according to an IBM CEO study based on interviews with 3,000 CEOs around the world. Additionally, more than 80% of CEOs interviewed said sustainability investments will deliver better business results in the next five years. This study highlights the transformative potential of aligning companies with sustainable practices.

As the leader of an asset management operation, you must help the company become profitable. Let’s explore how IBM® Maximo® Application Suite (MAS) can help you optimize asset efficiency through operational emissions management.

Take advantage of emissions management

Emissions management is not limited to tracking greenhouse gases. It also involves controlling and supervising a wide range of emissions released into the atmosphere during industrial processes. Emissions can be intentional, such as emissions from power plants, or unintentional, such as pollutants from manufacturing processes. These processes produce by-products including leaks, wastewater, waste oil and hazardous waste.

To effectively manage these byproducts, focus on optimizing your assets and identifying new problems early. Well-managed assets produce fewer by-products and have a longer lifespan. Additionally, minimizing waste and hazardous materials creates a safer and cleaner environment.

In addition to environmental responsibility, emissions management improves the bottom line through operational efficiency, regulatory compliance, a safer work environment, and improved corporate image. Let’s look at each of these aspects in more detail.

Strategic Planning and Operational Efficiency

A strategic maintenance plan can result in significant cost savings. Efficient assets have a longer life, improve performance and help ensure uninterrupted production. For example, Sund & Baelt saved time and money by automating inspection tasks to monitor and manage critical infrastructure. Sund & Baelt estimates that by better understanding asset condition and the risks that need to be addressed through proactive maintenance, the lifetime of bridges, tunnels and other assets can be increased while reducing total carbon emissions. Setting common sustainability goals fosters collaboration between typically separate departments such as operations, safety, and maintenance. Fostering this collaboration will put you in a better position to drive future asset management programs, and achieving these goals will improve your organization’s operational health.

Compliance and Fines

Regulatory agencies such as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have set strict standards that companies must meet. Emissions management is pivotal to implementing regulatory compliance as it helps organizations track and resolve issues. This approach fosters greater accountability, creating a culture of accountability and transparency within the company. Fines for non-compliance can add up quickly, highlighting the importance of compliance. For example, to protect stratospheric ozone and reduce the risk of climate change, the EPA has imposed millions of dollars in fines under the Clean Air Act on companies that mismanage their emissions. The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 amended the Clean Air Act and introduced new fines for methane leaks. It starts at USD 900 per metric ton of methane emissions in 2024 and increases to USD 1,500 by 2026. It affects more than 2,000 people, according to the Congressional Research Service. Fines imposed on oil and gas industry facilities are expected to increase to $1.1 billion in 2026 and $1.8 billion in 2028. This would result in annual fines totaling $800,000 for the average facility.

Operating status and working environment

Emissions management efforts can help establish a safe work environment throughout your organization. Reducing exposure to hazardous substances improves air quality, reduces health risks and has a positive impact on worker well-being. Compliance with occupational health and safety standards creates a workplace that prioritizes employee safety and meets regulatory requirements. Managing and monitoring emissions further reduces the likelihood of accidents and incidents. Emissions management also includes developing strategies to deal with emergency situations involving hazardous substances. As VPI puts it, “There are always inherent risks, but you can create a safe workplace by adopting strong, effective maintenance strategies and work safety systems.” Having a strong operational maintenance strategy in place will improve your organization’s ability to effectively respond to unexpected incidents and protect your employees.

Efficient, sustainable and responsible companies can benefit from a healthy culture. This approach attracts top talent and makes us attractive to investors. As more buyers prefer sustainable and responsible suppliers, sales to this market will increase.

Companies that make clear progress on their sustainability commitments often receive greater support from their governing bodies. For example, the Inflation Reduction Act provides significant tax credits to companies that can capture and store carbon dioxide emissions from industrial operations. This external verification reinforces the need for effective emissions management. This highlights the various benefits for business, society and the environment.

Simply put, emissions management involves taking responsibility, reducing waste, and making your business more efficient, high performing, and healthy.

Manage your emissions more efficiently with MAS

MAS is a comprehensive suite of applications designed to improve asset health and reliability. How does MAS help us better manage our emissions?

Driving a culture of reliability and sustainability begins with designing the optimal strategy for asset operations and focusing on the reliability and sustainability of critical assets. Maximo Reliability Strategies enables cross-functional teams to accelerate failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA) for assets prone to emissions issues. Asset operations teams can then apply reliability-focused maintenance strategies to ensure assets are maintained with the highest level of reliability.

Key components of MAS, including Maximo® Health, Maximo® Manage and Health, Safety and Environmental Management (HSE), play a pivotal role in emissions management. These applications provide operational data capture, governance, safety measures, and incident management. In particular, the HSE component provides occupational health incident tracking, process safety, permits, consents, identification of environmental emissions, compliance with ISO14000 requirements and investigations.

Ensuring optimal asset health requires a team with a high-performing culture equipped with the tools to bring your vision to life. To enhance your emissions management strategy, apply asset performance management (APM) within MAS using components such as Maximo® Monitor and Maximo® Predict, powered by industry-leading algorithms and AI through IBM watsonx services. APM allows you to take a proactive and prescriptive approach to emissions management to further increase efficiency and improve asset health.

Envizi and MAS: Better Together

IBM® Envizi™ ESG Suite complements the operational excellence enabled by MAS by providing core capabilities for a comprehensive emissions management solution.

Envizi provides top-down management reporting, while MAS provides bottom-up operational asset management. Envizi provides enterprise and site level reporting, while MAS adds asset level reporting for full traceability and accountability. Both solutions, Envizi or MAS, provide visibility across the spectrum of issues from enterprise to asset level. It also allows you to directly address issues presented by Envizi or MAS at the asset level or prevent them from occurring in the first place.

These two solutions enable asset management leaders to accurately measure organizational performance and operationalize sustainability goals.

summary

Leading companies are actively promoting sustainability, resilience and responsible asset operations. It’s not a simple choice. This is a strategic imperative to achieve our net zero goals.

Optimizing the operational efficiency of your assets can help you predict and prevent problems, reduce emissions, ensure regulatory compliance, and create a safer, healthier work environment across your enterprise.

With factors such as regulatory compliance, employee satisfaction, positive corporate culture and improved reputation, the case for effective emissions management is compelling. Ultimately, this is about protecting our future and our bottom line.

By investing in emissions management technologies like MAS and integrating them with solutions like Envizi to minimize your environmental impact, you can pave the way for a sustainable future and usher in a more prosperous and greener future for both your business and the planet.

See how IBM Maximo can help your business.