Bentley Systems, a leading infrastructure engineering software company, has announced the launch of new carbon assessment capabilities in iTwin Experience. These capabilities aim to empower infrastructure professionals to accurately quantify carbon reduction opportunities within their projects. The announcement was made during the Environment Analyst Global Business Summit, held in Chicago on June 27 and 28.
With the newly introduced capabilities, infrastructure professionals can automate embodied carbon calculation reports and impact analyses using iTwin Experience. This enables them to explore multiple design choices more efficiently, eliminating the need for manual data exports and normalization. In 2022, Bentley Systems developed an integration service within the iTwin Platform to automate the generation of embodied carbon reports for infrastructure projects using tools such as One Click LCA and EC3. By leveraging the bi-directional integration with EC3, carbon assessments can now be visualized within a digital twin without the need for coding. iTwin Experience exports a data model to EC3, allowing the tool to perform embodied carbon calculations and seamlessly display the results within the digital twin.
The availability of these capabilities in iTwin Experience benefits organizations looking to incorporate carbon assessment workflows into their infrastructure projects without the need for developing proprietary iTwin-powered apps. Additionally, this integration enables the seamless incorporation of carbon assessment workflows with other Bentley products and solutions for designing and managing infrastructure projects.
Kaustubh Page, Director of Product Management at Bentley Systems, highlighted the growing importance of lifecycle assessments, environmental footprint analyses, and reports in infrastructure projects worldwide. He emphasized that designers and environmental engineers often spend significant time generating environmental assessments or reports, which can be a time-consuming and error-prone process due to the manual exportation and verification of data. With the new capabilities in iTwin Experience, Bentley aims to transform this process from a six-month ordeal into a streamlined six-minute workflow. The goal is to enable users to focus their valuable time on designing, optimizing, and making faster and better-informed decisions, rather than spending it on data exporting and validation.
Rodrigo Fernandes, Director of ES(D)G at Bentley Systems, expressed the company’s commitment to enabling users to implement carbon analysis and optimization as a natural, repeatable, and standardized procedure for managing infrastructure projects worldwide. By integrating carbon assessment early in the project stages, Bentley believes that infrastructure professionals can unlock significant carbon reduction opportunities. While the current announcement focuses on embodied carbon, Bentley’s iTwin Experience offers opportunities to comprehensively tell the “carbon story” of an infrastructure project and asset, enabling environmental footprint assessments powered by infrastructure digital twins.
Mark Tablante, Design Technology Director at Burns & McDonnell, emphasized the significance of electrification in achieving global decarbonization goals. He noted the substantial capital investment required in electric transmission and distribution infrastructure and highlighted the importance of tracking and reporting progress towards net-zero goals, not only for shareholders but also for the future of the planet. Burns & McDonnell is collaborating with Bentley Systems to test the new iTwin-powered carbon reporting capabilities for the electric utility industry. Tablante expressed enthusiasm for integrating these services and assisting clients in tracking carbon emissions and achieving their net-zero goals.
The newly released carbon assessment capabilities in iTwin Experience are currently available in Preview mode for a limited number of partners and early adopters. Bentley Systems aims