Using Technology to Combat Climate Change

Technology can combat climate change by adopting certain strategies, such as AIoT integration into measurement and reporting, carbon offsetting and offset integration, and by embracing Abatement intelligence – predictive analytics to simulate emissions over time.

FREMONT, CA: Governments responsible for 63 percent of world emissions have committed to net zero, with net-zero corporate commitments covering 12 percent of the global economy (representing $9.81 trillion in revenue). When it comes to effective emission-reduction progress, however, it is not uncommon to see large disconnects between targets and actual emissions. As the G7 decided in June 2021 to make climate risk disclosures mandatory, seven of the most influential global economies indicated that carbon reporting and disclosure would be essential to meeting emission reduction targets.

The first step is setting a target; the second is understanding and quantifying the real emission baseline. Defining the emissions reduction strategy is the next step. A near-real-time monitoring system should be in place to compare targets with actual progress. Achieving net zero requires countries and companies to monitor, reduce, and, in some cases, offset their emissions.

In order to combat climate change, the technology can be used in the following ways:

Simulation of emissions over time using abatement intelligence: Lack of accurate measures for determining emissions derived from certain processes makes abatement planning challenging. Through AIoT technology, we can better predict process emissions by analyzing real-time data. Through analyzing and learning from data from multiple processes, AIoT can refine the performance evaluation of abatement measures and optimize emissions predictions. In addition to optimizing abatement strategies, this technology also lowers marginal abatement costs.

Integration of AIoT into measurement and reporting: The amount of labor required to simply categorize and organize the data from multiple business units and assets is immense due to the myriad of databases and systems involved. With AIoT integration, real-time activity level and asset inventory data can be sourced from a variety of systems seamlessly. Data can be structured, collected, and transformed into reports for accurate emissions monitoring and measurement, reducing overall efforts around data collection and enhancing data quality and report resolutions.

Integration of carbon offsets and carbon offsetting: The carbon offset market plays an important role in achieving global net-zero emissions goals for countries and organizations, with an estimated addressable market size of $200 billion by 2050. Verification of carbon offsetting and trading difficulties plague the industry, however. As a result of technology, RECs can be validated in near real-time, and a marketplace for carbon offsetting can be created that is affordable and fast. An organization could use offset integration to provide a global pool of offsets, improving the ease of trade and emissions planning, reducing organizational hassle, and optimizing REC purchase and retirement timings.