In a micro-factory the size of a garden shed, big minds are tackling a tiny problem: How to use the software that built a laptop to carefully dismantle it, robotically harvesting and sorting its components for reuse and recycling. A few years ago, most of these aging consumer workhorses might have ended up on a scrap heap. But innovators at Molg, with help from Autodesk technology, are efficiently transforming the raw materials of end-of-life products into a more sustainable future. For Autodesk and its customers, this little laptop is a major sign that we’re moving in the right direction.
Autodesk serves a world of designers, engineers, builders, and creators. Our technology is the foundation of the built environment, industrial production, and media and entertainment. We are constantly analyzing our industries’ challenges and aligning our business practices to address these needs. This progress is measured in our annual impact report that follows three ways we create impact: how we manage our own business to be a responsible steward of the Earth’s resources; how we empower our customers to design and make more sustainable projects; and how we build and support systemic actions necessary to advance our industries toward inclusivity, resilience, and sustainability.
Partnering with Innovators on Sustainable Solutions
Many innovators, like Molg, work with Autodesk to create real-life solutions for the world’s biggest problems.
Molg was one of 30 companies that joined Autodesk’s Sustainability Tech Partner Program this year. Together, these companies create an ecosystem of services using Autodesk technology, all focused on enabling more sustainable outcomes. With hands-on support from Autodesk experts and access to training, tools, and other opportunities, these partners pioneered 18 technology integrations in areas like measuring embodied carbon, reducing material waste, and minimizing energy use. This technology extends the capabilities of Autodesk’s platform to help our customers focus on the outcomes most important to them.
Another innovative customer, Orms Architects, transformed an aging and dilapidated London office building into a stylish landmark hotel. Other bidders wanted to demolish and rebuild, wasting the inherent embodied carbon in the building’s concrete structure and façade. The wider industry’s business-as-usual approach is one reason why CO2 emissions from building operations and construction make up nearly 40% of the global total GHG emissions.
Orms relied on Autodesk technology to create a three-dimensional digital model, helping them understand the building’s complex structure. They replaced the heating, cooling, lighting and ventilation systems to minimize the carbon emissions of the structure. Steel columns were threaded through the existing structure to support a new three-story crown containing modern hotel amenities for the building’s new life. This strategy, called adaptive reuse, is essential to remake our built environment for our changing demographics and a more sustainable future.
Managing Our Business to Do Right in the World
Like Orms, Autodesk is keenly focused on reducing its carbon emissions. Highlighted in our annual impact report, Autodesk continuously meets its 100% renewable energy commitment and continues to invest in sustainability through our Autodesk Carbon Fund. During the past fiscal year, the $3.8 million fund was used to procure 80,800 MWh of renewable energy certificates and support 21 carbon removal and reduction projects by purchasing high-quality carbon offset credits. Autodesk also joined the Sustainable Aviation Buyers Alliance, a coalition of organizations that use advanced market commitments to provide demand signals to the marketplace—in this case, to invest in sustainable aviation fuel, thereby reducing emissions from business travel.
Behind our sustainability initiatives and achievements are the people who make it all possible. That’s why a crucial part of managing our business is a commitment to fostering an environment where everyone, everywhere can feel like they belong. In support of our diversity and belonging goals, Autodesk expanded its array of employee resource groups—voluntary groups for staff with common lived experiences—to include two new offerings: a network for Indigenous employees and a network focused on mental inclusion, neurodivergence, and disability. In the last year, we’ve also experienced a 49.5% increase in the number of women in technology roles.
Advancing Our Industries
Changing attitudes toward sustainability are driving progress across Design and Make industries, like architecture, construction, manufacturing, and media and entertainment. Autodesk’s recent State of Design & Make report found that 97% of companies surveyed had taken actions to improve their sustainability. Additionally, respondents said that sustainability is good for short-term (69%) and long-term (87%) business success.
This cross-industry consensus is essential to progress, but it’s also important that companies have the right tools and data to achieve their sustainability goals. Autodesk’s Design and Make Platform technology enables our customers to make sustainable choices at every stage of their project or product’s lifecycle. Our newest solutions, Total Carbon Analysis tools for architects and Manufacturing Sustainability Insights for product designers, help companies calculate carbon emissions while a project is still in its design phase.
To meet their sustainability targets, companies are leveraging technological advancements, such as AI, as a catalyst for solutions. Architects, for instance, are using AI tools to analyze urban design factors like traffic, noise pollution, and heat—before shovels ever touch the ground. Autodesk architecture and construction customers used AI to design The Phoenix housing development with 300+ units in West Oakland at about half the cost, time, and carbon footprint of a typical multi-family building in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Stories like these spring from every section of Autodesk’s impact report. They are as varied as human ingenuity, but they all demonstrate the same thing: We can harness technology to address the world’s most pressing challenges. At Autodesk, this is how we see our work—supporting the world’s transition to a more sustainable, resilient, and inclusive future.
