Role of technology in achieving organisations’ sustainability goals

Sustainability is no longer a tick-box or checklist exercise, but an environmental, economic and social factor that is impacting our lives in almost every way imaginable. Understanding that no planet B exists for our youth and achieving 360° sustainability is crucial for all. Now more than ever, people are focused on sustainability and social issues. They are demanding that businesses step up and operate under sustainability standards.

‘We call upon all businesses to apply their creativity and innovation to solving sustainable development challenges,’ says the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

An environmentally aware enterprise considers more than just profits – it considers its impact on society and the environment. Leading enterprises realise the urgency of embracing more sustainability-focused business practices and reducing their carbon footprint. Authorities need to make sure that the strategy of a company and its sustainability efforts are aligned. This alignment enables companies to optimise operations while reducing their environmental footprint.

Achieving business sustainability goals – a pressing priority

Recent studies have found that more than 70 per cent of global consumers are willing to change their consumption habits to lessen their environmental footprint. To continuously strive in the competitive world, businesses need to provide services that benefit not only consumers but also the environment. People genuinely want to know that you’re doing good rather than just doing business as usual. For example, worldwide energy usage is expected to grow by nearly 50% by 2050. Investing in green energy that is clean, accessible, affordable and sustainable, is now becoming a priority for organisations and the people.

Technological innovations can help build sustainable businesses with net-zero and other environmental, social, and governance goals.

Leading companies are already leveraging technology accelerators to realise sustainability goals. For instance, IoT, data analytics, and sensors are helping to decarbonize industry operations and solve issues by:

Networking and communicating: Sharing information across networks, machines, and devices efficiently.

Monitoring and tracking: Real-time data capturing and reporting of operational performance within connected systems.

Analysing, improving, and forecasting: Obtaining insights from data for better decision-making on process efficiencies for the future.

Augmenting and automating: Connecting the digital and physical worlds through remote management and the creation of autonomous systems.

Here are four ways technology can accelerate net-zero ambitions:

Process optimization and digitisation: Creating sustainable operations that win stakeholder preference and improve business resilience

Adopting advanced technologies, such as cloud-native architectures for data-driven optimization of processes, can help businesses meet their emission reduction goals and set new industry standards. Such measures have the potential to yield significant CO2 reduction.

Carbon data transparency: Using technology-led solutions that guide organisations with carbon accounting across the value chain

IoT and blockchain-enabled sustainability solutions can aid transparency across all levels in an organisation. Data and guidance are visible and accessible to all key stakeholders and this ultimately facilitates sustainable decision-making.

Circular products and services: Building products and services that are sustainable and reusable with no pollutants

This involves implementing new types of product innovations and value chain solutions to fine-tune offerings, engage consumers and improve performance over time. Such solutions enable companies to create and promote zero-waste products while improving ROI and building new revenue streams.

Data ecosystems and ventures: Adopting cross-industry data sharing ecosystems that enable compliance with sustainability regulations

Data ecosystems provide valuable, shared and real-time insights into the environmental and societal impacts of a product or service, while enabling organizations to meet their sustainability targets and compliance goals.

Responsible AI for sustainable outcomes

Technologies like AI are essentially changing the way we think, live, work, and relate to one another and to the external world. Business operations and processes can be optimised with such AI-enabled applications. While companies use AI to increase efficiency and output and lower energy costs, training AI demands a lot of energy. Hence, to sustain an enterprise’s efforts to reduce its environmental footprint, it must also look at reducing the carbon outputs of its AI/ML models. However, organisations can also use the power of AI to simultaneously reduce their carbon footprints and mitigate material risks.

AI models must be as efficient as possible so that training the AI model does not require large amounts of energy or compute power to increase accuracy and performance. Enterprises need to conduct an efficiency vs accuracy test to determine if the resource utilised is justified from both a business and an environmental standpoint.

Organisations can control the environment in which they regulate their AI models. Consider renewable sources of energy or choose service providers that reduce power consumption during the training of the AI models. Enterprises can compensate for the carbon footprint of AI models by contributing financially to environmental sustainability efforts.

The success of frontrunner companies relies on leveraging technology from the very beginning. Through advanced technologies such as AI, IoT, or blockchain companies can analyse, reduce or optimise their environmental impact. Unlocking solutions to a sustainable and healthy planet won’t happen overnight, but technology is most definitely part of the solution.

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