5 November 2024, Tue |
4:32 PM
Bentley Systems’ ES(D)G – Empowering Sustainable Goals, Product Strategy Director Rodrigo Fernandes says their purpose is to empower sustainable goals through infrastructure digital twins.
Please tell us about the year 2022 for Bentley Systems.
We have seen multiple organizations looking for opportunities to reduce the carbon footprint associated with the different lifecycle stages – and particularly (but not only) in the design stages. While many of the companies are still drawing their strategy and are only asking questions to better understand “the art of possible”, in other cases where the sustainability market is more mature (e.g., UK), we are approached for supporting digital twins on large infrastructure projects where carbon plays already an important role.
This has been an important year for us to better understand the market needs and to position ourselves through strategic partnerships that will try to fill some of the existing gaps in better quantifying environmental performance in infrastructure digital twins.
What is Bentley System’s overall strategy regarding sustainability and what kind of goals has Bentley set for sustainability?
Our purpose is to empower SDGs through infrastructure digital twin solutions, helping our users – infrastructure professionals – realize outcomes that are more sustainable, predictable, and resilient. And that is why we combined the two acronyms ESG and SDG to form ES(D)G – empowering sustainable development goals.
We recognize that creating future-proofed infrastructure will play a key role in protecting the environment. We empower infrastructure professionals everywhere to deliver and operate more sustainable and resilient infrastructure, enabling them to work on our most significant environmental challenges – energy transition and efficiency; circularity, land and water resources; healthy cities; and climate action. To accelerate the answer to those challenges, our ES(D)G priorities in terms of investments, partnerships and initiatives are focused on 3 main areas: grids (energy transition); mobility (healthy cities); environment (climate action + land & water resources).
How is Bentley ensuring sustainable models of smart cities and infrastructure?
Cities are simultaneously the biggest driver and victim of climate change. It’s simultaneously part of the problem and part of the solution. We advocate that a city without digital, sustainable mobility is not a smart city. Our digital solutions are helping cities efficiently design and build collective transportation systems and facilitating multimodal transportation planning and simulation – reducing vehicle congestion, air pollution, and GHG emissions. In addition, buildings and campuses should be designed and operated to reduce carbon, energy, water and waste footprints as much as possible.
We provide multiple industry solutions for infrastructure digital twins that can help address those aspects. Some examples of these solutions: operating complex (electric) grid digital twins (Open Utilities DER); designing and operating water, wastewater, and stormwater networks (WaterGEMS, SewerGEMS, WaterSight); designing and simulating energy and carbon-efficient buildings (OpenBuildings).
Bentley’s focus at COP27 was on decarbonization and climate resilience through digital solutions, tell us what the company hopes to accomplish with this agenda?
At COP27, we wanted to bring attention to “going digital” strategies to future-proof and climate-proof our infrastructure:
