IT for Sustainability
Index
Notable News
IT for Sustainability Business News
Research & Tools
Collaboration
IT for Sustainability Collaboration
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Notable News
IT for Sustainability Business News
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GOOGLE — Announced a series of sustainability efforts using AI. These include fuel efficient routing maps for India and Indonesia; an effort to optimize traffic lights to cut congestion (“Project Green Light” which is now in 12 cities around the world); expanding its “Tree Canopy” tool to show urban shaded areas and aid in tree planting; and new forecasting solutions for flooding and wildfires.
GOOGLE — Developed and piloted a new way to reduce the electricity consumption of its data centers when there is high stress on local power grids, by shifting some non-urgent compute tasks to other times and locations, without impacting the Google services. This task-shifting can be initiated when receiving a notice from a grid operator of a forecasted local grid event, such as an extreme weather event. (Oct 2023)
MSCI / GOOGLE — MSCI expanded its partnership with Google Cloud to accelerate the development of generative AI solutions for the investment industry. The solutions will help MSCI clients better manage portfolio climate risks and opportunities, with a focus on identifying, synthesizing, and responding to risk signals, and on helping investors to measure and manage portfolio exposure to climate risk and identify low carbon investment opportunities. (Sept 2023)
GOOGLE — Launched three mapping tools to help businesses “develop sustainability products.” Using AI and machine learning, along with aerial imagery and environmental data, the three tools provide up-to-date information about 1) estimated solar energy potential and savings at the rooftop level, 2) air quality, and 3) pollen levels. (Sept 2023)
Jaguar Land Rover
partnered with
Circulor, Bridge of Weir Leather Company, and the University of Nottingham for an
Innovate UK-funded
trial to develop “the world’s first digital supply chain for leather using blockchain technology” and
trace its lowest-carbon leather sources. (Oct 2021)
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Mastercard is
launching a global Sustainability Innovation Lab in Stockholm to create digital products and solutions using technologies such as AI and 5G, with a focus on enabling sustainable consumer spending and supply chain visibility and traceability. The Lab includes an
R&D center, a
“Labs as a Service” platform, and an Experience Center for product demos and in-person engagement. R&D is already underway, initially prioritizing iterations of the
Mastercard Carbon Calculator and
Mastercard Provenance, and the physical space will open in spring 2022. (Sept 2021)
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Project Trackcycle (Circulor, TotalEnergies,
Recycling Technologies) — A new partnership to
develop a blockchain-enabled traceability solution for hard-to-recycle-plastics.
(Aug 2021)
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MICROSOFT — Established the
Green Software Foundation, a new nonprofit seeking to reduce emissions within the software industry by 45% by 2030 through the development of people, standards, tools, and leading practices.
Other founding members include
Accenture, GitHub,
and ThoughtWorks; general members include
Goldman Sachs
and nonprofits “Leaders for Climate Action,” “Watt Time,” and “The Green Web Foundation.” (May 2021)
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EASTMAN/SAP — Announced a partnership to pilot “GreenToken by SAP,” a blockchain-based platform to give brands and consumers traceable information of products’ sustainable attributes, including certified recycled content. (May 2021)
Chipotle Mexican Grill launched “Real Foodprint,” an online tool that allows customers to quantify the sustainability impact of the ingredients used to fulfill their digital order. The tracker tool compares Chipotle’s 53 ingredient options to their conventional counterparts across five metrics: less carbon in the atmosphere, gallons of water saved, improved soil health, organic land supported, and antibiotics avoided. (November 2020)
Microsoft committed to protect more land than it operates on globally by 2025 through land acquisition, conservation easement, national park creation, and community or indigenous-led conservation. The company also announced plans to build a cloud-based Planetary Computer platform to provide scientists, conservation organizations, and businesses with greater access to trillions of environmental data points. (April 2020)
Amazon launched the Amazon Sustainability Data Initiative, which aims to promote sustainability research, innovation, and problem-solving by making key data easily accessible and even more widely available. The datasets currently available through the initiative include weather observations and forecast data, climate projections data, satellite imagery, hydrological data, air quality data, and ocean forecast data.
Wildlife Insights, a collaboration between Google Earth and seven organizations, led by Conservation International, is the largest database of public camera-trap images in the world. It includes 4.5 million photos that have been analyzed and mapped with AI for characteristics such as country, year, species and so forth.
Research & Tools
IT for Sustainability
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The Green Code Gap (Salesforce) — Found that 75% of technologists want to develop applications that do less harm to the environment, according to a new survey of 1,000 technologists in the U.S., UK, and Australia. However, 45% confessed they don’t know how to develop software applications that do this. 34% admitted to rarely or never considering carbon emissions when doing their job. More than 40% said they write code from scratch, using more energy, while more than half do not use energy-efficient programming languages. 31% of technologists said sustainable software development is not openly discussed at their company, and 62% do not participate in sustainability-related skills development. (May 2023)
Optimizing Investments in EV Charging Through Data Sharing (WBCSD) — A new brief by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development found that digital solutions can reduce carbon emissions from electric vehicle charging by 15% and reduce total EV charging infrastructure by up to 85%. This research, based on two digital solutions by Fujitsu and by Arcadis, show the value of using data and planning to optimize charging infrastructure and scheduling. (Oct 2022)
Spatial intelligence and business: data application for a nature positive and net zero future (World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), in collaboration with Systemiq and the UN Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP WCMC)) — Explains the role of location-specific data, tools, analysis, and visualization (collectively, “spatial intelligence”) to align business strategies with global nature and climate goals. The authors contend that the quality and availability of spatial intelligence has improved to the point where it is now a viable tool for informing an initial phase of business decisions and collaboration-building at the “nature-climate nexus.” Adopting the technology would, according to the report, help companies:
- Evaluate impacts and dependencies on nature and assess related risks and opportunities accordingly.
- Meet spatial analysis requirements, where applicable, to demonstrate eligibility for green finance and related products.
- Transform business strategies and make more fully informed commitments to support a nature positive, net zero economy; Account for the spatial context of company operations and value chains in determining alignment with national and global goals.
Business uptake of the technology also helps drive its continual improvement, and ultimately helps mediate competing interests over land for agriculture, industry, infrastructure, and conservation. (Aug 2021)
Billions of Better Decisions: Industrial Transformation's New Imperative (ABB) — Examines the current uptake of the industrial internet of things (IoT) across sectors and its potential to lower GHG emissions and improve energy efficiency. Industrial companies cited “future competitiveness” (46%) as the top factor in their increased focus on sustainability. While 96% of respondents see digitalization as “essential to sustainability” and 57% said the industrial IoT has had a “significant positive effect” on operational decision-making, only 35% of companies have implemented industrial IoT solutions at scale. (Feb 2022)
Crunchbase highlighted
20 startups developing promising climate and carbon-tracking software solutions,
available in this downloadable pdf. (October 2021)
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Worldwide CO2 Emissions Savings from Cloud Computing Forecast, 2021–2024 (International Data Corporation) (March 2021)
- Cloud computing could prevent more than 1 billion metric tons of CO2 between now and 2024.
- Emission reductions are driven by the aggregation of computation from small enterprise datacenters to more energy-efficient large-scale centers.
Nonprofit independent think tank InfluenceMap released a report on “Climate Change and Digital Advertising” that criticizes Facebook for failing to prevent climate-science disinformation-related advertising on its platform. The analysis finds that nine U.S.-based advertisers collectively spent more than $42,000 on climate misinformation campaigns between January and June 2020, but acknowledges that Facebook recently launched its Climate Science Information Center and reaffirmed its commitment to tackling climate science misinformation through its fact-checking program. The nonprofit stated that it would expand this analysis beyond Facebook if Google/YouTube and Twitter begin to disclose data on climate-related advertisements on their platforms. (October 2020)
“The State of Climate Tech 2020” (PwC, September 2020) finds that investment in climate tech has increased by more than 3750% in absolute terms since 2013, representing 6% of global annual venture capital funding in 2019. The report also finds that mobility and transport has received the most funding to date, representing 63% of total investment in the climate tech category since 2013.
“Strativerse” (L'Atelier, August 2020) assesses the maturity of more than 80 technologies on a scale of 1 (basic principles being tested) to 9 (technology is already being incorporated into our lives) to better understand their capabilities, their likely trajectory, and the context they might exist within in 2030. The technologies are clustered into 6 different categories: Immersive reality, IoT, human enhancement, distributed systems, advanced manufacturing, and artificial intelligence.
Business and the Fourth Wave of Environmentalism (Environmental Defense Fund, 2019) offers insight into how companies are leveraging new technologies--including including artificial intelligence, automation, blockchain, data analytics and sensors-- to expand their sustainability efforts and drive business results. Key findings included the followingg:
- 94% of business leaders agree that investing in emerging technologies is essential to staying competitive—up 10% from last year.
- While the overwhelming majority of executives (92%) agree that emerging technologies can help improve both their bottom line and sustainability, just over half (59%) are investing for this purpose. This 33-point opportunity gap shows companies are leaving environmental and business opportunities on the table.
- 7 in 10 C-suite leaders and VPs are feeling pressure from customers and investors to make sustainability a strategic priority, and 8 in 10 feel pressure from regulators.
- More than 9 in 10 business leaders say consumers will likely hold them accountable for their environmental impact, up 12 points from 2018.
Digital with a Purpose: Delivering a Smarter 2030 (GeSI, Deloitte, 2019) summarizes opportunities various technologies offer for maximum impact on the separate SDGs. Explores the scope for key sectors to deploy digital technologies for impact on the SDGs; the most immediately relevant Goals for six major global regions; progress against these the comparative impact of digital technologies; estimates the current scale and impact of the ICT sector, as well as projections to 2030; and ideas for ways to maximize positive impact and minimise negatives.
“Technology, the Climate Savior?” (ING Group, 2018) quantifies the impact that technological developments in energy efficiency, electrification, and renewables could have on global energy-related CO2 emissions. The report finds that technology has the potential to reduce global energy-related CO2 emissions 64% by 2050.
#System Transformation: How digital solutions will drive progress towards the sustainable development goals (Global e-Sustainability Initiative, 2016) emphasizes the important role digital technologies can play in helping to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The report finds that companies in the Information and Communications Technologies sector could generate $2.1 trillion in additional revenue annually by 2030 from services that directly contribute to SDG achievements. The report also finds that every country has achievement gaps in more than half of the 17 SDGs.
“Intelligent Assets: Unlocking the Circular Economy Potential” (Ellen MacArthur Foundation and World Economic Forum, 2016) examines how the Internet of Things (IoT) can help enable the transition to a circular economy. The report also provides early-stage applications for IoT technologies that could help build a circular economyfor manufacturing, energy and utilities, built environment and infrastructure, logistics and waste management, and more.
AI and Sustainability
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Artificial Intelligence (AI) poses multiple risks to the climate crisis, according to a new report from the Climate Action Against Disinformation, a coalition of several environmental and tech accountability organizations. These risks include: a significant increase in the use of energy and water; the “turbocharging” of climate disinformation; and a lack of regulatory oversight. The report includes recommendations for companies and governments to increase transparency, safety, and accountability related to AI development. (March 2024)
ClimateGPT (Endowment for Climate Intelligence (ECI)) — This AI platform, drawn from several large language AI models, is designed to augment human decisions and address the complex and fast-moving impact of climate change. It draws from over 200 million academic articles and 10 billion webpages and is trained to synthesize interdisciplinary research and form a holistic understanding of the impacts of climate change across the natural, social and economic sciences. The platform supports 20 languages, is open source, and runs on renewable energy. (Jan 2024)
Ubuntoo AI (Ubuntoo) — This AI-based “digital sustainability consultant” for environmental practitioners provides “curated solutions and intelligence,” drawing on an expert database developed for over five years. The software can help address a variety of corporate sustainability dilemmas and offer action-based solutions at a fraction of the cost of a traditional consultancy, according to Ubuntoo.
Harnessing Artificial Intelligence to Accelerate the Energy Transition (WEF, in collaboration with BloombergNEF and dena) — Examines the
state of AI adoption in the energy sector. Identifies high-priority applications of AI technology and
provides a roadmap with recommendations to drive an equitable transition.
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“How AI Can Enable a Sustainable Future” (Microsoft and PwC UK, 2019) finds that using AI for environmental applications could contribute up to $5.2 trillion to the global economy in 2030, a 4.4% increase compared to the business as usual scenario. The report also finds that AI could reduce worldwide GHG emissions by 4% in 2030.
“Artificial Intelligence and the Circular Economy” (Ellen MacArthur Foundation and Google, 2019) examines the application of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in two value chains: food and consumer electronics. The report finds that AI could unlock up to $127 billion annually for the food value chain by 2030 and up to $90 billion for consumer electronics.
“Harnessing Artificial Intelligence for the Earth” (PwC and World Economic Forum, 2018) explores over 80 ways that artificial intelligence (AI) can transform traditional sectors and systems to address six of the world’s most pressing environmental challenges, including climate change, food and water security, clean air, and more.
Blockchain and Sustainability
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Bitcoin’s estimated energy consumption rivals the emissions of major fossil-fuel users and producers such as American Airlines and ConocoPhillips, according to a report by Bank of America. Bitcoin’s emissions have grown by more than 40 million tons in the past two years, accounting for about 0.4% of global energy consumption. (March 2021)
Redesigning Trust: Blockchain Deployment Toolkit (World Economic Forum, April 2020) provides tools and resources to help guide organizations through the development and deployment of a new blockchain solution within the supply chain.
“Assessing Blockchain’s Future in Transactive Energy” (Atlantic Council, 2019) finds that costs currently outweigh the benefits offered by blockchain as a platform for transactive energy. The six costs limiting blockchain as a platform for transactive energy include scalability, efficiency, certainty, reversibility, privacy, and governance.
“Building Blockchains for a Better Planet” (World Economic Forum and PwC) highlights more than 65 existing and emerging use cases that demonstrate how blockchain technology can be applied to the world’s most-pressing environmental challenges. The report also identifies eight blockchain “game changers” that have the potential to drive progress on transparent supply chains, sustainable financing, decentralized energy, circular economy, and more.
Collaboration
Green Code — This new initiative, launched by Salesforce, aims to help reduce carbon emissions associated with the software development lifecycle. As part of this initiative, Salesforce published the Sustainability Guide for Salesforce Technology, providing practical recommendations for designing apps and writing code that have less of an impact on the environment. The guide focuses on four areas: data design; architecture; development; and operations. (May 2023)
Ethereum Climate Platform (ECP) — A group of Web3 companies, convened by ConsenSys and Allinfra, launched the ECP. ECP’s mission is to incentivize and fund the development of real-world projects that will mitigate greenhouse gas emissions and deliver positive environmental and social impact long into the future in order to mitigate Ethereum's past emissions. It will also support new and innovative solutions in need of market validation, ensuring they will achieve tangible impact. CEF member Microsoft is a founding member. (Nov 2022)
Crypto Sustainability Coalition — This public-private initiative hosted by the World Economic Forum (WEF) and consisting of 30 partners will investigate how web3 and blockchain tools can be leveraged to achieve positive climate action. The coalition is convening working groups to tackle three issues:
- Analyzing the crypto industry’s consumption of energy and materials;
- Investigating ways in which web3 innovations could address challenges facing a Paris-aligned low-carbon transition
- Exploring how blockchain could address current flaws in global carbon markets, such as increasing transparency, addressing market failures, and expanding participation by smallholder farmers, forest stewards, and Indigenous communities.
Click here for a summary of all outcomes from WEF's Sustainable Development Impact Climate Week Meetings. (Sept 2022)
New Secretariat to Address Connected Device Emissions — Global climate consultancy, the Carbon Trust, and technology companies Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Samsung and Sky, are developing the industry’s first specification for measuring, accounting for, and decarbonizing the emissions associated with connected devices while being used by customers. Connected devices, which include phones and laptops, used a total of 500 Terawatt hours in 2020. The group aims to produce an accurate baseline for reporting energy efficiency improvements and establish rules for matching electricity consumption with renewable energy generation, as well as applying technology to optimize energy use of connected devices by consumers. (Sept 2022)
VMware Zero Carbon Committed — A new initiative led by VMware to accelerate the transition to zero-carbon clouds and help customers achieve decarbonization goals by connecting them with cloud providers committing to power data centers with 100% renewable energy or achieving net-zero carbon by 2030. Inaugural partners include Atea, Equinix, IBM, Microsoft, and OVH. (May 2021)
Crypto Climate Accord — A new global accord to ensure blockchain systems and digital currency mining operations operate on 100% renewable energy by 2025, achieve net-zero by 2040, and develop an accounting standard to measure emissions across the industry. Created by RMI, Energy Web, and the Alliance for Innovative Regulation, the Accord has already garnered support from over 20 cryptocurrency firms. (April 2021)
The World Economic Forum
launched
the Global AI Action Alliance (GAIA), an initiative to accelerate
ethical AI adoption in the global public interest. The Alliance includes over 100 companies, governments, civil society organizations, and academic institutions.
(January 2021)
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Non-profit the Linux Foundation announced the LF Climate Finance Foundation (LFCF), an initiative that aims to use the OS-Climate platform to equip investors, banks, insurers, companies, governments, NGOs, and academia with the open source analytics and open data they need to address climate risk and opportunity. Founding members of the LFCF include Allianz, Amazon, Microsoft, and S&P Global. (September 2020)
The Global Enabling Sustainability Initiative (GeSI) is a strategic partnership of the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) sector and organisations committed to creating and promoting technologies and practices that foster economic, environmental and social sustainability. Formed in 2001, GeSI’s vision is a sustainable world through responsible, ICT-enabled transformation. GeSI fosters global and open cooperation, informs the public of its members’ voluntary actions to improve their sustainability performance, and promotes technologies that foster sustainable development.
Wildlife Insights, a collaboration between Google Earth and seven organizations, led by Conservation International, is the largest database of public camera-trap images in the world. It includes 4.5 million photos that have been analyzed and mapped with AI for characteristics such as country, year, species and so forth. (2019).