A recent study predicts that up to 89 percent of all IoT platforms will include digital twins by 2025, which will alter how facility and IT managers collaborate as they transform industrial facilities and the processes within them. (Perhaps you're already experiencing these changes.)

Luis: The main differentiator between digital energy from traditional energy is how we automate, monitor, control, and optimize using digital technologies. Digital innovation makes energy smart. Thanks to this the invisible becomes visible, eliminating waste and driving efficiency. Electricity is the most efficient energy, proven to be 3-5x more efficient and it is also the best vector for decarbonization. Digital solutions such as "optimizing procurement," which tracks and analyzes energy performance to obtain the most accurate energy and carbon portfolio, enable us to gain key insights into the building's landscape and identify different patterns of how consumers are using facilities and energy.

Additionally, the ability to unlock data potential in buildings helps prioritize the highest energy consumption, enabling facility managers to have complete control over a building's carbon profile via visibility over operations of energy distribution. Adding to this, open-secure and centralized platform for real-time control and management can be used to assess the health and efficiency of HVAC systems, and power diagnostics can be automated once patterns are established to enable data transmission to optimize efficiency and make sustainability visible to managers.

Taking it a step further, the magic really happens when we can measure what's happening in the physical world and correlate those sensors with behaviors. This allows users to witness first-hand how their actions have a direct impact on the building operations and its carbon footprint. The key solution for a more sustainable and resilient world requires all digital and all electric net-zero buildings. This approach, which entails buildings becoming self-generating assets, is a formidable path to net-zero operations and has the potential to improve energy efficiency by 40 percent .

A digital twin is the enabler. When based on reliable, high-quality data, digital twins enable a range of real-time insights that makes design, commissioning, and implementation easier, while improving productivity and operations across the digital value chain, including the digital customer service experience.

One main role of digital twins is to design sustainability and efficiency upfront. Digital-twin technology enables facility managers to generate virtual representations that can evaluate the anticipated carbon footprint of the building during the design phase. This approach not only creates a baseline that tracks and updates the building's design to achieve energy and operational efficiencies, but allows the opportunity to design for flexibility and ensure continuous improvement as technology evolves or as the building becomes utilized in new ways. Having the opportunity to adjust your building design ahead of time allows facility managers to really understand all the possibilities and construct against an already pre-optimized building strategy.

Streamline processes and data reliability through a digital thread that enables data continuity and provenance to track and explain data and a real-time continuum across otherwise disconnected CapEx and OpEx phases.

With a successful digital twin-based platform, companies can reduce annual energy costs by 20 percent , with digital retrofits seeing an average playback in just 1-3 years. Incorporating digital twins as part of your environment can be used before and during any building-construction process for organizations looking to bring their data to life for better performance. It's best to keep in mind that there is no one-size-fits-all approach. Start small and prioritize your business objectives to be achieved, while also being mindful that in the practical environment, there will be the need to integrate and possibly digital twins from multiple domains and vendors.

Schneider Electric and our partner ETAP have a long history of experience deploying electrical distribution systems and developing software and services that enable new methods for managing electrical systems. Recently we announced new digital-twin integration enabling operator training and simulations greatly reducing risk to operations. This integration allows all Schneider Electric's EcoStruxure Power Operation systems to connect with ETAP Electrical Digital Twin on a continuous real-time basis what enables the operators to create and understand power system behavior during various real-world or plausible operating scenarios. This solution helps companies avoid unplanned outages caused by human error, reduce start-up and commission times, and evaluate operator awareness and readiness.

To do this, we must educate facility managers on the digital technologies that are widely available to modernize building management systems to improve sustainability and efficiency. Investing in digital-building solutions upfront will provide great payback not only financially, but for the planet. For example, building upon and enabling improvements of an old infrastructure building through digital simulations vs. demolishing buildings and starting from stretch. Construction costs a lot of money, and the cost would be monumental if we tore down old buildings to make way for new ones. We expect 50 percent of today's buildings still be in use in 2050 and for that reason achieving a net-zero emissions scenario by the middle of this century requires 85 percent of the existing building stock to be retrofitted over the next three decades, along with all new buildings to be net zero-carbon from 2030 onwards.

This is where the power of digital technology is the enabler to simulate attributes of a retrofitted building. On top of a retrofit building approach providing a cost savings of 43-65 percent , digital models can be used to predict occupancy usages, energy demands and key building operations to show how the ROI on sustainable investment can take place.

Lastly, how do we modernize existing building infrastructure? We're seeing a lack of education with existing buildings in need of retrofitting and modernized building-management systems that have different constraints due to older building-management systems. Instead of designing and building from scratch, we must salvage our existing building installations by implementing the tools, hardware, software and services to complement what already exists.

Today, we have technologies such as wireless, IoT, and connectivity directly to the cloud that allow us to modernize existing building infrastructures encompassing digitally driven energy-management initiatives.

Luis: The continuous synchronization between the physical product and its digital representation provided by digital twins is very exciting and will unlock major opportunities for the future of digital energy. Built on reliable, continuous, and intelligent IT and OT data, the "digital thread" establishes the continuity across the product lifecycle and provides a "single source of truth"—the lifeline for accelerating outcome-driven ways to capture IoT's business value.

Additionally, the integration of new building technologies that pair "all digital" with "all electric" is the recipe for a more sustainable and resilient world to accelerate the path to net zero and emission reduction. Being able to bridge the silos between mechanical and electrical processes to building-management systems, including EV charging infrastructures and microgrids and connectivity to the grid, is truly exciting because we now have the technology to really orchestrate all these assets to make the most of energy efficiency, resiliency and sustainability.