Product and Planet Lifecycle Management

When the term “Planet Lifecycle Management” first occurred to me during the anxiety-filled months of the COVID pandemic, the environmentalist in me was offended by the Product Lifecycle Management business professional I have been for much of my career.

How arrogant of me to think that we humans can ever manage nature – either a microscopic virus or an entire planet – like it was some engineered and manufactured product!

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Climate Change News Digest March 2022

The latest Climate Change News Digest for March 2022, prepared for followers of the PLM Green Global Alliance, summarizes recent news about the changing climate and efforts to decarbonize the global economy. While GHG emissions and climate trends remain alarming, as evidenced in the latest IPCC assessment, there is encouraging progress being made in green technologies, public awareness, and most importantly the political will to act. Our good news question of the month: what political body agreed to impose cross-border carbon tariffs on trade? Read on to find out.

In the latest report from the UN, the International Panel of Climate Change (IPCC) warns that humanity has a brief and rapidly closing window to avoid an unbearably hotter and deadlier climate. The planet will face increasing floods, heat waves, droughts, rising sea levels, storms, melting glaciers and permafrost, wildfires, loss of biodiversity, population migrations, tropical illnesses, water conflicts, hunger, and human suffering. Huge portions of the globe may eventually become inhabitable. The good news is that we still have time to arrest the most catastrophic consequences if we move faster in transforming to a low-carbon economy.

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Climate Change News Digest November 2021

The latest Climate Change News Digest, prepared for followers of the PLM Green Global Alliance, summarizes considerable good news from the UN COP26 conference on the growing urgency of world leaders and business leader to move faster to decarbonize the global economy. The  good news question of the month: how many countries have now joined the global pledge to reduce methane emissions? Read on to find out.

👍 As part of COP26 UN Climate Summit, more than three dozen countries announced they would phase out the use of coal for power generation. Nearly two dozen nations added their names with new pledges. Unfortunately, the largest coal users and exporters, China, US, and Australia, were not part of the agreement. Scientists warn that to limit global warming, industrialized countries would need to replace nearly all of their coal, oil, and natural gas power plants with renewables by 2035.

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The Role of PLM in Slowing Climate Change – Part 1

This new series of posts by Klaus Brettschneider and Richard McFall, contributing members of the PLM Green Global Alliance (PGGA), will explore how Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) can be used to slow climate change by reducing human-generated greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions into the atmosphere.

Carbon dioxide and methane are the two most damaging GHG which are commonly reported on as CO2 equivalents, or CO2e, and are measured in billions of tons or gigatons. Carbon continues to build in the atmosphere due to human activities on the ground where it has now surpassed 410 ppm, nearly double that prior to the start of the industrial age. Since CO2 stays in the atmosphere for hundreds of years, a consensus is urgently building among climate scientists, elected officials, and NGOs like the International Energy Agency that the global economy must attain net-zero GHG emissions by 2050. This starts with a very challenging reduction of 50% by 2030, less than ten years away.

Image credit of NOAA at https://research.noaa.gov/

We begin our series by outlining the different roles and use cases that PLM can have in minimizing the carbon footprint – or “decarbonizing” – products, businesses, industries, and even entire economies. But first a brief level set on what PLM is and is not.

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PLM Green Global Alliance is Growing

This post is an update on the evolution of the PLM Green Global Alliance that was originally published in Jos Voskuil’s weblog on Feb. 28.

On Friday, February 26th, the PLM Green Global Alliance (PGGA) team of international moderators had a meeting to discuss our current status and next steps for 2021 as we grow.

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Intersection of Product Lifecycle Management and Climate Change

Digital Engineering published the following commentary written by Robert Farrell on “The Intersection of Product Lifecycle Management and Climate Change” in the February 2021 issue which featured the PLM Green Global Alliance.

Until recently, initiatives to advance sustainability and combat climate change have primarily focused on improving product performance to minimize energy usage and lower greenhouse gas emissions. Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) is enabling technologies and supporting software applications that are contributing to the greening of our global economy in many ways.

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PLM Green Global Alliance is Launched

June 2020 (United States, Netherlands, Norway) – The launch of and participation in a new international collaboration, the PLM Green Global Alliance (“PGGA”), has been announced by Richard McFall from PLM Alliances, Jos Voskuil from TacIT, Oleg Shilovitsky from Beyond PLM, and Bjorn Fidjeland from plmPartner.

The coalition was founded with the mission to create a global connection and community between professionals who use, develop, market, or support Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) enabling technologies and software solutions that have value in addressing the causes and consequences of climate change due to human-generated greenhouse gas emissions such that we create a more sustainable circular economy.

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