Capgemini's Head Climate Tech on Corporate Sustainability

Renewable energy empowers companies to meet sustainability goals amid rising global CO₂ emissions.

In 2022, emissions hit 36.8 billion metric tons, while renewable capacity grew 9.6%. Solar and wind led this growth, offering environmental and economic benefits.

With renewable costs plummeting, clean energy integration has become advantageous for businesses aiming to meet net-zero targets. Supporting this transition is Florent Andrillon, Climate Tech Global Lead at Capgemini.

Florent joined Capgemini Invent in 2005 and collaborates with innovators to find impactful solutions. He works across sustainability, industries and intelligent industry to help clients scale climate tech and achieve net-zero targets.

With two decades of experience in energy and utilities, Florent assists companies in transitioning to a low-carbon economy.

Here, Florent shares his expertise.

Q. What role does green and renewable energy play in sustainability goals?

Sustainability encompasses a lot of topics covering all the planetary boundaries such as carbon emissions, but also biodiversity and resource efficiency including energy, water, scarce materials.

From a carbon emission standpoint, renewables or clean energies are nothing less than the solution to decrease reliance on fossil fuels and mitigate climate change.

Fossil-based energy sources for power generation, transportation and industrial processes generate around 80% of GHG emissions.

Transitioning away from fossil-based energy to clean or renewable sources — including wind, solar, nuclear power or green gases — is essential to reach net zero goals and achieve sustainability. 

However while the identification of the solution is easy, the implementation is the biggest human challenge of the century. This transition is an industrial revolution that needs to happen at digital speed. 

It disrupts the modern world as we know it (replacing our energy system with new, more efficient and cleaner infrastructure), especially in a context where energy demand is likely to increase.

Q. What are the business benefits of switching to green and renewable energy?

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), global energy demand could rise by 50% to 100% compared to current levels, driven by population growth and economic development, particularly in emerging markets and developing countries.

At the same time, energy supply will face tough challenges such as resource scarcity, geopolitical tensions and a very strong pressure to transition away from fossil fuels.

In that context, renewable energy and electrification are the best way to make our energy systems more efficient and answer this increasing demand.

Replacing fossil fuel technologies with renewable energy and electrification solutions can be two to four times more efficient as they are reducing energy losses associated with extracting, transporting and burning fossil fuels, and have a higher efficiency.

For example, an electric vehicle converts more than 77% of the electrical energy from the grid to power at the wheels, compared to only about 12-30% of the energy stored in gasoline.

With this paradigm shift, comes business opportunities all across the value chain with new generators, smart networks and smart grids, green hydrogen generation and new products powered by clean energy or clean electricity.

Additionally, business benefits of switching to renewables and clean energy comes from a strong need for acceleration across the whole lifecycle, from R&D to decommissioning and recycling, through industrialisation to ensure transition at scale.

Q. How does renewable energy adoption support regulation requirements?

We see it the other way around, regulation should support renewable adoption, by maintaining high ambitions for capacity installation, strong incentives, streamlined project development and flexible auction conditions, reducing time to operation and reducing the administrative hurdle.

Additionally, auction conditions need to be more flexible to ensure projects are financially viable. Electricity markets must also evolve to support the new power ecosystem. 

While corporations are increasingly adopting renewable power purchase agreements, the wholesale market must also adjust its fundamentals, such as clearing price setting, driven by the decline of fossil-based power generators, the drop in LCOE and the rise in storage capacities. 

Q. What are the challenges in renewable energy adoption, and how is Capgemini reducing them?

The global adoption of renewables is held back by scaling and integration challenges.

COP28 has set an ambitious 11TW capacity by 2030 but hitting this mark will require a very strong acceleration on each and every step of the value chain.

Negative pricing that occurs because there is too much power vs demand in some geographies will also need to be solved with energy storage solutions and we already see Battery Energy Storage (BES)peak up quickly.

Capgemini helps with this acceleration by providing advice to better build ecosystems: scale operating models and facilitate projects pipeline securing.

Also, Capgemini helps leveraging digital technologies to maintain profitability while scaling asset portfolios and supports the development of data-driven asset performance optimisation. 

Finally, as a long-time industry partner, Capgemini can help transform toward a cost-optimised and standardised engineering.

Combining better business and projects practices, technology integration and model industrialisation, Capgemini targets all levers to support financial viability of a global renewable adoption. 

At the same time, for every dollar spent in renewable energy, a dollar should be put in the infrastructure — and Capgemini supports in targeting the right investments to make a smarter, more reliable and more sustainable network.

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