Sustainability is good for business as well as the planet

Source: The post is based on the article “Sustainability is good for business as well as the planet” published in Live Mint on 21st October 2022. 

Syllabus: GS 3 – Environment 

Relevance: Adopting technologies for decarbonization

News:  Climate change has been an important phenomenon these days that countries are looking into as it not only affects the environment but also society and the economy. 

Therefore, organizations across the world are making commitments to decarbonize by adopting different technologies and sustainable business strategies. 

Moreover, the pandemic did affect the Sustainable Development Goals achievement but it also showed the way to reduce carbon emissions. 

How did the pandemic highlighted the technologies for decarbonization?

The pandemic made employees to work from home using internet services. This work-from-home has become a culture even after the pandemic.  

Working from home not only cuts the cost of the firms, but it also helps in reducing carbon footprint. 

According to the studies, both small and large enterprises can reduce their per-user carbon footprint from 30% to 90% by just moving to cloud computing. 

Further, firms can also use a ‘sustainability calculator’ to track greenhouse gas emissions arising from their cloud use. 

Therefore, firms can adopt sustainable technologies for decarbonization. Some of the firms have already proceeded in this direction. 

How firms are adopting technologies for decarbonization? 

Building technologies: The adoption of smart buildings has increased the productivity of the assets, made energy utilization more efficient and created accessible and secure spaces using technologies like the Internet-of-Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI), etc. For example, 500-acre campus with 125 buildings can save 6-10% of energy and can address 48% of faults in less than a minute using technology. 

Intelligent manufacturing: The adoption of technology is helping manufacturers to decarbonize their core operation, reduce emissions across their supply chain and create a product with the help of digital technologies. These technologies also increase the movement of goods in supply chains and reduce waste. For example, Siemens Gamesa saved 6,000 hours a year at just one facility by using cloud, IoT and Bluetooth technology for equipment searches.  

Banking: A study showed that customers prefer banks with better sustainability records demonstrated by their ESG (environment, social, governance) initiatives. For example, Flowe (a digital bank) went beyond banking to integrate green living and personal health goals into its services. Thus, including sustainability in business goals can help improvement in banks. 

Agriculture: Technology is playing an important role in helping farmers and producer companies to sow seeds at the right time, and manage soil parameters using IoT among others. Technology also helps procurers to optimize the supply chain using IoT. 

Further, there are various industries (healthcare, energy, etc.) where technology is helping to achieve the objective in a sustainable way. 

Therefore, it is important for industries to adopt sustainable technology to tackle climate change.