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From aircraft to zero-emission vehicles, power touches every area of our lives—and the energy transition is redefining what’s possible like never before. As renewables replace fossil fuels, clean air regulations tighten, and even more industries embrace electrification, the energy transition is unleashing a new power paradigm that’s more local, sustainable and affordable.
As we stare down the barrel of the climate crisis, this is a vital transformation that will dramatically improve wellbeing for both people and our planet. Today, the energy sector creates almost 90% of global carbon emissions and we need to change that reality as soon as possible.
Sustainability is at the heart of nearly everything we do at Eaton. The global energy transition is one of the most exciting sustainability opportunities ever to appear in our industry—and we’re seizing it with both hands. We’re empowering utilities, businesses and homeowners to realize the full potential of this transformation—unlocking clean, reliable and efficient power.
We’re bringing all our stakeholders with us on this exciting journey, supporting everyone at whatever stage they are on the path.
Powering transformation
As an organization dedicated to sustainability, continuously challenging ourselves to enable the next step towards a better future has been crucial to our success. Today, we’re going through one of the most exciting changes in our 110-year history of continuous evolution.
With expertise in microgrids, digitalization, battery storage, intelligent power management, and cybersecurity, we’re uniquely positioned to accelerate the energy transition. We’re also committed to bringing all our stakeholders with us on this exciting journey, supporting everyone at whatever stage they are on the path, as well as anticipating and adjusting to future needs.
Through our “Everything as a Grid” approach, we’re enabling customers to reimagine the energy value chain. We’re creating solutions and services that help utilities, businesses and homeowners plan, develop, deploy and manage systems that integrate a significant mix of renewables and support electric vehicle infrastructure.
As of early 2021, the UK generates over 40% of its electricity from renewables—but we can and must help the nation go further. For instance, with buildings consuming around a third of the world’s energy, helping them use power more wisely is a crucial piece in the decarbonization puzzle. By integrating local green generation, energy storage and smart charging, we’re helping building owners to optimize energy costs, lower their carbon footprint, rely less on the grid, support the rising tide of electric vehicles, and even sell excess energy back to utilities.
Effective integration and management of distributed renewable generation and storage, two-way energy flows across the grid, and mass electrification, will also demand smarter power networks than ever before. To seize the opportunities within intelligent power, we’re continuing to expand the team at our Center for Intelligent Power in Dublin—where our researchers focus on digital technologies, machine learning, computational intelligence, and data science. The team’s work is enabling new solutions like Brightlayer, which empowers customers to leverage their data for actionable insights that create operational value.
In addition, we’re combining our core electrical technology and deep domain expertise to advance the electrification of everything, while our approach to grid modernization is helping to build more resilient, efficient, sustainable and secure power networks.
To give you some idea of where this energy transformation will take us, imagine a future where homeowners can use electric vehicle batteries for backup power during blackouts, where data centers can tweak their UPS systems to become renewable energy hubs that enable a more stable power grid, and where manufacturers lower running costs by selling electricity back to the grid.
We’re already making this a reality for some customers in the UK, helping the country towards its 2050 net-zero emissions target. We recently worked with Drax, the UK’s biggest renewable power generator, to help its customers better harness local renewable generation from solar panels or wind turbines. Our xStorage solution is enabling Drax’s customers to use renewable power even when the sun isn’t shining or the wind isn’t blowing—cutting emissions and reducing power bills, while also lowering the burden on the national grid.
We’re strengthening our environment of continuous learning and development, ensuring a culture where it’s okay not to know and everyone has the chance to learn.
Working in new ways
People are the engine of our success at Eaton. Our team’s expertise enables our innovations, powers our growth, and drives forward our business strategy. We’re all united by our passion for the huge opportunities ahead and the chance to make a meaningful contribution to society.
To accelerate the energy transition with new technologies and solutions, we’re continuing our century-long tradition of actively embracing change in the way we work. From the people designing our latest solutions in the lab, to those tasked with selling our products on the ground, we’re all inspired to keep growing our knowledge and skills every day.
Preparing for the future means continuously challenging business as usual. It’s a mindset that’s deeply embedded in our business and we’ve seen particularly significant changes in the last years.
We’re transforming our power management portfolio to support a more sustainable, low-carbon future. We’re continuing to leverage digital transformation, harnessing new insights that enable our teams to be more productive and efficient. And we’re strengthening our environment of continuous learning and development, ensuring a culture where it’s okay not to know and everyone has the chance to learn.
I’ve seen firsthand that Eaton always leads on learning from the top, supporting lifelong development in many ways and listening to feedback from our teams. Our employees completed around 610,000 courses at Eaton University last year, but we also offer leadership programs, digital classes, one-on-one mentoring and more, to help everyone get to grips with the new challenges created by the energy transition.
Career development is a process we all actively encourage—and, in my own experience, our leaders often believe in you even more than you do yourself, which is incredibly inspiring as you set your sights on a new goal. We actively encourage people to think about where they are, where they want to be, and how to get there—whether that’s honing a new skill, learning a new area, or getting comfortable with a different way of working.
Alongside enabling our current employees to expand their knowledge and explore exciting new career opportunities, we’re also recruiting people with very different skills than we’ve typically looked for in the past. For instance, data scientists, UX designers, and software developers are vital to support the new digital capabilities at the heart of the energy transition, while people with cross-industry expertise will be essential to our Buildings as a Grid approach.
The commitment to ongoing adaptability inside our business is essential to powering the energy transition outside it—and we’re very proud to be taking both challenges head on to fundamentally alter how we all live, work and play for the better.
