Sustainable technology: The future of business
With climate change not only becoming a growing concern for today’s generation, but ‘climate action’ seen as an increasingly necessary campaign, it is important for each organization to consider how they cannot only change, but act, in transforming their business operations to be more carbon-conscious.
In January 2024 at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland, on the theme of ‘Rebuilding Trust’, an article asked participants ‘How can we unleash climate action for profitable business growth?’ “Companies must view climate action and decarbonization strategies not as a hindrance to profitability, but as an opportunity,” the article said. “We need to see challenges as opportunities for innovation and growth, for profitability and for creating the brighter, sustainable future we all want for business, for society and for the planet.”
Every little bit helps, from acting to conserve resources and changing processes related to software development upgrades, sustainable technology is creating a future in which businesses can act to be profitable, and must act to be sustainable patrons for the environment.
What is sustainable technology?
Sustainable technology describes the solutions that IT service providers create and implement to help reduce environmental impact.
Many of these solutions involve decreasing the amount of energy a process consumes. This, in turn, uses fewer resources and minimizes waste.
From the purpose it serves, to the energy it uses, for technology to be sustainable, the impact on the environment needs to be intentional. Developers create and innovate to solve industry-specific problems or simply to make operations run more efficiently. For example, in manufacturing, intelligent facility management allows businesses to react to energy usage trends with real-time monitoring.
How can sustainable technology impact the environment?
Technology and digitalization use resources in two main ways: the physical property data centers require and the power it takes to run digital assets. For example, for consumers to access an organization’s site, they need to charge their mobile device using electricity, which often requires fossil fuels to generate. Developers can design sustainable technology to use less energy, reducing the amount of carbon releases. Organizations can also use this technology to create new systems that rely on alternative power sources.
Larry Flink, CEO of BlackRock, said in 2024 that as countries decarbonize and digitalize their economies, capital markets can help countries meet their decarbonization goals. Decarbonization can be seen as an objective, per se, but it is also a sub-product of the digitalization that the world has been facing in the last years. Considering these two concepts walk together, it is pertinent to consider the best practices of sustainable IT and GreenCoding in the overarching digital transformation strategies.
Renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar power, are often the focus of sustainable efforts, and the majority of Americans polled in a June 2023 Pew Research Center survey see prioritizing climate renewable energy solutions as a way to address climate change. However, it is also important to consider how organizations can minimize the effects of climate change while transitioning to renewable energy. Part of this transition includes the optimization of the current fuel production. Renewable resources produce significantly less carbon emissions but are costly to install. This process is also time-consuming, which is why it’s necessary to find other ways to promote sustainability for business in the meantime.
Using technology to optimize fuel production
Natural gas will continue to serve as a bridge to renewables, especially in electricity generation. Maintaining its abundance while reducing associated greenhouses gases with its extraction will be essential.
Within the energy sector, AI, cloud computing, data collection and predictive maintenance are playing a critical role in expediting the transition to cleaner energy. In the oil and gas sector, for example, AI reduces equipment costs through predictive maintenance algorithms. These AI-generated algorithms improve maintenance cycle planning, eliminate unscheduled downtime and extend the life of drilling equipment.
As we transition away from drilling, technology has also helped reduce the number of rigs needed for each site. Through digital strategy, oil and gas companies were able to improve the speed and flexibility of the drilling rigs, which meant that they could move the equipment from one site to the other more efficiently. This not only reduces carbon emissions related to the transportation of equipment, but also makes the entire drilling process more effective.
Advances in AI and data technology will boost production from existing natural gas wells, which is an essential step in the transition to cleaner energy sources. With hydraulic fracturing, wells typically produce only about 15% of the available resource. But better data, such as pinpointing where to make factures, can help boost production figures. Increasing production by just 20% would have significant implications for U.S. energy security and the continuity of supply for electricity generation and other uses.
The future of sustainable technology
As AI and other technologies advance, it’s crucial to explore how these innovations can contribute to our climate goals. In April 2021 U.S. President Joe Biden announced a new greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution reduction target of 50% for 2030, which accompanies the earlier net-zero target that many countries aim to reach by 2050. Similarly, many organizations, including GFT, agreed to set an emissions reduction goal. GFT’s current initiative is approved by the corporate climate action initiative, Science Based Targets. GFT aims to cut its GHG emissions in half by 2030.
To achieve this goal, organizations must put a plan in place now— and that is exactly where sustainable technology can help.
One might think that a small energy savings through coding an application is pointless, but it is not. That piece of code can be run millions of times for years, and then a tiny saving (in time or energy) can be significant. This also comes with a change of mindset on software development, where performance prevails rather than energetic efficiency. This balance must be pursued.
Reviewing business operations to identify processes that these innovations can improve and strategizing how new sustainable inventions can assist in these targets is essential. GFT’s contribution to this task extends to both sustainable innovation uses: optimizing practices and establishing new ones. While our AI use cases can aid in the journey of achieving business agility and efficiency, our GreenCoding technology constructs a new frontier for software development.
Recently, it was announced that Microsoft and Open AI joined forces to build the supercomputer Stargate, based on nuclear fusion, to provide computing capacity to feed AI algorithms from Open AI in a growing demand for computing capacity in a new world. The two companies are investing approximately $100bn in the project, with very ambitious target dates in place to launch before 2030, a timeframe whose feasibility has been brought into question by market specialists.
The Stargate project would be a significant change to use nuclear fusion as a new clean energy source rather than the currently available nuclear fission technology. In theory, nuclear fusion has a similar outcome for its bottom line. Still, the main difference is the security of toxic waste byproducts in the fusion process, which would allow further experimentation in exploring the most powerful energy source known to the world today. It will be a game-changer, not only for AI development, but for the pursuit of sustainability goals aligned with business and economic development.
What is GreenCoding?
GreenCoding is GFT’s solution for businesses to make software development a part of their sustainability initiatives. Built from three key architecture principles, GreenCoding software development aims to reduce energy consumption with every line of code. These principles are:
- Shut down when idle. This means designing software which shuts down when no one is using it, allowing your organization to be intentional in your energy consumption.
- Avoid impulsive consumption. Question whether real-time processing or dynamic content is always necessary and look into data platforms tailored to your business.
- Focus your investment in time and energy. Look at the big picture to see what elements will need the most resources to conserve time and energy for these components.
With the GreenCoding model and GFT’s work with AI, sustainability through technological advancement becomes more tangible. Together, we can create a more responsible digital future that not only helps your organization achieve true business efficiency, but also conserves energy and protects our environment.
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