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Jean-Charles van den Branden: So happy to have you with us here in New York in our office for New York Climate Week. As you saw, we brought out our CEO report on sustainability a couple of days ago. And very interesting to have your point of view of what we call the big divergence. Big divergence between where we see investments really making a difference in energy transition as an example, and other things not moving at pace like circularity. Should we talk about those two?
Eva Riesenhuber: Absolutely. But it's like when we talk about them, you have to be fair. Because the energy transition is much more advanced than the circularity transition. I mean, when you look at the energy transition, like what we achieved in the last ten years, ten years ago, is like people would have told you it's not possible.
Jean-Charles van den Branden: Very true. So what unlocked that? Why is it that energy transition now is scaling so fast? And how are you at Siemens enabling this so well?
Eva Riesenhuber: It's like any new technology. And by the way, in circularity, we're on the path as well. It's like you need to move to scale to actually make it competitive, right? So ten years ago, a lot of what is today super successful, like when you look at solar, and you look at how the prices of solar have come down. So now it's cheaper than fossil. So many renewables are cheaper, many clean tech is cheaper than old tech.
Jean-Charles van den Branden: So what is really amazing with Siemens is your pledge of the one gigaton. It means that every product you sell, everything you push in the market is enabling a diminishing of carbon. And that is really interesting. The more you sell, the better the world gets, right?
Eva Riesenhuber: Yes. Now that is a huge advantage and you look that over the last three years, we already saved close to 700 megatonnes of CO2 with our technology, which by the way, is about what Germany actually produces in one year, and our technology saves that at our customers. You get the scale that we're talking about.
Jean-Charles van den Branden: So it's amazing to talk about what works, the energy transition. Let's talk about what should work or will work eventually. Let's talk about circularity.
Eva Riesenhuber: Absolutely. So circularity is even more complex because you don't just have to change energy, you have to change everything else. To move from linear to circular, so many different players have to come together in a system, like changing a system. That's really difficult. And then it's been moved at different speeds and in different geopolitical regions. So the direction of travel, everyone is united, the road is not clear.
Jean-Charles van den Branden: Yeah, as you said earlier, it's not just the scaling of the technology, it's also the scaling of changing the ecosystem. That is probably what makes it so difficult. And do you see places where you have hopes or elements that make you believe that this scaling is possible?
Eva Riesenhuber: How can I express it? So while we're working on so many different levers, that's just Siemens. We're changing our product design so that all the products that we produce are being done in mind with repairability, recyclability, updatability, durability. So, making sure that they have several lifetimes. Now you also have to change the business model, because if you have to make money with your products being out there longer instead of selling more, you have to find different ways of getting commercial value out of circularity.
And then we're empowering our customers to do the same with our design software, our automation, so that they can become circular. Now, that is only the beginning, because you have to find a way to get your products back, so you need your distributors in the chain. You have to talk to your recyclers, and then it's like, because the recycler is only, you know, moving the material out, then you need to talk to your steel producers to turn that into low-carbon steel, for example, or green aluminum or recycled copper. So it takes many different players, and we're proving again and again that it can be done for various of our products, like our trains.
Jean-Charles van den Branden: And so yeah, I remember your example of the train, which is one of the best ones. You want to talk about your example of the train? Or do you think that everybody has heard it by now?
Eva Riesenhuber: Look, I think a lot of people have heard about it. It's a huge asset. It's like we're working with our customers, our recyclers, our green steel and aluminum providers to build this ecosystem. We have several, like in several European countries now. And we're very proud of it, because that is real scale.
Jean-Charles van den Branden: What I like about this as well is the business value that we will eventually get from it. To your point of scaling a technology in energy transition is because it's good for business. It's a good economic case. In circularity, we're going to see this as well, because we're going to be able to reuse, we're going to be able to extend the life, we're going to be able to have a kind of a profit pool that is going to be enhanced by this, you know, new business model as well.
Eva Riesenhuber: It opens new markets; it opens new customer groups. There's a lot of very positive things around that, and there's so much opportunity.
Jean-Charles van den Branden: And also in Europe specifically, as we don't necessarily have the resources that we want, that is a better way to reuse our resources, and it creates resilience.
Eva Riesenhuber: Exactly. So it's a geopolitical resilience. Once the resources are in Europe, in China, in the US, you localize your supply chain, you de-risk it. We always talk about the triple win, right? It needs to be good for business, it needs to be good for sustainability. Of course, it's the first one that needs to be good for the customer. More competitive, more resilient, and sustainable. And that is when things work.
Jean-Charles van den Branden: And good for all the stakeholders, as you're able to create more resilient value chains.
Eva Riesenhuber: Absolutely.
Jean-Charles van den Branden: Excellent. So it means that the energy transition is doing well, and it means that the circularity transition is coming at pace pretty soon. So very excited to hear from you on both.
Eva Riesenhuber: Think of it like, and we're not the only ones, like everyone I talk to, all the big companies, they're all moving different pieces of the value chain. So we don't see it yet at scale, but it will come up in the next few years that suddenly people say, “Wow, this works, and this works.” It's like, this is my absolute hope. And then the ones who haven't leaned into this opportunity will go like, “Wow, I didn't see this coming, and now there's a whole new world.”
Jean-Charles van den Branden: That's what I see in other examples like regenerative agriculture, a totally different field. But it's this ability to show that pilots are scaling in specific places on specific elements. That scaling is the proof point that you can then do more and replicate this in different ones.
Eva Riesenhuber: Exactly.
Jean-Charles van den Branden: Excellent. Thank you so much for spending the time with us, for coming here and having that conversation with us.
Eva Riesenhuber: Always good chatting. Thank you.