• About
  • Subscribe
  • Contact
Thursday, May 8, 2025
    Login
  • Management Leadership
    • Growth Strategies
    • Finance
    • Operations
    • Sales and Marketing
    • Careers
  • Technology
    • Infrastructure and Platforms
    • Business Applications and Databases
    • Big Data, Analytics and Intelligence
    • Security
  • Industry Verticals
    • Finance and Insurance
    • Manufacturing
    • Logistics and Transportation
    • Retail and Wholesale
    • Hospitality and Tourism
    • Government and Public Services
    • Utilities
    • Media and Telecommunications
  • Resources
    • Whitepapers
    • PodChats
    • Videos
  • Events
No Result
View All Result
  • Management Leadership
    • Growth Strategies
    • Finance
    • Operations
    • Sales and Marketing
    • Careers
  • Technology
    • Infrastructure and Platforms
    • Business Applications and Databases
    • Big Data, Analytics and Intelligence
    • Security
  • Industry Verticals
    • Finance and Insurance
    • Manufacturing
    • Logistics and Transportation
    • Retail and Wholesale
    • Hospitality and Tourism
    • Government and Public Services
    • Utilities
    • Media and Telecommunications
  • Resources
    • Whitepapers
    • PodChats
    • Videos
  • Events
No Result
View All Result
No Result
View All Result
Home Management Leadership Growth Strategies Corporate Social Responsibility

IBM: AI can help bridge sustainability gaps

Gigi Onag by Gigi Onag
June 23, 2023
Image by annca from Pixabay

Image by annca from Pixabay

While 95% of organisations have developed ESG propositions, only 10% have made significant progress towards their goals. CEOs in a survey conducted by IBM cited a lack of insights from data as a major barrier to achieving their sustainability goals.

“Nearly half of CEOs globally and in ASEAN said sustainability was one of their highest priorities, but lack of insights from data is a top obstacle to achieving sustainability objectives,” said Agnes Heftberger, general manager and technology leader, IBM ASEANZK, said at the recent “Road to COP 28: ASEAN ESG in Action – Planet, Profit and Purpose" media roundtable.

ASEAN is one of the most vulnerable regions to climate change, but latest data show mitigation efforts by countries in the region have been insufficient to combat climate change. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) predicts that climate change could decrease Southeast Asia's overall GDP by over 11%.

Arun Biswas, IBM Asia Pacific

Quoting the same IBM survey, Arun Biswas, managing partner for strategic sales & sustainability consulting at IBM Asia Pacific, said 7 in 10 CEOs today see ESG as a revenue driver rather than a cost centre.

"At the same time the trust that customers have in ESG data that is disclosed by companies is going down quite sharply," added Arun.

Connections between ESG and AI

Heftberger pointed out data is at the heart of solving sustainability challenges and "AI is the only way to process enormous amount of data and help organisations achieve more concrete sustainability targets".

Agnes Heftberger, IBM ASEANZK

“AI allows companies to collect and analyse the vast amounts of sustainability data scattered across their business while automating feedback between operational endpoints and corporate sustainability initiatives more easily,” she said.

This is echoed by two-thirds of more than 7,500 global IT leaders surveyed who said their company is currently or planning to apply AI to address sustainability goals in the near future - in particular, for managing the complexity of data and reporting.

Globally, IBM is collaborating with NASA on new geospatial foundation model, which can potentially help provide information for estimating climate-related risks to crops, buildings, and other infrastructure, valuing and monitoring forests for carbon-offset programs, and develop predictive models to help enterprises create strategies to mitigate and adapt to climate change.

As oceans are home to up to 80% of all life in the world, generate 50% of the oxygen we need and absorb 25% of all carbon dioxide emissions, The Reef Company and IBM Consulting have recently joined force to restore and revitalise the marine ecosystem before 90% of all coral reefs are extinct by 2050.

Bridging ESG and sustainability gap

"Our big belief at IBM is that we need to use AI to go about achieving sustainability goals, but we are only going to achieve sustainability objectives as organisations if we look at the whole 360-degree of an organisation not just one point of its setup," said Heftberger.

Businesses need an AI-powered 360-degree sustainability approach.

For example, organisations will be required to consolidate more than 500 data types to support internationally recognised ESG reporting frameworks, to consistently deliver transparent, verifiable, financial-grade information and report on progress. A tool like IBM Envizi is required to assess progress towards sustainability benchmarks and help reduce the environmental impact of daily business operations.

Predicting the next failure can help extend life and improve the efficiency of physical assets such as building, machinery and critical infrastructure, which reduces waste and additional resources. Through IBM Maximo intelligent asset management technology, large companies across business sectors have seen 43% less downtime per year.

Progress of sustainability agenda in the ASEAN

Three of the biggest energy companies in Asia — in peninsular and east Malaysia and in Indonesia — are increasing the reliability of their power generation and distribution systems with AI-powered enterprise asset management (EAM) technology. The advanced analytic tools and IoT data today improve operational availability, extend asset lifecycles and optimise their performance, as part of the journey to reach their sustainability goals.

Sustainability framework of Growthpoint Properties Australia

A real estate investment trust Growthpoint Properties Australia recognised the significance of driving sustainability through ESG transparency and the need to give investors and stakeholders the most reliable and relevant information regarding our sustainability performance. With its framework spans four themes—environment, economic, people and governance and 11 focus areas linked to 20 measurable targets, AI today helps Growthpoint automatically identify data anomalies and gaps, saving a lot of time and effort in having to manually look for errors and issues in hundreds of invoices we get every month. The Envizi tool also halves the time it takes to complete performance data uploading for the GRESB survey.

COP28 will be a milestone moment when ASEAN and the world will take stock of its progress on the Paris Agreement. We only have another seven years to meet the 2030 goal, and leaders are searching for specific ways to achieve more concrete sustainability targets, extend their reach, and operationalise their sustainability projects.

Related:  Joint AI initiative aims to equip 445,000 public officers in Malaysia
Tags: Artificial IntelligenceASEANESGIBMsustainability
Gigi Onag

Gigi Onag

Gigi has more than 15 years of experience in technology journalism, covering various aspects of enterprise IT and telecommunications from both business and technology perspective. Before joining CXOCIETY as editor for FutureIoT in July 2019, she was assistant editor of ComputerWorld Hong Kong. Based in Hong Kong, she started with regional IT publications under CMP Asia (now Informa), including Asia Computer Weekly, Intelligent Enterprise Asia and Network Computing Asia and Teledotcom Asia. She had contributed articles to South China Morning Post, TechTarget and PC Market among others.

No Result
View All Result

Recent Posts

  • Agentic AI-powered AppSec platform launched for the AI era
  • IDC forecasts GenAI alone will grow at a 59.2% CAGR
  • Dataiku brings new AI capabilities to create and control AI agents
  • Microsoft reveals the rise of a new kind of organisation in the AI era
  • St Luke’s ElderCare enhances data security and user experience with Juniper

Live Poll

Categories

  • Big Data, Analytics & Intelligence
  • Business Applications & Databases
  • Business-IT Alignment
  • Careers
  • Case Studies
  • CISO
  • CISO strategies
  • Cloud, Virtualization, Operating Environments and Middleware
  • Computer, Storage, Networks, Connectivity
  • Corporate Social Responsibility
  • Customer Experience / Engagement
  • Cyber risk management
  • Cyberattacks and data breaches
  • Cybersecurity careers
  • Cybersecurity operations
  • Education
  • Education
  • Finance
  • Finance & Insurance
  • FutureCISO
  • General
  • Governance, Risk and Compliance
  • Government and Public Services
  • Growth Strategies
  • Hospitality & Tourism
  • HR, education and Training
  • Industry Verticals
  • Infrastructure & Platforms
  • Insider threats
  • Latest Stories
  • Logistics & Transportation
  • Management Leadership
  • Manufacturing
  • Media and Telecommunications
  • News Stories
  • Operations
  • Opinion
  • Opinions
  • People
  • Process
  • Remote work
  • Retail & Wholesale
  • Sales & Marketing
  • Security
  • Tactics and Strategies
  • Technology
  • Utilities
  • Videos
  • Vulnerabilities and threats
  • White Papers

Strategic Insights for Chief Information Officers

FutureCIO is about enabling the CIO, his team, the leadership and the enterprise through shared expertise, know-how and experience - through a community of shared interests and goals. It is also about discovering unknown best practices that will help realize new business models.

Quick Links

  • Videos
  • Resources
  • Subscribe
  • Contact

Cxociety Media Brands

  • FutureIoT
  • FutureCFO
  • FutureCIO

Categories

  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of Use
  • Cookie Policy

Copyright © 2022 Cxociety Pte Ltd | Designed by Pixl

Login to your account below

or

Not a member yet? Register here

Forgotten Password?

Fill the forms bellow to register

All fields are required. Log In

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In
No Result
View All Result
  • Management Leadership
    • Growth Strategies
    • Finance
    • Operations
    • Sales and Marketing
    • Careers
  • Technology
    • Infrastructure and Platforms
    • Business Applications and Databases
    • Big Data, Analytics and Intelligence
    • Security
  • Industry Verticals
    • Finance and Insurance
    • Manufacturing
    • Logistics and Transportation
    • Retail and Wholesale
    • Hospitality and Tourism
    • Government and Public Services
    • Utilities
    • Media and Telecommunications
  • Resources
    • Whitepapers
    • PodChats
    • Videos
  • Events
Login

Copyright © 2022 Cxociety Pte Ltd | Designed by Pixl

Subscribe