Towards a Smart and Sustainable Future

Transformation is often most effective during a time of crisis. Sustainability, until recently, has been the preserve of environmentalists. But it is crossing over into the business ecosystem in a way that we have not seen before. According to a McKinsey report, with the global sustainable investment crossing $30 trillion, the ESG-oriented investing has witnessed a steep rise. Investors and consumers are also increasingly gravitating towards businesses that pursue sustainable practices. Hence, getting your ESG proposition right leads to higher value creation and links to cash flow by facilitating top-line growth, reducing costs, minimizing regulatory and legal interventions, attracting talent, and optimizing investment and capital expenditures.

Sustainability is a complex and multi-dimensional problem. Having an ESG framework in place helps narrow down the focus to specific environmental, social, and governance factors. IoT is emerging as a crucial technology for sustainability, and is increasingly enabling the creation of a digital twin of an enterprise's ESG posture along with enhancing the ability of leaders and employees to make optimized decisions. Additionally, AIoT, the convergence of IoT with AI, can process insights with data at a scale that is not easily visible or comprehensible to the average human.

The ability to capture real-time-state at a cost, fidelity, and scale that was prohibitive a couple of years ago, has been a major enabler and I might even say, a catalyst for change. Long-range, low-power IoT devices are reliable and effective in enabling smart cities, smart enterprises, smart factories, smart farms, smart homes, and the list goes on.

Enabling a Circular Economy

Emerging technology lends itself to enabling a circular economy, in loose terms - extending the life of assets / resources – recycling / maintaining / repurposing assets / resources – avoiding / recycling waste to power back the economy. Below are some interesting solutions being actively deployed today.

Optimizing Energy Consumption and Waste – According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), buildings account for nearly 55% of the global energy demand and industries account for another 35% of global consumption. There is a huge opportunity to use technology to identify energy hotspots, and energy leaks or waste looking at the energy consumption as it relates to production for example. More and more manufacturers are looking to run sustainable manufacturing operations, leveraging these insights to drive actionable changes on the factory floor. In addition, IoT technology is used to remotely monitor and optimize the operations of renewable energy sources like solar or wind farms. This eventually allows us to shift to cleaner energy sources profitably.

Water Preservation - An average large commercial building roughly uses at least 20,000 gallons of water per day. Whether it is tracking water quality within purified water systems in factories or water leaks in commercial buildings or even personal water consumption, transparency can trigger several conservation actions to fix wastage of a very critical resource.

Cleaner Air and Clean Spaces - Consumer expectations are significantly higher than they were before the onset of COVID. With the availability of environmental sensors like temperature, humidity, Biogenic Volatile Organic Compounds (BVOC), carbon dioxide, and carbon monoxide, AQI employees, occupants, and facility managers can assure an optimal, ventilated, and safe environment even within large expansive spaces.

Engaging Customers, Consumers, and Employees - Everyone wants to be engaged and informed in today’s world. IoT technology is bringing this transparency and information into the hands of consumers. Be it smart meters for the home, water leak alerts, energy conservation insights, or even the cleaning status of restrooms on campus, the information empowers a user to take action and know that they can "do their bit".

Preserving Perishable Resources - Every year, 100 billion pounds of food is wasted. Large grocery chains are using technology to enable cold chain monitoring to manage the temperature of perishable products. This not only helps to maintain quality and safety through the distribution chain to the final consumer but also extends the shelf life of perishables.

Enabling Agricultural Technologies - Like Hydroponics or aeroponics with the ability to closely monitor and model growth conditions like the PH value of the soil or water level for optimal growth now allows farmers to pursue agriculture in a much more profitable manner with the ability to get a reliable yield with minimal waste.

And the list goes on.

On the flip side, technology itself has a massive footprint. According to one study by the University of Massachusetts, training AI models for NLP can produce the carbon dioxide equivalent of 5X the lifetime emissions of a car.  In response, technology majors like Google, Microsoft, and Amazon are all taking measures to minimize energy consumption at data / computing centers.

References & Credits: Forbes, McKinsey, PWC