[INFORMATIVE] The Role of Technology in Promoting Sustainability

The Role of Technology in Promoting Sustainability

By: Raina Liu

Sustainability has now become the need of the hour for the world; given the ecological implications faced on earth due to changes in climatic conditions, the depletion of resources, and ever-growing levels of pollution. At the center of these sets of challenges lies how technology embeds its use in the most ways of revolutionizing energy production, waste management, and mobility of persons and goods. I will describe how technology promotes renewable energy, smart ways of managing waste, and eco-friendly transportation to indicate the benefits and challenges ensuing from these inventions.

Indeed, there is no doubt that the contribution of technology towards sustainability has been most important in the sense that it helps maintain the production of renewable energy. According to the United States Energy Information Administration, the energy demand around the world is expected to increase by as much as 50% by 2050- hence, the demand for cleaner and more sustainable sources of energy continuously increases. For instance, despite serving as feedstocks for industrial development over the last one-and-a-half century, the United Nations found fossil fuels to account for 75% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

Solar energy belongs to the family of promising technologies in renewable energies. During the last decade, the development of photovoltaic cells used for converting sunlight into electrical energy has improved a lot. It currently costs 89% less than it did back in 2010, according to (IRENA), The International Renewable Energy Agency, something that is making it increasingly competitive when compared with fossil fuels. Solar energy comprises about 11% of today’s global renewable energy production, a number that surely will keep growing with more countries involved in building solar energy infrastructures. As a result, this has ensured the efficiency of the solar panel in generating more electricity from the sun. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory, (NREL), even reports that in recent years, commercial solar panels reached efficiency from 15% up to 22% in recent years.

Technology goes further and pushes it up even in areas like wind energy. New types of wind turbines do exist, and starting from some point, they also become efficient and produce more volumes of electricity. Already in some countries, such as Denmark and the United Kingdom, this constitutes a big share of the national energy mix. For example, per the same report by World Wind Energy Association, nearly 50% of its electricity produced in Denmark is by wind. These are made possible through advances in turbine design and improvements in the materials used, which allow extending the height and length of turbines to longer lengths in order to capture more energy from the wind.

Energy storage technologies are also under construction as a way to overcome one of the huge challenges linked with renewable energy: intermittency. Besides, solar and wind resources are intermittent resources; they cannot meet peak periods of demand each and every time. This can be counted as one of the reasons battery technology has been developing these days: enabling excess generation times in low demand periods when renewable energy is integrated onto the power grid, as was the case with lithium-ion batteries. Correspondingly, lithium-ion batteries have seen their costs drop a huge 85% since 2010, according to BloombergNEF, in the last decade alone, hence allowing for the integration of renewable energy onto the power grid.

Yes, with the many benefits of renewable energy come a lot of challenges. One of the larger limitations is huge investments in infrastructure. While economies of scale have indeed made renewable energy generation cheaper in many cases, the major infrastructure elements which would fully support the process remain fantastically expensive to install, including but not limited to transmission lines, energy storage systems, and smart grids. To put this into perspective, the International Energy Agency estimates that, by 2050, the world will need to invest $131 trillion in energy system infrastructure as part of any transition towards a low-carbon economy. If that weren’t enough, many renewable energy technologies depend on supplies of rare earth metals, including neodymium for wind turbines and cadmium for solar panels. An estimate by the European Commission suggests that 71% of the global supply of rare earth elements emanate from China; besides environmental degradation due to mining operations, there is also a concern related to disruption in the supply chain.

Perhaps another critical aspect of sustainability is waste management. Currently, more than 2.01 billion metric tons of refuse are generated annually by the citizens of this world. The World Bank estimates that by 2050, these will increase by 70% more. Landfilling and incineration were the traditional mechanisms of handling waste; these are indeed unsustainable in view of the fact that such environmental degradation causes loose greenhouse gasses into the environment, contaminating air, soil, and water. Thankfully, technology has been playing an important role in changing how we approach garbage processing in this respect, with a view to making the process more effective and friendly to the environment.

Specific examples of such technological innovations that might drive efficiency and effectiveness are integrating IoT devices within the system for managing wastes. IoT sensors are attached to respective waste bins to monitor their filling level in real time. The fact that such information is relayed efficiently to the services responsible for collecting wastes helps in routing the collection of wastes and reducing the number of trips made to empty those respective bins. To this end, the practice contributes to fuel consumption reduction and hence less emission from the vehicles involved in waste collection. Smart waste management, according to Forest & Sullivan’s calculation, reduces up to 30% operating costs for municipalities.

Adding the two together-robotics with IoT-the processes of recycling are greatly improved in tremendous magnitudes of efficiency. Indeed, sorting out such a huge amount of waste materials by human workers is very time-consuming and prone to errors in a traditional recycling facility. The robots, now powered by AI algorithms, will carry out the task at incomparably higher speeds and accuracy. For instance, it is said that at Stanford University, engineering researchers have been working on a robotic arm already capable of sorting out recyclable materials with an accuracy rate of 85%, referred to as “RecycleBot.” This could have several implications for increases in recycling rates and huge reductions in the rate of materials going to landfills. While national rates of recycling-reported by the Environmental Protection Agency- increase a great deal at 32.1% in the United States in 2018, this rate can go manifold with an increase in the effectiveness of the waste sorting technologies.

The other positive trend is the increasing rise in waste-to-energy technologies. These facilities turn the produced waste into usable forms of energy- many times in forms of heat and electricity. It does this through incineration or anaerobic digestion. These waste-to-energy plants reduce not only the quantity of wastes going to landfills but also provide a renewable energy source. In Sweden, for example, nearly 50% of household wastes are incinerated in waste-to-energy plants, part of that nation’s stated goal of taking zero waste to landfills.

There is, however, a set of limitations that smart technologies for waste management face. Cost is certainly one big stumbling block: basic investments in the installation of IoT sensors, robotics, and waste-to-energy plants are huge and thus beyond the reach of most municipalities around the world, let alone those of the developing world. Another major problem that still persists worldwide is contamination of recyclables. The levels of inefficiency contributed by food waste mean that even the most advanced sorting technologies cannot get around the preponderance of non-recyclable materials in the streams. In this regard, the UN Environment Programme estimated that 20-30% of materials in many countries are recycled but contaminated and hence reduce the overall effectiveness of recycling programs. Besides all these, public involvement in waste reduction and proper recycling provides a development ground for these technologies. After all, pure technological advancements cannot do much without widespread sustainable management of wastes on the part of people and businesses.

Another field in which the development of technology is playing a highly important role with regard to promoting sustainability is that of transportation. According to the International Energy Agency, it contributes about 24% of carbon dioxide emissions around the world and thus forms one of the major contributors to climate change. Much greater emphasis has been given, in this respect, to developing eco-friendly transportation technologies that would reduce emissions and increase efficiency.

Of the many radical game-changers in technology, some have to do with electric vehicles. Electric vehicles produce no tailpipe emissions and would go a long way in lowering the carbon footprint of the transport sector. According to the International Council on Clean Transportation, EVs emit 50-70% fewer lifecycle emissions than gasoline-powered cars. Most of the world’s governments have offered incentives to their consumers, therefore, to switch over to an EV. Brands such as Tesla, Nissan, and General Motors have in turn led a charge in the production of long-distance yet reasonable affordable electric vehicles. According to an estimate by the International Energy Agency, more than 10 million vehicles sold globally accounted for 14% of the world’s new car sales in 2022 alone. This is a figure likely to spiral upwards in coming time with unabated declines in battery costs and increased charging infrastructure.

The other promising technology could be that of autonomous vehicles. This indeed is an obvious technological prospect for cutting fuel consumption and reducing emissions-just by smoothing driving patterns, reducing congestion, and optimizing driving efficiency. In other words, autonomous vehicle technologies depend on sensors, cameras, and machine learning algorithms that keep them oriented on the road and make driving decisions. Researchers at The University of Washington have estimated that independently operated vehicles can reduce fuel consumption by up to 15-40% or more because of the degree of operation and type of driving environment. In addition, carpooling with the utilization of autonomous cars would reduce the number of cars on the road even further, thereby eventually reducing emissions and congestion.

Public transit is also one of the beneficiaries of better technologies. Several cities have begun to introduce intelligent transportation systems that reroute using real-time data to optimally route and cut waiting times by putting better and fuller use to public transit. In fact, this could have been long enough in countries like Singapore and Japan to actually reflect a reduction in congestion and increased usage of public transport normally much more sustainable than private car travel. Besides, electrification of bus and rail systems further ecological footprints the public transport system. It is true, for instance, that China has been operating more than 500,000 electric buses- according to the International Energy Agency- and the switch is already substantially clearing the air in mega cities.

But, of course, there are several major hurdles before transport does anything other than get off to a start. The most basic and major reason is that most rural areas and poorer countries lack charging infrastructure. While more networks have been rolled out by governments and private companies, it may take some time to develop the required network for rampant EVs. Besides, while electric vehicles emit less than fuel-run cars, the lithium-ion batteries powering the electric vehicle are not quite environmentally friendly at their production stage. Mining lithium, cobalt, and nickel-very critical in battery production-is extremely injurious to the environment if not well managed. A case in point is the demand for lithium, said by Institute for Sustainable Futures to possibly go as high as 488% by 2050, casting questions on the sustainability at these current rates of mining.

Technology makes such sustainable solutions possible in renewable energies, smart waste management, and eco-friendly transportation. These doubtless will go a long way towards reducing greenhouse gas emissions, saving on natural resources, and generally reducing environmental degradation. They, too, have their challenges that must also be surmounted-high initial costs, infrastructural demands, and resource limitations. It remains immensely valuable that collaboration at policy and practical levels be pursued continually by governments, businesses, and individuals in light of harnessing all the benefits these technologies offer. With every rise of technology to the challenge, its aid shall grant us the ability to continue gradually into a sustainable future for generations onward.


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