ABB sees energy, climate change and emerging-markets driving demand

ABB, the leading power and automation technology group, said the economic crisis is reinforcing three trends that have been driving demand for the company: the battle against climate change, the search for energy and process efficiency, and the strength of emerging markets.

The trends will extend beyond the current economic cycle and will increasingly shape ABB's research and development activities, as well as decisions on where to locate new facilities, CEO Joe Hogan said today in Zurich.

Efforts to lower greenhouse-gas emissions and especially to promote renewable energy have gained new momentum under the stimulus plans of many governments, Hogan said. In addition, awareness that energy prices will rise over the long term, combined with the need to cut costs to weather the current downturn, are driving industries to improve the efficiency of their energy consumption and processes.

ABB also said that approximately 75 percent of the growth it has seen in the past five years has come from the emerging economies, and that this trend is likely to continue.

"Despite the current economic crisis, the long-term growth factors for ABB remain unchanged: Steadily rising electricity demand, the rapid rebound of the emerging-market economies and the need to feed renewable power into existing grids require solutions for more and better power infrastructure, energy efficiency and industrial productivity," Hogan said. "As a high-tech infrastructure company and market leader for power and automation technologies, ABB is ideally positioned to offer solutions to these challenges, and we are continuing to invest aggressively in new technology."

Energy efficiency was a primary purchasing criterion for products, systems and services representing about 45 percent of ABB's revenue in 2008, the company also said today, and as energy prices increase this share will rise further.

Opportunities to increase this share abound. An ABB analysis of industrial energy consumption carried out this year has shown that $180 billion could be saved annually by improving energy efficiency and productivity with the best-performing technologies on the market today.