«Hackathon CO2 Industry»: Renault Group selects 4 projects to accelerate the decarbonisation of its plants

This collaborative challenge brought together nearly 100 candidates from the education, energy, industry and digital fields, on the Refactory site in Flins, from 23 to 25 November 2021. Supported by experts from Google Cloud and the group, and accompanied by Startup Inside, a specialist in open innovation, artificial intelligence and intrapreneurship, the 13 project teams conducted their reflection around five themes:

- Reducing the energy consumption of the group's industrial facilities.

- Improving the thermal performance of buildings.

- Increasing the production of low-carbon heat.

- Accelerating the digital transformation to increase energy performance.

- Set-up breakthrough models of transition to a greener factory.

Hosted in the group's Industry Innovation Centre in Flins, which brings together prototyping, 3D printing and production facilities maintenance activities, the teams presented their solutions at the end of the exercise, before answering questions from the jury made up of group executives and representatives of Google Cloud.

José Vicente de los Mozos, EVP Renault Group Industry, declared: “By 2030, on the group's industrial perimeter, we are aiming for carbon neutrality of our factories in Europe and the reduction by half of CO₂ emissions from our sites worldwide. In the spirit of the Renaulution, which leads us to a profound transformation of our business model, we wanted to innovate in our working methods. The organisation of an in-plant hackathon to address the challenges of industrial decarbonisation is a premiere for the sector. The aim is to bring out new ideas through collective intelligence to sustainably transform our industrial ecosystem”

"Google has a deep commitment to sustainability and a long history of applying technology to climate action. Renault Group and Google Cloud have a shared perspective on driving sustainability, and we are proud to foster the development of innovative and ambitious projects to help decarbonize our future.", added Jacqueline Pynadath, Director, Sustainability & Innovation, Google Cloud EMEA

Presentation of the projects deployed from 2022:

• 1st prize: Team n°3 - "Kairos" project:

Development of a digital platform to optimize the start-up cycles and shutdown periods of the paint baking oven. This solution would generate an estimated electricity saving of 230 K€ per year for the Douai plant. This project could be extended to other facilities.

• 2nd prize: Team n°11 - "CO₂ Advisor" project:

Creation of a tool to a real-time measurement of the CO₂ emissions of production activities. The application would allow operators to have visibility on the consumption of their workshops.

• 3rd prize ex aequo:

Team n° 4 - "Adjust'Air" project: Development of a digital solution to optimize ventilation and air filtration systems on production sites. The tool would allow the division by three the energy consumption dedicated to the air extraction.

Team n° 6 - "Sieren" project: Implementation of a power consumption modeling and monitoring dashboard for consumption for factories, with the integration of weather parameters and energy consumption in the programming of factories.