Virtual twins and sustainability
March 9, 2021
March 9, 2021
The benefits of virtual twins are numerous. From increasing speed-to-market to minimizing the risk associated with complex innovations and projects, these technologies can help companies across industries reduce costs and improve operations.
Virtual twins help by allowing users to design, test and model disruptive new sustainable products and processes in record time, all virtually, significantly decreasing time to market and risk. Because of this, they have already been used in the development of 85 percent of the world’s electric vehicles and have powered breakthrough sustainability pilots such as electric furnaces, the world’s first solar airplane and new biomaterials.
But most importantly perhaps, virtual twins also significantly support the transition to a more circular economy—where parts and products are designed in a way which makes for easy reuse and repurposing and eliminates waste from the lifecycle. This can help us achieve the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals in the Decade to Deliver—an ever critical step to addressing the climate crisis.
Our research findings indicate that if industries, governments, and societies were to implement virtual twins, we could unlock additional benefits of USD $1.3 trillion of economic value and 7.5 Gt CO2e CO2e emissions reductions between now and 2030.
Virtual twins can help many different industries innovate operations and ultimately reinvent core business. Within our research, we looked across five key industries and use cases to demonstrate the potential of virtual twins:
If introduced at scale, virtual twins can deliver $1.3 trillion of economic value and 7.5 Gt CO2e emissions reductions between now and 2030 across these five use cases alone. However, it is clear that adoption has been limited to date, and we must work to accelerate the adoption of these technologies across industries. To do this, we encourage executives to follow our five key recommendations: clearly link technology and sustainability agendas; improve the understanding of these technologies; focus on disruptive systems-change use cases; deploy these technologies responsibly; and, rally ecosystem support.
Through our analysis, we have shown the potential for virtual twins to help us achieve our Global Goals, and deliver clear business value, and we hope we can inspire the next wave of leadership to think about these combined benefits, and accelerate our progress.
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