BT today announced it has expanded its Carbon Network Dashboard to give business customers visibility of electricity consumption and carbon emissions at an individual workload and application level. The insight will allow them to optimise their data-centre and network infrastructure to manage emissions as they adopt AI applications at scale.

AI can have significantly different impacts on networks and data-centres than other application types. It can cause sharp, unpredictable increases in bandwidth demand, which in turn cause spikes in power use by infrastructure traditionally designed for predictable workloads. If spikes in demand overload individual network devices or servers, this will not only impact performance but cause them to overheat, wasting electricity. This creates additional challenges for customers aiming to reduce emissions.

The Carbon Network Dashboard already offers a single, end-to-end, near real-time view of how much electricity a customer’s network and data-centre infrastructure is using. It can now tie this consumption to traffic patterns caused by individual applications, including AI.

As part of its sustainable network design and refresh service, BT can use this insight to help customers adapt, either by changing network design, capacity and management or optimising applications and AI workloads. BT can also help customers develop distributed architectures, which bring components of AI closer to users, devices and machines. 

The capabilities are part of the latest NetFlow plug-in for the Carbon Network Dashboard. In future, the Dashboard will be able to identify traffic going to colocation or public cloud services and prioritise what to focus on for optimisation, including re-designing for extra or flexible capacity. This will ensure network devices are running within their design limits, efficiently and with flexibility to accommodate growth of AI workloads.

In addition, the Dashboard now incorporates electricity consumption data from a wider range of world-leading network equipment vendors and types of devices. This includes SD-WAN equipment, servers and WAN and LAN devices.

The Dashboard’s energy optimisation tools have also been expanded. They now include: V-App IoT builder integration for energy management of wireless access points; zero-touch automation to enable/disable power over ethernet (PoE) ports when not in use for energy management and carbon savings; and sustainable device refresh recommendations for end-of-life devices.

“AI has incredible potential but if not deployed thoughtfully could place unpredictable demands on customers’ digital infrastructure causing surges in electricity use and carbon emissions,” said Sarwar Khan, sustainability director, Business, BT. “BT is committed to helping customers innovate to achieve sustainable growth. With our Carbon Network Dashboard, we can help them adopt AI at scale while optimising their infrastructure to achieve their decarbonisation goals. It’s a great example of how BT has their back.”

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The global leaders in their respective fields will build on their extensive expertise in sustainable building management and global networking to make it easier for customers to reduce emissions from buildings around the world.

Sarwar Khan, global head of digital sustainability, Business, BT, said: “Our collaboration with Johnson Controls will help BT deliver on its pledge to help customers avoid 60 million tonnes of CO2 by the end of March 2030. Customers will benefit from better visibility and management of energy data from connected buildings, helping them reduce Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions, and reach Net Zero faster.”

According to the World Green Building Council, buildings are responsible for almost 40 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions and the IEA finds they consume at least 30 per cent of energy globally. Smart and sustainable buildings are on the rise as they represent a key opportunity in helping to meet climate targets. At the same time, the number of subsystems, IoT devices and data is increasing exponentially, driving demand for secure and reliable networks. Connectivity to the cloud is now needed in areas within buildings that may have been poorly served by legacy networking solutions. 

The two parties are offering solutions that leverage smart building technology and Johnson Controls’ OpenBlue digital platform connected by secure and resilient networks that can improve data capture, enhance security, and provide effective management of connected buildings at scale.

Katie McGinty, vice president and chief sustainability and external relations officer, Johnson Controls, said: “With the powerful combination of technology and partnerships, coupled with government incentives, there has never been a more opportune time to drive sustainability leadership and action. The collaboration between Johnson Controls and BT will unlock new potential for customers to further reduce emissions, cut costs and energize employees with their sustainability mission.”

Using the combined technologies BT and Johnson Controls will be running a live demo at BT’s research facilities in Adastral Park.

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About Johnson Controls

At Johnson Controls (NYSE:JCI), we transform the environments where people live, work, learn and play. As the global leader in smart, healthy and sustainable buildings, our mission is to reimagine the performance of buildings to serve people, places and the planet.

Building on a proud history of nearly 140 years of innovation, we deliver the blueprint of the future for industries such as healthcare, schools, data centers, airports, stadiums, manufacturing and beyond through OpenBlue, our comprehensive digital offering.

Today, with a global team of 100,000 experts in more than 150 countries, Johnson Controls offers the world`s largest portfolio of building technology and software as well as service solutions from some of the most trusted names in the industry.

Visit www.johnsoncontrols.com for more information and follow @Johnson Controls on social platforms.

BT today announced an expansion of its digital sustainability tools to help customers monitor and optimise energy use across their full IT estate, from the network to servers running their apps and workloads in data centres and elsewhere.

The company is integrating data on servers’ energy use into its AI-powered sustainability tools. It means BT’s digital dashboards can now offer a single, end-to-end picture of how much energy customers’ IT infrastructure is using and present actionable insights on what to do to optimise devices, apps and workloads to help meet their net zero goals. BT then offers to help deliver this as part of its sustainable network design and refresh service. 

For example, the dashboard can look at network traffic over a 24-hour period and processor telemetry to identify opportunities for server devices to be placed into deep sleep depending on the way the workloads and apps are run.

Globally, data centres and associated networks that underpin digitalisation account for 0.9 per cent of energy-related greenhouse gas emissions. The EU has already introduced new policies and regulations for reducing energy use and decarbonising data centres. Organisations will be required to demonstrate their data centres meet the EU’s Assessment Framework for Data Centres as part of the upcoming Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), which will impact up to 50,000 companies.

BT continues to evolve its digital sustainability tools to help organisations meet these challenges. The tools already help customers monitor and benchmark energy consumption of their network devices in internet of things (IoT) operational environments such as factories and ports; local area networks (LANs) that provide connectivity within offices; and wide area networks (WANs) that link sites globally.

They are the latest step in the delivery of a BT Group Manifesto pledge to help customers avoid 60 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions by 2030.

Sarwar Khan, head of digital sustainability, Business, BT Group, said: “More and more customers are setting science-based net zero targets and face increasing regulatory pressures to improve efficiency in their data centres. By integrating data from leading IT vendor partners such as Cisco and INTEL, we’re giving customers end-to-end visibility of energy use across their full IT estate as well as the insight and support needed to optimise devices and workloads.”

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About BT’s digital sustainability tools

BT’s Carbon Network Dashboard gives a real-time view of power consumption across the network and datacentres. It uses AI and machine learning to detect and predict anomalies based on historic usage. This includes which network devices are consuming the most power. Customers can also forecast total energy use based on their network inventory and historic utilisation.

To help understand how electricity consumption translates into carbon emissions, the Dashboard includes data from regional power grids showing their carbon intensity.

The Digital Carbon Calculator helps customers estimate their network and data centre’s carbon footprint. It scans the customer’s network and data centre inventory to estimate their carbon footprint and can track how this responds to changes and upgrades over time. It includes lifecycle management, highlighting devices at the end of service to prioritise for replacement. Customers can also choose to use the calculator by uploading an inventory of their IT infrastructure equipment for analysis.

BT today announces phase two of its Green Tech Innovation Platform (TIP), to fast-track cutting-edge new digital solutions to help manufacturers cut their carbon emissions and progress towards a circular world.

Following the initial scouting phase supported by Plug and Play, the second phase sees  rising stars of the start-up world RIIICO, Sensorfact and Circularise joining the platform. In partnership with BT and the Manufacturing Technology Centre (MTC), they will begin proof of concept (PoC) activities to prove their impact for UK manufacturers.

A joint report by BT and Accenture has forecast that tech, including 5G, can help reduce carbon emissions from the manufacturing sector by 13% by 2030 (the equivalent of 1.3 Gt CO2e). The three start-ups have been selected to solve some of the sustainability challenges with the biggest impact on the carbon-intensive manufacturing sector, applying digital solutions to:

• Redesign legacy manufacturing processes with a sustainability lens
• Deliver energy efficiency on the shop floor
• Drive circularity and transparency in supply chains

The chosen start-ups will help develop solutions based on their expertise in the following technologies:

• RIIICO helps manufacturers create resilient and transparent digital factory designs; ensuring they’re prepared for the future. It does this by using a combination of 3D scanning to inform Digital Twins (digital versions of physical environments) augmented by artificial intelligence (AI) to enable people and computers to remodel and enhance that environment. This approach reduces modelling time by 95% and is also reducing data maintenance costs by 25%.
• Sensorfact work with small manufacturers to reduce their energy bill and carbon footprint by eliminating energy waste in a smart and easy way through sensors. Sensorfact have already helped over 1,000 manufacturing companies across north-western Europe save an average of 5-10% on their electricity bill.
• Circularise  helps suppliers to trace materials, share sensitive data without risking privacy, and automate mass reporting using blockchain software. This helps businesses and Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) to get visibility into their own Scope 3 emissions, preparing them for upcoming supply chain sustainability regulations, and enabling a circular economy at scale.

David Wrout, Principal – Digital Supply Chain, Enterprise Digital Solutions at BT, said: “We have set a target to help customers avoid 60million tonnes of CO2e by 2030 through our products and services, and Green TIP phase two allows us to do this. By using the power of digital, we can drive sustainability impact throughout the value chain and help our customers with the transition to net zero. We are really excited about the opportunities we can explore with the three innovative start-ups we’ve selected in phase two for our manufacturing customers.”

Alejandra Matamoros, Technology Manager at Manufacturing Technology Centre adds: “The MTC is pleased to be working with BT on the Green TIP to support manufacturers in trialling the selected technologies, proving their potential to help them reach their sustainability targets and show other businesses alike how to make progress towards a greener manufacturing industry”.

The next phase of Green TIP sees BT, MTC and the three start-ups collaborating on PoCs to see how different solutions and applications can support the UK based manufacturing sector. Manufacturing companies interested in taking part should complete an online form here stating which solution they’d like to hear more about and why. 

About BT Group’s climate commitment

BT Group has led on climate action for 30 years and was one of the first companies in the world to adopt science-based targets, directly linking its own goals to the overall level of reductions in emissions needed to limit the most harmful impacts of the climate crisis.

As part of the transition to a low carbon business model, BT Group uses 100% renewable electricity worldwide and aims to transition its commercial fleet to electric or zero-emission vehicles by 2030. Since 2016/17, BT Group has reduced the carbon emissions intensity of its operations by 55% and has reduced carbon emissions by 28% in its supply chain over the same timeframe.

In 2021, BT Group accelerated its climate commitments and pledged to be net zero by March 2031 for its operational emissions and March 2041 for its supply chain and customer emissions. The target is part of BT Group's mission to build a bright, sustainable future through technology which is responsible, inclusive, and sustainable.

For more information please visit: Sustainable - Responsible business | BT Plc

Powered by AI technology within Foresight Optima^TM from QiO Technologies, it combines the latest in machine learning with BT Edge Compute devices. Customers can also benefit from BT’s wider digital industries capabilities, including IoT, cloud and secure connectivity, in a single managed solution.

The new solution brings together real-time data from IoT sensors, machinery control settings, databases, external data and energy sources to identify the variables that can be optimised to reduce energy consumption, and can also help improve quality, productivity, and other relevant factors.

The resulting energy efficiency index (EEI) looks at past configurations of the process and compares them to see which were most energy efficient and why. It can also compare sites and equipment to look for best practices.

The solution is hosted on a BT Edge Compute device, which ensures data can be securely processed by the AI close to where it is created. BT securely connects the device to all relevant systems, hardware and assets to give total visibility of the process being measured. Connectivity options include private 5G.

QiO’s AI has been successfully deployed across a wide range of industries, including glass, steel, cement, automotive and others, delivering energy savings between 5-15 per cent. For example, QIO’s deployment at a leading glass manufacturer reduced energy consumption by six per cent and carbon emissions by 21,600 tonnes.

“I believe we have a very important role to play in addressing the climate crisis. By partnering with customers, we can help them achieve net zero carbon emissions,” said Hriday Ravindranath, Chief Product & Digital Officer, Global, BT.

“Data is key,” he added. “Too many organisations still gather carbon data manually, making reporting difficult and limiting its usefulness in improving operations. Our solution collects data securely, and by using QiO’s AI, recommends steps to optimise processes. Moreover, customers can use this data to report on their performance in a standardised way. It’s a great example of how we’re delivering on our Manifesto commitments and connecting for good.”

“Our partnership with BT will deliver the benefit of QiO Foresight Optima^TM to asset heavy and energy intensive industry to help meet sustainability and net zero goals,” said Rick Haythornthwaite, Chairman & Co-Founder, QiO Technologies. “Combined with BT’s industry knowledge and connectivity expertise, we can accelerate delivery of energy efficiency, carbon emissions reduction and cost savings for organisations globally.”

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About QiO

QiO Technologies is a Gartner Magic Quadrant Industrial IoT AI Software products company delivering Sustainability and Industry4.0 solutions for the industrial sector.

Since 2015, QiO has built a global track record with leading industrial companies by optimising their operations, reducing their energy costs and carbon emissions, delivering 5-15 per cent efficiency improvement, and expediting their sustainability agenda.

QiO’s solutions are available across multiple industries, including aerospace, automotive, steel, glass, cement, oil and gas, healthcare, data centers and shipping

For more information, visit www.qio.io

BT today announced it is building a flexible, resilient and secure network for Deutsche Post DHL Group to support the global logistics powerhouse in its drive to digitalise supply chains in a sustainable way.

The new eight-year agreement continues the long-standing relationship between the firms. It will see BT deploy the latest technology to transform connectivity for DPDHL Group in 27 countries across Europe, including the UK.

Deutsche Post DHL Group is the world’s leading logistics company. It focuses on delivering exceptional customer service and innovative sustainable transport solutions for increasingly digitalised supply chains.

The new network will be a key enabler of Deutsche Post DHL Group’s strategy, helping the company digitalise and automate its business in a sustainable way.

It will be based on the latest technologies that combine the scale and flexibility of the internet with security and resilience to deliver trusted performance. It will be optimised for the cloud, where Deutsche Post DHL Group increasingly hosts its applications and digital services used by 350,000 employees at 1500 sites across the regions.

Sustainability is a fundamental part of the network transformation. BT will audit Deutsche Post DHL Group’s existing network to identify and remove copper cables wherever possible, replacing them with fibre connections to optimise energy consumption.

BT’s networks use 100 per cent renewable electricity and the company employs science-based emission reduction targets across its business.

Anna Spinelli, Chief Procurement Officer, Deutsche Post DHL Group, said: “Our relationship with BT builds on strong foundations and a common purpose to connecting people and improving lives. Thanks to this new long-term agreement, both companies have strategically committed to work closely together to enable the best performing, flexible and sustainable network, globally.” 

Bas Burger, CEO, Global, BT, said: “We are proud to work with Deutsche Post DHL Group, a globally respected logistic company driven by a purpose that mirrors our own. Like BT, it places customer service, the power of technology and sustainability at the heart of its corporate strategy. Our new partnership gives us the opportunity to achieve our respective growth ambitions and contribute towards common goals.”