Honeywell's West Lays Out Future Energy Needs

Bloomberg

Watch Honeywell's West Lays Out Future Energy Needs - Bloomberg on Dailymotion

Transcript

00:00How acute is the energy need right now, and how far away are we from actually meeting that demand?

00:06Well, first, thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure to be here with you.

00:10And you're exactly right. That need that we have for energy is there today, and it's going to be

00:16there even further tomorrow. One thing that as I go around the world and I talk to large energy

00:20providers and energy users that they can agree on is the world will need more power tomorrow than it

00:25needs today. In fact, many of the forecasts say that we will need more than 30 percent more energy

00:30by 2050 than we have just today. So that's part of what Honeywell is working behind the scenes to find

00:37efficient solutions to meet those needs. So what are the biggest bottlenecks to getting power? I had

00:42an email recently from a viewer who said, like, these turbines are incredibly hard to get right

00:49now. There's a super long waiting list for them. And that's just obviously one piece of one kind of

00:54energy generation. So what are the biggest problems, the biggest things holding you back?

00:59Yeah. So when you think about it, energy is created from large infrastructure investments. So one of

01:03the things that's holding us back is just the time to be able to bring those up and bring them online.

01:08That's one of the things that we've been able to do within Honeywell is, first and foremost,

01:13we're optimizing existing infrastructure. So by adding things like automation behind the scenes,

01:18we've been able to improve reliability and actually get more power out of the existing

01:22infrastructure. In addition to investing in some of the new transition fuels that some of these have

01:28been out for many years, but they're being expanded to meet some of those growing energy

01:32needs, such as LNG. And that was part of the acquisition we did from Air Products at the end

01:36of last year, bringing on their liquefaction process unit.

01:39Well, from a U.S. regulatory standpoint, this administration has been doing more to try to remove

01:44some of the barriers, especially with LNG, expedite some of the authorizations. At the same time,

01:50though, some of the renewable energy capabilities and things that would help make that easier have

01:57tightened that. How has the regulation push and pull changed business?

02:01Yeah, for us, we're very much a very long cycle business. Many of the technologies that we're

02:06providing to meet these needs, we've been working on for decades, and they will continue for the next

02:11few decades. As we look, the current administration has removed some of the barriers that were there for

02:17getting near-term investments, such as LNG projects, even right here in the United States,

02:22where we've seen a number of announcements in recent investment in those areas. And for Honeywell,

02:27we continue to stay very balanced, where we're continuing to focus on, one, the optimization of

02:32our existing infrastructure out there, two, the investment in transition fuels, such as LNG,

02:38where we have an end-to-end solution from process control all the way to pre-treatment to

02:43liquefaction, and then three, to continuing the proliferation of new technologies that are going

02:48to help in the renewable space. So we really feel like the timing has been great for our investments,

02:53and we're well-positioned for whichever way this goes.

02:55You kind of touched on it, but I'm wondering how AI can help you improve operations and how your

03:02subscription-based sales model is working out.

03:06Yeah, so if we take a look, automation has been a key point to our operations. Labor force is continuing

03:12to be a challenge. And one of the things we're able to do with these AI capabilities and digitization

03:17behind the scenes is augment existing workforce. So we can take somebody who, let's say, was working

03:23in a control room, a control board operator in a petrochemical plant or a refinery. Someone today with

03:29two to three years of experience, with the help of some of those tools, they can become and operate

03:36with much of the same decision capabilities as someone that used to have 30 or 40 years of experience.

03:41So we're augmenting the training, making the workforce more efficient, and being able to do

03:45this and improve optimization.

03:47And they pay essentially a salary, like a subscription, right? So it's like,

03:52instead of paying a person that bigger salary, a smaller subscription to Honeywell.

03:56Well, they do. So if we think about many of the facilities, we're first on the technology side

04:02of developing and building these facilities. But we also help support our customers in running

04:06these facilities for the next 30 or 40 years. And this comes with everything from the reloading

04:10of things like catalysts and others that are durable resources that are needed in these facilities,

04:16to helping out with service and engineering. And that's part of our model. So we've

04:20developed and launched a model called Performance Plus, where we take and blend

04:25those automation capabilities. We're connected to more than 800 of these process units around the

04:29world. And we blend that with our leading service capabilities and engineering capabilities. So when

04:35you put an engineer, technical service and AI together, now we have a great option for our

04:41customers with Performance Plus.

04:42Is it enough to completely relieve some of the labor constraints we have right now,

04:45marrying the technology together? Or is there still an issue there?

04:48It has definitely helped, Danny, in those labor constraints. When we take a look at it,

04:52wherever we are in the world, labor is going to continue to be an issue as we go forward.

04:56And this is definitely helping to support those.

Category

Transcript

Be the first to comment

Recommended