2020 marks the 50th anniversary of Earth Day. The first ever Earth Day was organised by a graduate student, Denis Hayes in 1970 and his actions sparked the modern environmental movement.
We’ve come a long way since 1970 and we believe that the next movement in climate conscious actions will be driven by technology with data at its heart.
We’ve put together some encouraging stats around climate change and the green agenda along with our thoughts on how tech holds the key to the next generation of sustainability.
Tracking Emissions
There’s been a lot of fluctuation in CO2 emissions across the world with some regions’ emissions seeming to have wildly grown while others have been brought under control. The European Commission’s 2020 Climate & Energy Package aimed to for 20% cut in greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 levels. Real-time data will be a real catalyst for the control of emissions as benchmarking will be instantaneous.
Renewables
There’s been a huge push for renewable energy and in the past decade alone, we’ve seen an uptake in both wind and solar PV power generation. Technology is playing a huge part in the monitoring of not only the generation but also the storage and distribution of renewable energy.
Changing Habits
Cultural changes have lead to the reduction in energy being used in general. An understanding of energy usage, both domestically, through the likes of home heating apps and on a larger business scale, makes for more informed and energy conscious decision making. Check out our case study on how the implementation of The Hark Platform gave unprecedented visibility of 600 UK retail stores.
Greener Cities
City-scale data is the lifeblood of a smart city. Multiple data points can be brought together to create greener urban environments from emissions and air quality to energy usage and light pollution.
Climate change as an issue is steadfast at the top every political and cultural agenda. Technology is being tested and implemented with great success in a plethora of different ways and will be at the very core of our strategy on a greener world. There’s more on how technology and specifically machine learning can help tackle climate change in one of our earlier blog posts.
All data repurposed from iea.org.
