Middle East business leaders prioritize sustainability, says Honeywell

According to a Honeywell survey on building sustainability and energy management, Middle East business leaders and decision-makers regard environmental, social, and governance (ESG) efforts as a top business concern, with an emphasis on energy management and occupant safety and well-being.

“As an active ESCO in the region, we understand the challenges of driving energy efficiencies across facilities. By treating buildings as dynamic entities and deploying the right technologies, building owners and managers can achieve both goals of meeting their energy efficiency targets and creating a healthier indoor environment for their occupants,” said George Bou Mitri, president, Honeywell Building Technologies, Middle East, Turkey and Africa.

The survey of more than 300 business leaders and decision-makers in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt found that ESG has grown in importance within organizations over the last two years, owing to a greater focus on the need for sustainability improvement, as well as an immediate requirement to support cost-efficiency improvements and occupational health and safety in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Key findings include:

• Eighty-nine percent of respondents say that environmental, social and governance (ESG) considerations are important to their organization’s strategy with 84 percent saying that energy management and sustainability are important to their organization today
• Eighty percent of respondents say that the importance of energy management and sustainability in their organization has increased over the last two years
• Occupant health and safety (50 percent) is the most commonly invested in area of ESG
• Forty-three percent of respondents say that COVID-19 helped accelerate their organization’s energy management and sustainability initiatives, versus only 21 percent who say the pandemic hindered such initiatives

Technology taking center stage in ESG initiatives:

• Energy-efficient lighting, predictive maintenance software and HVAC optimization are now common areas of investment among building managers, with approximately 76 percent of respondents in UAE and KSA and 58 percent in Egypt confirming that their organization implemented air quality measures in their building during COVID-19
• Eighty percent of respondents believe that an autonomous control or a predictive maintenance solution would improve their organization’s energy management operations
• Eighty percent of respondents believe that digital-based solutions available today are effective in improving the energy efficiency of buildings

Honeywell’s building technologies help businesses flourish by enabling smarter buildings and portfolio management, simplifying facility operations, and increasing operational and energy efficiency. Honeywell Forge corporate performance management software-as-a-service can help buildings go digital while lowering energy usage and improving operational efficiency. Honeywell Forge Energy Optimization, for example, is a proprietary, cloud-based, closed-loop technology that optimizes energy use by connecting to a building’s existing HVAC systems. This closed-loop technology works without the need for human intervention by integrating near-real-time circumstances data – such as weather and occupancy – with predictive, machine learning models that automatically compute and alter setpoints across a facility’s complete HVAC distribution system. This approach aided the first authorized smart university in the United Arab Emirate in achieving double-digit energy savings.

Honeywell is licensed to provide energy services to customers in building management through Energy Service Performance Contracting (ESPC), Energy Performance Contracting (EPC), and building retrofits in the UAE (Dubai, Sharjah, Abu-Dhabi, Ras al Khaimah) and Saudi Arabia (Dubai, Sharjah, Abu-Dhabi, Ras al Khaimah). Honeywell has performed over 6,000 EPC projects around the world, resulting in over $10 billion in assured energy and operational savings.