As part of its climate plan to make its plants in Europe carbon neutral by 2030, Renault Group unveiled the four projects selected at the end of the "CO2 Hackathon" at the end of November. This event wasorganized to accelerate the development and deployment of low-carbon solutions that will make tomorrow's metal industry cleaner. Around a hundred candidates from the worlds of education, energy, industry and digital technology met at the Refactory site in Flins from November 23 to 25 to take part in this collaborative decarbonization challenge. Surrounded by experts from the Renault group, Google Cloud and accompanied by Startup Inside, the 13 project teams conducted their reflection around five themes:
  • Reduce energy consumption in industrial facilities;
  • Improve the thermal performance of buildings;
  • Increasing low-carbon heat production;
  • Accelerate digital transformation to increase energy performance;
  • Imagine new, more sustainable industrial models.
The teams stayed at the group's Industry Innovation Center in Flins, which brings together the activities of prototyping, 3D printing, and maintenance of production resources; they presented their projects at the end of the exercise in the form of a "pitch" and then answered questions from the jury, which was made up of group executives and representatives of Google Cloud.

The projects that will be deployed from 2022 within the Renault Group :

  • 1st prize: Team n°3 - "KAIROS" project : Development of a digital platform to optimize the start-up cycles and shutdown periods of paint baking tunnels. This solution would generate an estimated electricity saving of 230 K euros 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 measure in real time 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 technical solution to optimize ventilation and air filtration systems on production sites. The tool would allow to divide by three the energy consumption dedicated to the air extraction. Team n° 6 - "Sieren" project : Implementation of a dashboard for modelling and monitoring electricity consumption for factories, with integration of meteorological parameters and energy consumption in factory programming. José Vicente de los Mozos, Renault Group Industry Director, said:
"By 2030, on the group's industrial perimeter, we are aiming for carbon neutrality of our plants in Europe and halving CO2 emissions from our sites worldwide. In the spirit of Renaulution, which commits us to a profound transformation of our business model, we wanted to innovate in our working methods. The organization of an in-plant hackathon to address the challenges of industrial decarbonization is a first for the sector. The objective is to bring out new ideas through collective intelligence to sustainably transform our industrial ecosystem."
Jacqueline Pynadath, Director Sustainability and Innovation, Google Cloud EMEA, added:
"Google is deeply committed to sustainability and has long applied technology to climate action. Renault Group and Google Cloud share a common perspective on driving sustainability and we are proud to encourage the development of innovative and ambitious projects to help decarbonize our future."
Translated from Hacklathon CO2 Industry : le groupe Renault dévoile les quatre projets de décarbonation industrielle retenus

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