A hackathon to decarbonise Renault Group plants

The sun was just rising at Renault Group’s iconic Flins site on 23 November when the shuttle bus from Paris arrived, carrying around 100 contestants. To reach the room where the hackathon took place, the participants were thrown straight into day-to-day factory life, walking down the wide aisles and past assembly lines where workers were already operating machinery. Bringing innovators and industry together was just one of the focuses of the Hackathon CO2 Industry, and this image fully symbolises the technological turning point taken by Renault Group as it pivots to a “tech-industry” model. Ultimately, the goal of modernising the industrial landscape goes hand in hand with the decarbonisation objective.  This was the central focus of this unprecedented hackathon, held within the plant itself: bringing together stakeholders from diverse sectors to work together on solutions to decarbonise industrial sites.

Opening up the industry to new and innovative practices

Hackathon CO2 Industry contestants included not only over

30 companies and start-ups

(mostly involved in energy, digital, education and industry), but also

students

– a first for the sector.

Open innovation

isn’t just for start-ups. The industry itself is also undergoing an in-depth transformation in order to reinvent itself and anticipate the future. This collaborative challenge – organised with the support of Startup Inside, a specialist in open innovation, artificial intelligence and intrapreneurship – is breaking all the traditional rules, replacing them with

new working methods

for plants. The CEO and Cofounder of Startup Inside, Damien Gromier, is well-versed in organising this type of event. He underlined the unique nature of this hackathon, organised by an industrial stakeholder with the aim of reducing carbon emissions.

Damien Gromier

, CEO and Cofounder of Startup Inside

Teaming up with the cloud

Participants were put into 13 project teams and given three days to develop tangible solutions based on five specific themes:

• Cutting energy consumption at industrial facilities
• Enhancing buildings’ thermal performance
• Increasing low carbon heat production
• Accelerating the digital transformation to boost energy performance
• Imagining new and more sustainable industrial models

Each of the projects had to make use of cloud technology provided by Google Cloud, a partner to the event and to Renault Group in its industrial transformation. This technological partnership covers numerous projects, including the development of a software agent based on artificial intelligence that aims to reduce the energy consumed by data centres, so it can be reinjected into plants’ paint workshops. These AI solutions could help reduce plants’ energy consumption by up to 20%.

Jacqueline Pynadath

, Director of Sustainability and Innovation at Google Cloud EMEA

Four projects from the hackathon to be deployed at Renault Group as early as 2022

After three days of intensive brainstorming, with advice from the numerous experts and mentors on hand, contestants had precisely

four minute

s

to

pitch

their projects

and win over a jury made up of managers from Google Cloud and Renault Group. But that’s not all – there was also a large public audience, with 150 people watching on site and several hundred more tuning in online. The

Alpine F1 Team

sustainable development team was also part of the jury when it gave out additional prizes in the name of the brand: the audience award and a special prize for the most innovative project. The jury was initially expected to recognise three projects but, during its deliberations, ultimately picked two teams as joint winners of the third prize – so

four projects

, rather than three,

will soon be rolled out in plants

! Here are the winners:

• First prize: Team No.3 – The “Kairos” project: developing a digital platform to optimise the start-up and shutdown periods of paint drying ovens. This solution would generate additional electricity for the Douai plant worth an estimated €230,000 per year, and the project could be rolled out to other facilities.

First prize: Team No.3 – The “Kairos” project

• Second prize: Team No.11 – “CO₂ Advisor” project: creating a tool to measure CO₂ emissions from production activities in real time. This application would give operators greater visibility of energy consumption in their workshops.

Second prize: Team No.11 – “CO2 Advisor” project

• Joint third prize: Team No.4 – “Adjust’Air” project: developing a technical solution to optimise ventilation and air filtration systems at production facilities. This tool would enable a threefold decrease of energy consumption from air extraction.

Joint third prize: Team No.4 – “Adjust’Air” project

• Joint third prize: Team No.6 – “Sieren” project: implementing a dashboard to model and monitor plants’ electricity consumption and incorporate meteorological parameters and energy consumption in plant schedules.

Team No.6 – “Sieren” project

A boost for low carbon

With this hackathon, Renault Group has shown that a

new form of collaboration

is possible between major industry stakeholders, start-ups and students – and at a factory, no less! The Group plays a key role as an emulator, enabling these different participants to gain traction in the

“tech-industry” landscape

. This is a new,

value-creating

industrial landscape where each partnership is highly strategic, with industry giants like Google supporting the creation of decarbonisation projects, such as those selected at the end of the hackathon. The launch of an open innovation competition like Hackathon CO2 Industry has also provided an additional boost for the transformation of industrial sites, offering us a glimpse of a more sustainable and collaborative environment where

open innovation

and

technology

can create a new dimension for

industry

Factories at the forefront of innovation to cut carbon

Renault Group presented its new

environmental strategy

this year, with an ambitious roadmap: reaching

carbon neutrality

at its plants in Europe and

halving the CO₂ emissions

of its plants worldwide by 

2030

. To do so, it intends to make the decarbonisation of its infrastructure a major driver of its transformation, helping the Group to achieve its climate targets. But this is by no means just a recent concern; a number of Renault plants all over the world have already been making significant progress in this area for over a decade. The

Tangier plant

in Morocco is a key example, having already

fully decarbonised

by way of its zero CO

₂

emissions and zero industrial effluents strategy, implemented in 

2010

. The plant’s success can be summed up in two figures: over 90% of its energy comes from renewable sources, avoiding the emission of 100,000 tonnes of CO

₂

every year. What’s more, a

strategic partnership

was signed

with Iberdrola

in 2021 to launch projects to reduce Renault Group’s CO

₂ 

emissions and energy consumption in

Spain

and

Portugal

. For example, the

Seville

Refactory, Spain

– similar to the Refactory in Flins – opened its doors in November, enabling the development of the country’s circular economy activities. Moreover, the three French plants that make up the

ElectriCity hub

– Douai, Maubeuge et Ruitz – and the

Cléon plant

will become

entirely carbon neutral

facilities in 

2025

. Lastly, the

Refactory in Flins

, France has just celebrated its first birthday. The plant marked the occasion by inaugurating

‘Factory VO’

, an on-site centre specialised in

reconditioning used vehicles

so as to extend their life cycle and enable them to clock up over 1 million kilometres!