Powering sustainable energy development through digital innovation

As global energy demand continues to rise, the sector faces a three-pronged challenge: delivering reliable, affordable and secure energy while reducing emissions and advancing sustainability goals. Meeting these goals requires more than incremental change, it demands new ways of working and digital technologies are at the heart of this transformation.

Advanced industrial software and enterprise analytics, enabled by Artificial Intelligence (AI) are reshaping how energy is produced, transported and consumed. From monitoring gas turbines and compressors, to optimising natural gas and LNG processes, to enhancing enterprise-wide operations, digital innovation is helping operators to make smarter decisions, better manage risk, and deliver optimised, more efficient operations across the value chain.

Turning industry challenges into opportunities

Operators across energy and industrial segments face mounting pressure to improve reliability, productivity, and sustainability – all while managing increasingly complex systems and massive volumes of data. Information alone is no longer enough. What’s needed are actionable insights: the ability to predict problems before they occur, optimise performance in real time, and track emissions progress with confidence.

Digital solutions are helping to close this gap. By unifying data from across the enterprise and applying advanced analytics, operators can shift from reactive to predictive, and ultimately prescriptive decision making. This shift helps to enhance efficiency, safety and decarbonisation efforts.

The digital backbone of industrial intelligence

A growing priority is building a digital backbone that transforms raw operational data into reliable intelligence. As assets, processes and supply chains become more interconnected, operators increasingly require unified platforms that can integrate data from sensors, robotics, and control systems and translate it into actionable insights.

AI-enabled platforms make this possible, combining machine learning with physics-based models and industrial domain expertise to deliver insights that are both predictive and explainable. The result is faster, smarter decision-making in areas ranging from equipment health and maintenance strategy to process efficiency, energy management and even carbon capture, utilisation and storage.

At Baker Hughes, our Cordant platform illustrates how this digital backbone can take shape in practice. Our solutions Powered by Cordant, help operators establish a digital thread that connects tools and data across their operations – reducing complexity, enabling smarter decisions and unlocking more value from their digital investments. Alongside these solutions, the Cordant suite provides targeted applications across asset performance management, process optimisation, and energy management to deliver measurable outcomes in reliability, productivity and sustainability.

Real-time monitoring at global scale

Digital transformation is making an impact in remote monitoring and predictive diagnostics. As operational complexity grows, continuous oversight of critical assets is becoming indispensable.

Global monitoring centres provide operators with real-time visibility into equipment performance, enabling intervention before failures occur. This proactive approach delivers tangible benefits: improved safety, avoided outages, greater productivity, and measurable emissions reductions.

Baker Hughes iCenter, powered by Cordant, is one such example. With operations in Houston, Florence, and Kuala Lumpur, iCenter provides seamless round-the-clock monitoring of over 2,000+ critical assets. In 2024 alone, iCenter delivered over 19,000 actionable insights, proactively solving problems. Predictive monitoring is no longer a luxury, but a necessity for modern energy operations.

Optimising for reliability and lower carbon

Digital innovation is creating new opportunities to decarbonise energy systems without sacrificing productivity. In LNG, where uptime is critical, advanced modelling and optimisation tools help operators fine-tune processes, maximise throughput, and minimise emissions.

Solutions like NMBL allow real-time simulation adjustment of liquefaction trains, balancing production demands with lower carbon intensity. Similar approaches are transforming refining, petrochemicals, and power generation – helping the industry align operational excellence with sustainability goals. In emerging areas like carbon capture, use, and storage (CCUS), digital tools such as CarbonEdge, powered by Cordant™, are providing end-to-end visibility, enabling more efficient and transparent pathways to lower emissions.

These examples show how digital insights can help turn the perceived trade-off between reliability and decarbonisation into a win-win.

Building a sustainable energy future

The path forward for energy and industry is clear: those who embrace digital innovation will lead. By harnessing data and insights across assets, processes and energy systems, the industry can unlock new levels of performance while advancing towards a lower-carbon future.

Digital technologies are not a side story in this journey, they are the enabler. They will empower operators to meet demand and reduce emissions with derisked, optimised and more efficient operations.

At Baker Hughes we’re committed to supporting this transformation. By combining decades of deep domain expertise with digital innovation, we aim to help customers and partners around the world realise the dual goals of energy growth and sustainability – and to prove that the future of energy can be both reliable and lower-carbon.