Following her involvement in the Residential Green Retrofit Conference we’ve been speaking about the subject with Louisa Buckley, Residential Marketing Manager at Schneider Electric…

How does Schneider Electric serve as a digital partner for Sustainability and Efficiency for your clients?

Schneider Electric takes a collaborative approach to carbon and environmental solutions with products, solutions and services that companies can utilise at all stages in their sustainability journey.

The core of our strategy is to build sustainable businesses. Schneider Electric doubled down on its long-standing strategy to embed environmental, social, and governance considerations into every facet of its activities and assist its customers and business partners in achieving their sustainability objectives.

Customers, employees, partners and investors have never been more focused on ESG considerations than they are now. Schneider has long embraced those issues, and we keep raising the bar for ourselves and our customers and partners.

Schneider Electric also offers a number of physical products. How can your products support the retrofitting of buildings to modern standards?

Retrofitting isn’t a new practice, but is having new life breathed into it by a new generation of smart technologies. Retrofitting can take many forms, from simply fitting insulation to removing gas boilers and replacing them with heat pumps and networks. But it all revolves around augmenting what already exists to extend the lifetime of old systems and enhance their capabilities. The practice of retrofitting is also significantly cheaper than ripping out and replacing old systems wholesale, while achieving very similar efficiency benefits. In the UK, effective retrofitting is vital to hit net zero by 2050.

Wiser was originally launched nearly ten years ago, accessible through utility programmes and partnerships with home automation providers. The Wiser Energy Center is set to create a new spark in creating smart, distributed energy-enabled homes. Designed for those who want to live more sustainably, or who have complicated home energy systems and requirements, it is an electrical panel to help people manage their end-to-end energy use. The number of households this will be relevant to will only increase as we have more electrical and electronic items in our homes and more people invest in technologies like solar panels.

How does your unique Ecostruxture platform help to maximise energy efficiency and sustainability?

The EcoStruxure architecture and interoperable technology platform brings together energy, automation, and software. It provides enhanced value around safety, reliability, efficiency, sustainability, and connectivity. In turn, it opens up the digital world to users across key end markets, enabling them to be competitive in today’s IoT (Internet of Things) economy.

By bringing together energy, automation, and software, EcoStruxure makes IoT a reality. By bridging IT and OT, EcoStruxure software allows customers to maximise the value of their business data. Specifically, it helps translate data into actionable intelligence to enable better decision-making. Ultimately, it enables Schneider and its partners and end-user customers to develop scalable and converged IT/OT solutions. These maximise energy efficiency and sustainability through smarter systems and real-time, data-driven decisions. Furthermore, it optimises asset availability and performance through predictive analytics and proactive maintenance.

Schneider Electric is committed to decarbonisation and delivering a green future. How is this reflected through your operations?

Schneider Electric has long been a corporate pioneer in the fight against climate change. We are proud of our involvement in global initiatives such as the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals for many years now. We have created a clear, low-carbon strategy to decrease our emissions, eliminate landfill waste, gain efficiencies, and lower costs.

We are active participants in industry associations and organisations in over 100 countries, frequently partnering with governments around incentives, legislation, and regulation to drive meaningful change.  We work with our partners, customers, communities, universities and schools to share our skills, knowledge and learnings.

Through our EcoStruxure and Green Premium offers that are, in themselves, sustainable solutions designed to operate for longer and also be recyclable, we provide clear visibility of energy usage to help identify and avoid waste in the long term.