Machine Makers Set To Drive A New Low Carbon Industrial Revolution

Some of the world’s biggest companies are the makers of capital goods – the machines, buildings and equipment that keep the global economy going. As a result, these heavy industry manufacturers are some of the world’s biggest emitters of greenhouse gases (GHGs).

And yet, because of the products that they make, which high-emitting sectors such as power generation, buildings and transport rely on, they can be part of the solution to climate change as well. That is exactly what many of them are doing, according to a new report "Bridging low carbon technologies" from environmental non-profit and investment research provider CDP.

CDP, formerly known as the Carbon Disclosure Project, says that innovation in the capital goods sector is driving a low-carbon industrial revolution by harnessing the trends of electrification, digitization and automation to open up new market opportunities in transformative and radical technologies in areas ranging from microgrids to machine autonomy and from energy storage to hybrid renewables.


Driving many of these opportunities are the targets set at the Paris Agreement in 2015, where more than 190 countries pledged to keep global warming below 2°C above pre-industrial levels. Countries all around the world, along with state, municipal and city governments, have introduced targets for cutting emissions and decarbonizing their economies.

The report analyzes companies in the "electrical equipment," "industrial conglomerates" and "heavy machinery" parts of the sector, and highlights Schneider Electric, Vestas and CNH Industrial as leaders in their fields.