Decarbonization and resource circulation are critical components for today's businesses in driving green transformation (GX). Companies need to effectively reduce CO₂ emissions while optimizing resources to meet environmental standards. A failure to advance in these areas can result in regulatory penalties, reduced competitiveness, and diminished investor confidence. NEC's GX Platform offers support by integrating and managing environmental data, such as CO₂ emissions, to propose optimal strategies that promote sustainable business growth.

1. Introduction

Decarbonization and resource circulation are essential themes for today’s businesses, serving as critical components in green transformation (GX). In alignment with Japan's goal of achieving carbon neutrality and establishing a resilient society by 2050, companies must prioritize decarbonization by actively reducing CO₂ emissions. Efficient use of limited resources and waste minimization through resource circulation are also vital for sustaining economic growth. As illustrated in Fig. 1, these efforts are interconnected; advancing resource circulation reduces energy consumption associated with extracting and producing new materials, subsequently lowering CO₂ emissions. To successfully achieve GX, companies should integrate these strategies and aim for sustainable growth, which necessitates collaboration both internally and with external partners and suppliers. This approach not only mitigates environmental impact but also opens up new business opportunities for companies.

In this context, NEC has planned the GX Platform as a comprehensive offering suite to support GX, with the aim of realizing the vision set out in the NEC 2030VISION: “Reducing environmental impact and making effective use of limited resources to create a future where people and the planet can coexist.”

2. Business Landscape

In Europe, regulations requiring the disclosure of sustainability information are becoming increasingly stringent, while in Japan, environmental information disclosure is gaining momentum, particularly among companies listed on the prime market. This trend is expected to extend to companies listed in the standard and growth markets, emphasizing the growing importance of committing to environmental goals and effectively managing and visualizing environmental data. As detailed in Fig. 2, there are four types of risks that could threaten a company's sustainable growth and long-term viability:

3. Introduction to the GX Platform

3.1 Concept

NEC's GX Platform provides strategic and practical solutions to address the challenges of decarbonization and resource circulation businesses are facing. By integrating and managing environmental data, such as CO₂ emissions, it offers a comprehensive understanding of a company’s status through detailed analysis of emissions and resource usage. As illustrated in Fig. 3, the platform includes simulation capabilities that propose optimal strategies for improvement, thereby helping businesses maintain their competitive edge over the long term. Through data integration and advanced analytics, the GX Platform accelerates green transformation, enabling companies to achieve both environmental sustainability and economic growth.

3.2 Key components and value proposition

The GX Platform facilitates the transparent and consistent management and reporting of environmental data, like CO₂ emissions. This enhances the visibility of corporate environmental performance, bolstering the credibility of disclosures and reports for investors and government bodies. Although designed for larger companies in general, the platform particularly aims to maximize value throughout supply chains. These involve a complex network of procurement, manufacturing, distribution, and waste management, where environmental impacts accrue at each stage. The GX Platform visualizes energy consumption and CO₂ emissions data across all these processes, employing advanced data analysis and simulation to support optimal decision-making and effectively address customer challenges, as depicted in Fig. 4.

4. Solution Examples

4.1 Environmental Performance Management

NEC's environmental performance management solution, GreenGlobeX (Fig. 5), is capable of centrally collecting, efficiently analyzing, managing, and visualizing environmental data such as energy usage, greenhouse gas emissions, water usage, wastewater, and waste from global locations. Its flexible master structure allows it to adapt to changes in corporate activities and environmental trends while featuring an input interface that supports the continued use of familiar reporting forms. This solution has long supported NEC's advanced environmental initiatives and the implementation benefits have been demonstrated in the corporate executive management, investor relations, environmental management, and facilities management divisions. GreenGlobeX enables the visualization of CO₂ emissions throughout customer operations and the entire supply chain, and is utilized in a wide range of industries, including manufacturing.

4.2 Product Carbon Footprint

To meet disclosure obligations and enhance corporate value, environmental management currently involves aggregating CO₂ emissions across all business activities, visualizing the full scope of corporate operations. In the future, there are plans to expand this visualization to the product and service level, including the supply chain, via integration with systems for product management, production management, and procurement management. For further details, see the article, "Towards Implementing Activity Based GHG Emission (ABG) Management."

4.3 Analysis and Simulation

NEC aims to develop advanced analysis and simulation functions that leverage its analytical technologies to examine environmental data, assisting companies in formulating decarbonization strategies. For instance, the system can simulate the impact of various initiatives on reducing CO₂ emissions and recommend the most effective measures, such as switching energy sources or optimizing production processes. By continually learning from accumulated data, the system will provide up-to-date recommendations aligned with market trends and company needs, supporting sustainable growth. For further details, see the article, "Advancing Sustainability in Global Supply Chains through Agent-based Simulation."

4.4 Digital MRV (Monitoring, Reporting, Verification)

NEC is developing a service to digitalize the measurement and reporting of CO₂ reduction and absorption data, incorporating third-party verification. This initiative aims to streamline processes from data collection and reporting to verification, enhancing transparency and reliability through IoT and blockchain technologies. NEC has plans for this service to be applied to the J-Credit system.

4.5 Materials Informatics

NEC plans to develop a service utilizing its AI technology to improve the impurity removal rate in the aluminum recycling process. This will be achieved in collaboration with partners through joint demonstrations. Additionally, we plan to establish traceability for recycled aluminum by centralizing the management of data collected during the recycling process and fostering trusted data collaboration between manufacturers. For more on this, refer to the article, "Building an Advanced Aluminum Circular Economy with ICT."

4.6 GX Consulting Services

The GX Specialized Consulting Organization, which works in cooperation with the NEC Group's sales department, provides consulting services to help resolve various GX-related issues and requests from customers. For more information, refer to the article, "Supporting Carbon Neutrality Initiatives Through GX Consulting."

5. Conclusion

The GX Platform is a suite of offerings that provides innovative solutions to the pressing issues of decarbonization and resource recycling facing companies and will work together to drive change toward a sustainable future. The GX Platform will also continue to evolve by using the data collected to suggest the most appropriate actions. Through this mutual growth, NEC aims to achieve a balance between the environment and the economy and will build strong partnerships for the realization of a sustainable society.

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