Sustainability LIVE Chicago Q&A: Siemens’ Eryn Devola

Industrial processes were responsible for nearly 7% of global greenhouse gas emissions in 2021 according to the World Resources Institute. 

Many of these industries, like cement and chemicals, are hard to decarbonise, requiring new tools and technologies to reduce their negative impact. 

Siemens works with many of these industries to implement new solutions like digitalisation and automation. 

Eryn Devola is Head of Sustainability, Digital Industries at Siemens and has more than a decade of experience at the business. 

She joined Sustainability Magazine at Sustainability LIVE Chicago and spoke to Editor in Chief Steven Downes before heading on stage. 

What can you tell us about your role?

I get the pleasure of being the Head of Sustainability for our digital industries portfolio. 

These are the solutions that we bring for digitalisation and automation to industry, where we know about a third of all emissions come from. 

I really have the ability to help companies look at their footprint and minimise that footprint and what they're doing.

I think one of the cool things about how my role is structured is I have the ability to look at our own footprint within Siemens. 

We have hundreds of facilities across the world and we look at the footprint there across our CO₂, water usage, biodiversity. 

Then I get to look at our products. We make motors, drives, instrumentation, controllers and we need to look at the footprint of that, taking that Scope 1 and 2, adding our Scope 3 upstream and downstream to that and really understanding what a sustainable product is for us.

The last thing I get to do is work with our customers and help them take some of those same tools that we need to use to make their products more sustainable.

What brings you to Sustainability LIVE Chicago?

I think it's really important to look to others and understand what people are saying and what trends are in the industry. 

Keeping on top of what the future holds at events like this really gives you perspective.

We get to talk to people from really varying industries, from varying backgrounds, and I think that's really important to keep your eyes and ears open.

Why is sustainability important to Siemens?

Siemens has been around for over 170 years, and part of that is really taking good care of the environments and communities that we work in and the people that work for us and work around us. 

Sustainability has been a core value of Siemens for a very long time and it's always important to us to continue to stay on top of that and know what that means. 

Not just today, but in 2030, 2040 and 2050.

What are you hearing on the floor?

Lots of talk about AI. 

There's always a lot of talk about AI, but I think it's also important to think about the data that you have.

How do you pull that data through and what's the intention you're able to put to that AI? How is it helping you? How can it be trustworthy, reliable and consistent in the applications that we need it for moving forward? 

I think that's really a hot topic here, a lot of people are grappling with “how do I get all the data I need?” and then “how do I make it so I can use it and have good intentions behind it?”.

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