Miller Magazine Issue: 152 August 2022

85 ARTICLE MILLER / AUGUST 2022 stay and in 30 years from now this industry will be very big, it will be removing CO2 on a gigaton level from the atmosphere, and it will operate synergistically with other climate change technologies like solar and wind,” explained Gebald. LEADING BY EXAMPLE In a move to help achieve its own climate change targets to have solutions ready to multiply that reduce energy, waste, and water by 50% in the value chains of its customers by 2025, Bühler announced that it had assessed the impact of its different processing solutions, on waste, energy, and wa- ter consumption, land use and CO2e footprint, along with assessments of how the technological advances impact on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and the benefits for circular economy. “By evaluating the impact of our solutions, we can then start tracking their overall accumulative impact,” said Ian Roberts, Bühler CTO. An important contribu- tion is optimization of the industry’s installed asset base and Bühler is learning to monitor the reduction in CO2e footprint resulting from services at its customers’ sites. So far, 30,000 tons of accumulative CO2e reduction have been calculated across only 11 of the Bühler services in customer processes. “We are going to expand that calculation across the whole service portfolio to better understand the impact we can bring together on that CO2e footprint and then verify the calculation as we build better data sets,” said Roberts. Bühler is also using new technological solutions to track avoided CO2e emissions. Roberts told delegates that Bühler is now able to provide a service by working with customers to quantify their CO2e footprint. “We can do product as- sessments and look at where the processing hot spots are and build action plans to drop your CO2e footprint and we can have it externally certified,” he explained. Holger Feld- hege, Bühler’s COO, addressed the audience and explained Bühler’s global internal CO2-reduction targets, and how the defined actions will be implemented in Bühler’s operations through a global program which will be implemented starting now until 2030. RICE AS A KEY FOOD STAPLE In one of the event’s expert talks, Sujit Pande, Bühler Global Marketing and Product Manager for Rice Solutions, described the complexities associated with processing rice given the thousands of different varieties and weather conditions under which rice is grown. “It is estimated that rice feeds around half of the global population and yet when compared to other en- ergy sources such as wheat, maize barley and sorghum, rice forms roughly a quarter of the energy source of the world,” explained Pande. The discrepancy between energy source and population dependency is due to rice being a key sub- sistence crop and so solely used as a food source. Rice is also linked to food security and so has a direct impact on the political security of a country and tends to be eaten in regions of high population density. BUSINESS’S ROLE IN EDUCATION Leading representatives from academic institutions outlined the need for greater experiential learning for students and called on businesses to work with their local academic institutions to see how to best achieve this. “You can see companies absorbing a workforce prepared in universities or you can see companies be- ing part of the education system, which is what we see at Bühler, and many other companies based in Swit- zerland,” said Joël Mesot, President of ETH Zurich. He described to delegates the merit of the Swiss educa- tion system and the recognition of the need for a social