The “Energy Transition” context

On the 50th anniversary year, we at SAP take great pride in being a trusted partner to the oil, gas, and energy industry, navigating through various business cycles over the years. At this juncture, we have the dual responsibility of helping the industry provide energy needs of today whilst supporting development of the energy systems of tomorrow. The “energy transition” narrative is evolving towards:

• Energy mix shifting towards power, hydrogen and synfuels (~50% of the energy mix by 2050)
• Oil demand is projected to peak in next five years largely driven by EV uptake
• Investment in decarbonization technologies (CCUS, Hydrogen, sustainable fuels, EV charging) and in RES (renewable energy sources) is expected to accelerate rapidly
• Net-zero pledges: In the context of COP26, a total of 64 countries (accounting for 89% of global CO₂ emissions) have made net-zero pledges. In addition to this, major energy companies and the industry have pledged to get to net-zero by 2050.

However, recent geopolitical developments put pressure on “Energy Transition”.

• Ukraine crisis has resurfaced risks to energy security, sustainability, and affordable access to energy. Energy mix and import diversification can bring countries greater energy security, affordability, and sustainability.
• The extreme volatility in energy markets raises concerns about energy security, energy affordability and the energy transition.
• The energy transition must be made robust with adequate enablers and support mechanisms to maintain the momentum despite the challenges

How are our customers innovating to navigate this “Energy Transition”:

• Shell: Shell is undertaking a global transformation from its history as an oil and gas company to its future as a net-zero energy company.  The transition requires becoming a much more efficient company while further empowering the workforce.  The contract authoring and negotiation process was identified as one of the key opportunities that will impact the transition, and Shell partnered with SAP Ariba to co-develop a new and innovative SAP Ariba Enhanced Contract Authoring solution. The new solution was fully live by November 2021 and will manage approximately 8000 contracts during 2022.
• Avangrid: AVANGRID, a leading sustainable energy company, is making a paradigm shift in field work maintenance to identify the issues proactively and prioritize them efficiently with the recently completed proof of concept “Automated Overhead Network Inspection.” This edge computing solution is deployed in SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP). The cameras mounted on AVANGRID’s maintenance trucks provide high-resolution images to the edge-computing devices in the truck which use machine learning and AI to automatically detect visible defects on the poles and wires that the trucks drove by. Through this POC, the team was able to train and perfect an artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms to identify defects with 90% accuracy.
• OMV – Mobile Asset Management using Augmented Reality: Contextualized digital twins available on an augmented hybrid solution (on/offline) which is based on SAP Asset Manager and the HoloLens 2 headset with a Bluetooth communication, providing SAP Plant Maintenance data, SAP Asset Strategy and Performance Management checklist data and a digital twin overlaid as a 3D-Model. Mark-up annotations and checklist assessments are supported to enable results entry and malfunction reporting on the fly which are synchronized to SAP Asset Manager and the digital twin.
• Engie: Moving to renewable energy with predictive maintenance in solar farms. ENGIE freed workers from repetitive tasks, saved carbon emission by avoiding unnecessary travels, and anticipated maintenance spends. The accuracy of the digital twin enabled the ENGIE team to successfully determine the precise location of several broken fuses at the very moment of their failure, and schedule maintenance accordingly. The digital twin would also provide ENGIE with the ability to anticipate component failures and optimize maintenance activities of their assets.
• Motoroil: Motor Oil Group is investing in modernizing its IT infrastructure to enable intelligent processes across various business areas. A key area of interest is to improve processes during oil refinement by proactively acting upon upcoming alarm incidents related to critical refinery equipment. To do this, it worked with Accenture and the Data Science group at SAP on a pilot for refinery-critical compressors using the SAP HANA Cloud database, SAP Extension Suite, and the SAP Analytics Cloud solution.
• Murphy Oil – Integrated Operations Platform for Oil Well Operations: Remote Operations Center (ROC) is a centralized monitoring cockpit, which brings in the essential operational efficiencies and visibility into day-to-day activities by the unification of information and business processes from disparate systems. Harnessing the power of SAP Cloud Platform and its services, the platform ensures intelligent data management, smart allocation of resources, improved safety conditions of staff, and a seamless flow of processes.
• Bboxx: a socially beneficial utility company operating in some of the world’s most impoverished markets, employed SAP technology to rapidly scale their business. With the help of Grow by SAP, SAP Business by Design, and Orchard House Solutions, Bboxx was able to expand their operations with best-practice management and process automation. These upgrades are helping the company solve energy poverty for more people in more places.
• Arpa: Built an innovative factory from scratch to help make a new production line highly successfull. Achieved 80% reduction in energy and water use through smart, automated consumption fine-tuning, reduced scrap waste almost down to zero by using best-practice machine learning algorithms, >6x productivity improvement and production cost savings of EUR 750k.
• Exnaton: Energy Community facilitates local marketplaces for renewable energy among households by computing and visualizing energy flows and calculating billable items for each point of delivery.

References:

World economic forum reports

IEA World Energy Outlook

US Energy Information Administration