Dive Brief:
- Schneider Electric has made changes to its EcoStruxure Resource Advisor, a cloud-based energy and sustainability data management platform.
- This strategic evolution from a platform of standalone solutions to an integrated and multifaceted suite addresses the rapidly maturing market and the increasing complexity of corporate sustainability needs, Schneider Electric said in a news release Thursday.
- “Resource Advisor sets itself apart in the market with its integrated approach, offering end-to-end functionality across ESG, sustainability, procurement, renewables & carbon, and efficiency management,” Amy Cravens, research manager of ESG management and reporting technologies at International Data Corporation, said in a statement.
Dive Insight:
Companies are increasingly being tasked with minimizing carbon emissions, optimizing energy sourcing, improving their ESG reporting practices and boosting operational efficiency through targeted energy-saving strategies, Schneider Electric said. Over 2,000 companies globally use EcoStuxure Resource Advisor for energy and sustainability monitoring, visualization and control systems, the company said.
The upgrades to EcoStruxure Resource Advisor can help companies comply with regulations like the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s climate disclosure rule and California’s climate laws, Steve Wilhite, president of Schneider Electric Sustainability Business, said in a statement.
“The biggest challenge that building operators face is collecting, standardizing and validating sustainability and ESG data across their diverse portfolios. No two buildings are the same, and neither is their respective sustainability data,” said Jessica Kipper, senior director of software product management at Schneider Electric. “The data required for sustainability and ESG reporting can be severely siloed or spread out across various systems and formats.”
This lack of uniformity can complicate the collection and analysis of data necessary to report at both the portfolio and corporate levels, Kipper said. For large-scale commercial real estate players, this challenge is often magnified by the geographical dispersion of properties which are subject to local regulations and practices, Kipper noted.
Upgrades include an AI-driven data hub in its Resource Advisor ESG module and an intelligent tracking and allocation functionality in its Resource Advisor Renewables and Carbon software, which can help users increase the efficiency of their renewable energy initiatives by identifying lagging assets or sites that have exceeded their renewable energy goals
EcoStruxure’s Resource Advisor ESG’s data hub now uses advanced AI to improve enterprise data integration and accuracy, per the release. Multi-entity data management and reporting, which can connect physical data to legal entities, can accommodate jurisdiction-specific reporting requirements, the company said.
The upgraded data hub and multi-entity management and reporting functionalities will help building operators manage portfolios and entities with more ease by ingesting data from any source system and creating indicators broken down by sites, regions and entities, said Kipper.
Resource Advisor ESG has added a library of standard ESG indicators mapped to frameworks to align with global standards and regulations, the company said. Custom visualizations and dashboards can improve data interpretation and ESG-related trend analysis, Schneider Electric said in the release.
With upgrades to Resource Advisor Renewables and Carbon, users can now prioritize auditability and information-sharing and use automated calculations of renewable energy coverage for all their locations, the company said. This automation can reduce manual errors and improve the accuracy and efficiency of sustainability initiatives, as it “gets building operators and their portfolios out of traditional spreadsheets through precise and real-time calculations of renewable energy coverage against consumption data,” Kipper said.
“This standard global reporting functionality will allow our clients to monitor their progress towards critical renewable energy goals such as pledges to consume 100% renewable energy by a specific date,” Wilhite said.
