In this episode, host Mike Murphy is joined by HJ Dewes, Regional Sales Manager for HVAC Drives US, to discuss circularity. HJ has over 30 years of experience with ABB and is an active board member with the Hydraulic Institute, NEMA, and Department of Energy.
Learn more about ABB's solutions for the air handling and HVAC industries.
Learn more about ways to create energy savings.
In this episode, host Mike Murphy is joined by HJ Dewes, Regional Sales Manager for HVAC Drives US, to discuss circularity. HJ has over 30 years of experience with ABB and is an active board member with the Hydraulic Institute, NEMA, and Department of Energy.
Learn more about ABB's solutions for the air handling and HVAC industries.
Learn more about ways to create energy savings.
Welcome to the ABB Solutions Podcast where we talk about some of the challenges we face in our industry. I'm Mike Murphy speaking to you from Greenville, South Carolina. I'm excited to have with me today, HJ Dewes, Regional Sales Manager for HVAC Drives in the US. HJ has over 30 years of experience with ABB and is an active board member with the Hydraulic Institute, National Electrical Manufacturers Association or NEMA, and Department of Energy, just to name a few. HJ is here to speak with us on circularity. HJ, thanks so much for being here.
HJ Dewes:Thanks, Mike. I'm looking forward to the conversation. This is a topic that I'm really interested in. It's obviously an area that, where ABB has some focus, and I'm excited to chat with you about it.
Mike Murphy:Yeah, great having you. Alright, so I do like to learn a little bit about a topic before we get started on the podcast. And I found that a circular economy, it relates to consumption and reusing existing material for as long as possible. How does this relate to industry?
HJ Dewes:You know, that's a great question. Historically, I would say, you know, since the Industrial Age, we've had what I would call a "Take, Make, Waste Economy". In a "Take, Make, Waste Economy", you know, we've had the privilege of abundant natural resources where we could take from the natural supply, make equipment, deploy the equipment, or make make goods, consumer goods doesn't make a difference, but an industry, make equipment and deploy it. And then at the end of the life, you know, we basically work to, to, at best recycle it, but in many cases, we just trash it. You know, it goes to landfill or whatever. The circular economy looks at how you create circularity from source, to equipment, to use, and then bring that equipment back for circularity. So really, where this is big in industry, it works to minimize our dependence on raw materials, as we work to employ the next and best and greatest technology. Right, the next best technology.
Mike Murphy:Okay, that's great. All right. So what are socially responsible companies like an ABB, what are they doing to reduce their impact on the environment?
HJ Dewes:So there's a lot of things right. I mean, I think the big thing is, obviously, energy. First and foremost, I think that's the big deal, right? People are looking to go to alternative energy sources, they're trying to reduce carbon footprint, they're trying to do things more efficiently, looking to optimize processes. That's a big one. The second big one is from an end user perspective, they're working to recycle. So at ABB, if we're using materials, we're trying to minimize the waste that we have in our operations, and trying to use more environmentally healthy or positive materials in our use. But then when we have things that can be recycled, we're looking to recycle those things. And the circular economy, I think, takes it beyond that, and I'm sure we'll get into that. But you know, I think the two big areas or maybe three, minimize, you know, hazardous materials; reduce as much energy consumption as possible; and we work to recycle on the backend wherever we can.
Mike Murphy:Okay. All right. How might government regulations fit into this?
HJ Dewes:You know, that's a great question. I would tell you that I think that, you know, really cutting edge, environmentally conscious companies are really ahead of government regulations. I think government regulations chase organizations that are really doing really great things with technology. So I'll give you an example. The government has regulated the efficiency for commercial buildings and we're using IE3 motors, which are motors that have come out, you know, in the early 2000s timeframe, from an efficiency perspective. That's where regulation is today. Companies like ABB are introducing technologies that are IE4, IE5, and even greater than IE5 efficiencies, which are much improved. Regulation chases that. So regulation is always demanding that we use more efficient things, but the organizations that are really ahead of the game, are inventing the technologies where regulation is following. And I think what's important about that, is that companies that really want to be cutting edge and get ahead of the curve, they're looking to partner with with organizations that are trying to do things more efficient than is required by law or regulation is. They're also trying to utilize equipment that's going to be more efficient. They're trying to reduce their overall cost and be more environmentally friendly. You know, regulation tends to follow. So as we see more stringent regulations around whatever it is: pollution, you know, energy consumption, energy efficiency. The leaders in industry are well beyond that. And regulation, I think follows. So you know, what I'd like to say a closure on this specific topic, people who are looking to stay current with regulations aren't doing enough, right, if they're staying current with regulations, they're doing what the government requires. And really, they're not doing what's possible. And I think, you know, for the government to regulate efficiency standards, we'll say as example, or regulate waste standards as an example, that's being mandated because it's the right thing to do. But it's better to do the right thing, than wait to be mandated to do the right thing, if that makes sense.
Mike Murphy:Sure, it does, instead of being forced to have to meet regulations, you're already doing it.
HJ Dewes:Yeah. And that's a good point and not only be forced to meet regulations, but at the end of the day, if you're being forced to meet regulations, ultimately speaking, you're doing the absolute minimum to comply. Right. As opposed to doing what's possible, right. And I think that organizations that are really ahead of the game are constantly pushing the envelope about what's possible, and how do we make the world a better place.
Mike Murphy:Very interesting. Okay. HJ, you brought up IE3, IE5. I know ABB is a big driving force in this energy efficiency movement. Can you go over some of the reasons ABB is so engaged with this?
HJ Dewes:Yeah, absolutely. I mean, first, we're leaders: we're leaders in technology around electrical energy consumption. And we can change we can change the world; we can drive change. Our technologies, whether it's motor technologies- the most efficient electric motors in the world; variable frequency drives - applying variable frequency drives to reduce energy consumption on variable speed applications; working to source materials that are less rare earth magnets, that are more available; looking to deploy things like circularity into our designs. ABB is a huge player in the industrial and the commercial building space. I mean, a huge player when we talk about the motors and drives we bring to market. So ABB is in a great position. And, you know, we talked about in our energy movement, to change the game, on how we use energy, what equipment we produce, and how efficient it is. How we use things like variable speed drives to operate the equipment that we're driving even more efficiently. And how we make sure that we continue that cycle to improve. You know, what do we do at the end of life, you know, for inefficient motors, and and how do we bring those back? How do we deploy those motors to be more efficient and more efficient technologies. And so I think when you talk about the overall energy movement, ABB is one of the organizations that is big enough, and has the R&D resources to drive global change. And I think that's a really big piece of what we can do, whether it's working to use energy more efficiently; whether it's to operate our buildings and our industries more efficiently; or to reduce our dependence on raw materials. You know, rare earth materials and raw materials, or if it's to bring them back and reuse them again, right. ABB as a major fingerprint on all those aspects. Great. Mike, I'll tell you, it's one thing for us to be really good and really environmentally focused in our operations. That's important. And I would say ABB is a leader there. We can help our customers become much more efficient and improve their environmental focus. And we can also help our suppliers, right. Our technology is oftentimes running the factories that are producing stuff that's going to come to us. So I think whether we're automating their factories, whether we're automating our factories, whether we're automating the mining equipment that's getting materials, or if we're helping our customers on the consumption side, right. ABBs, got, you know, our finger print runs across the entire thing. So we can help from source, you know, they say source to socket, right, we can get help from supply all the way to the end.
Mike Murphy:I like it - Source to Socket. I like it. And now I guess I could do a plug for the energy efficiency movement. If you were just to search that online, correct me if I'm wrong, but won't that take you to our webpage? Right through abb.com and a lot of great information out there. Can you just highlight that a little bit for us?
HJ Dewes:Yeah, absolutely. So in ABB sustainability strategy, we've got a couple of things that are going on. One is the energy efficiency movement, which if you were to search on abb.com, um, you could find multiple white papers, multiple presentations, you know, multiple podcasts, I'm sure tied to it, interviews with some of our leadership team about the energy efficiency movement, and also at Capital Markets Day, we just introduced to focus on circularity, the topic that we're talking about. So I think you would find things in our sustainability page tied to all- the circular economy, diversity, equity inclusion, the energy movement. It would all be in ABB sustainability page.
Mike Murphy:Oh, great. Great. That's perfect. All right. HJ, let's talk about the HVAC industry. Just as an example. What is this industry's impact on energy consumption?
HJ Dewes:That's a great question! So there's a lot of ways to look at that. First I'm going to tell you is that 38% of all electrical energy use is in commercial buildings. Let's start there. We'll just start with commercial buildings and talk about the HVAC space and commercial buildings. The second thing that's really interesting to know is that the very first energy efficiency regulations that went into effect was in the year 2000. 75% of the buildings that we have today that are effectively operating in the active stock of buildings were built before 2000. So they were built before any energy efficiency regulations at all. When people talk about a green building, or a LEED building, LEED Gold, Gold certificate, or LEED platinum, or whatever it happens to be. None of that existed before the year 2000. So, we've got a couple of things that are coming together here, right, there were no regulations on buildings, 75% of the buildings we have today, were built before 2000. And then the third thing that's good to know is that the largest carbon footprint of a building is during the construction phase. So that you know, you used to hear a lot about if you had an inefficient, old, airy building, the right thing to do was to tear that down and rebuild it with a green, modern building. But really, based on that CO2 footprint, what it really means is that we need to retrofit those buildings. So, the HVAC industry has a huge space, right? The other thing that I think is really important to
know Mike, in HVAC:the three biggest electrical consumers in the electric motor space, are motors, pumps, and fans, and the compressors, pumps and fans driven by electric motors, I mean. Many times those can be operated in variable speed by operating in variable speed, we can get much, much greater efficiency. So I think we've got to ask the question first - Is the motor that we're using to drive our compressors our pumps, our fans, is that an efficient solution? And if it's not, what should we do to upgrade it? The second is - Is it a variable speed application? And can we reduce the speed and save energy with the affinity laws? And I think if you look at the two of those, the HVAC industry can have a major impact by doing two pretty simple things, right? Really accelerating the life, the end of life for inefficient motors, electric motors and replacing them with higher efficiency motors. You know, we had talked about, you know, IE4, IE5, IE5+. And the second thing is deploying variable speed drives on those motors where you can, to save energy and really reduce the overall carbon footprint and the overall energy consumption.
Mike Murphy:Okay, great. Obviously, these companies want their equipment to last. This leads me to think about terms that you hear a lot about reliability. So how does reliability play a role with the topic of circularity?
HJ Dewes:That's a good question as well. One of the key aspects of circularity is to try to extend the life of equipment as much as possible. So you want to go into, you know, modular design. And there's components that fail, and you know, which components might fail quicker. By going into a modular design, you can really extend the life of the equipment by replacing whatever module it is that failed. Like, as example, you know, batteries is a pretty good space, right? If a battery has a short life, what can you do to reduce the environmental footprint of that battery, and work to replace the battery to the extend the life? Let's let's talk about in electric motors, right. In the electric motor, maybe if the windings start to fail, what can you do to replace the windings and extend the life of the equipment? Increase the efficiency of the equipment, and provide a really reliable solution that has a long life. I think that's really an important piece. You know, and then of course, whenever anything fails it's not operating as efficiently as it could be. You know, if a drive were to fail, or whatever you may operate in bypass and lose those gains that you have from the variable speed. Really maintaining equipment, making sure that you're extending the life and then it's reliable is an important aspect in getting equipment to operate as efficiently as possible.
Mike Murphy:Okay, that's great. And going back to the drive, I know, I've even done a couple of podcasts with our drive services group to again, keep the equipment up and running longer. So that's great. HJ, so ABB, definitely a leader in technology. So how does their digital platform play a role with a circular economy?
HJ Dewes:That's a great question as well. When we talk about circularity, the most important aspect of circularity, where things really change in a circular economy, as we move from "Take, Make, Waste" to circular. Circular requires you to bring the end product back into your new product. So let's talk about what that means and how you would use digital to trace that this kind of brings everything together. The first piece is that if we have an electric motor, we talked about inefficient electric motors. We have an inefficient electric motor, we need to replace it with a more efficient motor. Well, what happens you know everybody has a great desire to do the right thing. So they say, I've got a bad carbon footprint. I'm running inefficiently. I can improve my bottom line by improving my efficiency with the new electric motor. And they also think you know, I'm going to operate more efficiently and reduce my carbon footprint. What happens when they replace those motors, typically they take the next step, which is important and they work to recycle those motors. What people don't realize is that those motors typically go to a recycler, who will take them and many times sell them in bulk form, you know, by the container, or by the ton to areas of the world that might have less efficient, you know, less environmentally focused regulation, and those inefficient motors that the customer took out of their operation, they really just pass that problem on to somebody else who's going to take that motor, and they feel that it's cheaper to reuse and use that motor as opposed to buying a new motor. So what happens is they take the problem of the inefficient motor, and they pass it on, right. Circularity would suggest that you can't just pass it on, you can't just recycle it, but you need to take responsibility for what happens to that motor, you have to manage the supply chain. A company like ABB looks at it very holistically. Through our digital platforms, we have the ability to trace that electric motor. So our commitment would be, we're going to make sure that that electric motor comes back to us. Or we're going to make sure that rather than be dependent on raw material, we're going to trace that electric motor through its life. Using digital, when it's no longer efficient, we can help a customer understand how its operating, is it operating efficiently or not? Through our digital platforms. When it's no longer efficient; it's not operating efficiently, we can suggest a replacement, which helps the customer operate more efficiently. But we can also, as we move into the circular arena, we can commit to the customer that we're going to make sure that that motor doesn't end up somewhere where it's being operated inefficiently somewhere else in the world where the CO2 footprint is the same, or that it doesn't end up in a landfill. But what we can do is we can trace that motor and say, look, we're gonna make sure it comes back to us. So through our partnerships, and through digital, we can trace that that motor might go to somebody who doesn't un-manufacturing process it, they take it apart, they give us the raw components or they take it to various smelters, or whatever. So they can produce, you know, electrical copper, electrical steel, and they can feed us as we work to design and deploy the next level of efficiency and motors. In essence, through circularity, and through digital, we can make sure that customers operate their buildings, their motors and their driven applications as efficiently as possible. We can also make sure that end of life, those motors come back to us and they're recovered properly. And then we can take those motors and use them as a source for us to produce the next generation of more efficient motors, reducing our overall consumption of raw materials. So ultimately, speaking through digital, we can tell the customer - "Look, are you operating efficiently or not? And when you're no longer operating efficiently, let's replace this with a more efficient solution for you a better carbon footprint solution for you. Let's make sure that expired or end of life equipment comes back through our supply chain through our recovery efforts in to our supply chain and let's make sure that it gets used again in an even more efficient solution in the future." Ultimately, speaking, circularity and digital tied together and the overall energy efficiency movement.
Mike Murphy:Sure, okay. Very interesting. All right, he I've got one last question for you. And you might have touched on it already, but we need to hear it again. Where can someone go to find more information on this topic; on sustainability?
HJ Dewes:So there are two places that are great. The first, I'll give you an ABB reference and then I'll give you the third party reference if that's okay. Please. abb.com. If you go to abb.com, look up our sustainability page and look through the information there. Again, it will take you to what we're doing with the circular economy and how we look at circularity. I'm going to look at the commitments that ABB has made in our own operations around sustainability, and also our commitment to help our customers and our suppliers through a circular movement and working to reduce the overall carbon footprint that we have in the world. Really, really important. The second place is the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. They're really the experts on circular economy. They're out of the UK. They are partnering with ABB; strategic partner of ours. Really great place to learn more about circularity both on the biological side of the things and also on the mechanical and industrial side of the things that we've talked about today.
Mike Murphy:Sure. Fantastic, fantastic. And just for our listeners' sake on our landing page, ABB Solutions Podcast, we'll also have some added pieces of collateral too, and easy to follow link. So okay, so we're gonna stop right there. HJ, this has been great. I really appreciate your time speaking with us on circularity. Remember if you've got any other questions, reach out to your local ABB sales representative or as HJ mentioned, we've got a lot of great material on www.abb.com. If you've got any ideas for future podcasts, shoot us an email us-solutions@abb.com. HJ again, thanks. And thank you listeners and have a great rest of your day.