Engie targets carbon neutrality with data governance strategy

To refocus the business towards its main priorities, Engie undertook a major business transformation changing from 25 country/regional operations to four enterprise-wide divisions. These are renewable energy, energy solutions, networks, and thermal production and energy supply. The company knew that data would be critical to accelerating change. “The climate crisis, in particular, is forcing everyone to change from traditional to renewable energy production and consumption. Gone are the days when you had 10 or 20 years to change. Events like the war in Ukraine and COVID happened in the last 18 months, requiring us to be more agile and resilient. The only way to do that is with data. To survive in today’s super-complex environment, you need to capture and use data in real-time,” stated Mr. Grima.

Data, such as information on weather, is critical to advancing renewable energy. Not only does weather data influence production – like wind power generation – it also influences consumption since too cold or too hot weather means more energy needed. “The more you know about the weather, the easier it is to model energy consumption and production,” said Mr. Grima.

Also, IoT data from sensors across the company’s infrastructure including pipelines, wind turbines and solar farms, improves monitoring, measurement and maintenance management.

Engie has consolidated weather, IoT and a host of other data sources into a newly created Common Data Hub. This is an AWS-based data lake that Engie business units use to collect, share and analyze data.

Previously, data was largely confined to separate and autonomous business divisions where it was often analyzed using spreadsheets. Sharing data and using it to influence strategic decision-making was difficult. Collibra was brought in and integrated with the Common Data Hub as a tool to help Engie use data more effectively to improve operational excellence.

“Collibra is one of the best data governance solutions on the market. If you want to transform your organization and how it operates, you need to focus on business issues. The value for Engie and what sets Collibra apart from other solutions is its connection between business and technical, but always with a business orientation,” commented Thierry Grima.

Engie uses three modules of Collibra Data Intelligence Platform: Data Catalog, Data Governance and Data Lineage. In addition, Collibra integrates with Engie’s SAP ERP solution, while integration with their Salesforce is planned for the future. Engie worked with Collibra professional services and Collibra partner Lamarck Group to help plan and implement deployment.

At a strategic group level, Collibra aims at supporting the so-called Global Performance Cockpit that provides KPIs to the CEO, the Group executive committee and levels below covering financial and operational information. Collibra is actively used on 25 other projects at local level. For example, Engie’s Global Energy Management unit that manages energy trading uses Collibra to support trading prices and timing.