GE Digital Collaborates with Microsoft and Teradata for Sustainability Solution Development

GE Digital announced at the Farnborough Air Show that it had signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Microsoft and Teradata to develop a sustainability solution designed to help reduce carbon emissions. The three companies expect to begin to work together to develop an offering designed to help empower aircraft operators with the tools they need to record, report, and reduce emissions.

The collaboration brings the software solutions of three companies together to target the challenge of helping to reduce aviation emissions. GE Digital provides high fidelity flight data and fuel efficiency analytics to identify specific opportunities to help reduce fuel and emissions. Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability enables reporting across aircraft operation stakeholders through its common data model and streamlined data capture via Microsoft Sustainability Manager and a broad array of calculation services. The Teradata Vantage multi-cloud data and analytics platform via Flight Data Link, a solution developed with GE Digital, allows for the integration of additional operational and financial data sources via the airline industry’s data model, as well as analytics to better understand root cause of non-adherence to fuel saving opportunities. Bringing these capabilities together can help close the feedback loop with front-line personas outside the direct sphere of influence of the fuel team.

The goal of the future solution will be to help support recording, reporting, and reducing emissions by breaking down silos with an integrated data model using actual data, not estimates. The new solution is intended to allow users to access a sustainability dashboard for more accurate measurement of emissions and savings for Scope 1, 2, and 3 reporting. In addition, the companies intend to deliver self-service analytics to help users leverage predictive, prescriptive, and actionable recommendations to make changes within the operation that help to reduce emissions and influence across the value chain.

The three companies are prioritizing the following features and functionalities in the new solution:

• Record & Report: Develop auditable carbon accounting and reporting capabilities geared towards airlines who need to view emissions data, trends, and opportunities to prioritize efforts, set targets for reduction, and meet compliance expectations with flight data.
• Reduce: Develop an integrated platform using GE Digital’s Fuel Insight software for actionable analysis of fuel optimization opportunities within an airline to help reduce carbon emissions. In addition, the aim is to enable airlines to ingest data to provide weight reduction monitoring and optimization as well as potable water consumption.
• Standardize: Develop a standard data model specific to airlines so sustainability initiatives can scale in a more cost-effective manner  and extend mechanisms of flight data for Scope 3 reporting (i.e. companies beyond airlines who must report business travel emissions).