The Internet of Things (IoT) has a significant economic and environmental impact owing to the billions of interconnected devices that use various types of sensors to communicate through the Internet. By next year, 45% of all internet traffic will be machine-to-machine communication driven by IoT networks.
Emerging technologies such as 5G, blockchain, and AI are unlocking new IoT use cases in the enterprise. The strategic use of IoT devices allows businesses to create new business models and revenue-generating opportunities as well as drive greater efficiencies across the value chain.
However, a billion interconnected devices imply significant energy consumption and data management impacting the carbon footprint, along with adding to the growing e-waste (a significant concern when it comes to battery-operated devices). This is worrying. Particularly, since in the past few years, sustainability has become imperative for businesses in their role as responsible global organizations.
Businesses are therefore looking at examining sustainable and energy-efficient practices and strategies for IoT deployments to undo the harm for well-rounded environmental, social, and economic benefits.
Greening of IoT by manufacturing energy efficient hardware and developing green software can reduce the IoT carbon footprint. Interestingly, IoT facilitates the creation of a sustainable environment by tracking performance of systems in real-time, helping identify opportunities for reduction of energy consumption. Green IoT will further ensure that the increase in use of IoT for building sustainable solutions are not jeopardized by the carbon emissions of the IoT devices themselves.
A move towards Green IoT will encourage the development of energy efficient practices and processes that prioritize resource conservation (while reducing waste) and environmental sustainability (by reducing energy consumption and carbon emissions). Green IoT involves making IT hardware energy efficient and environmentally friendly. As IoT devices work with large volumes of data, Green IoT will also drive the growth of green data centers.
The Green IoT lifecycle
According to an IEEE paper, Green IoT is defined as “the energy efficient procedures (hardware or software) adopted by IoT either to facilitate reducing the greenhouse effect of existing applications and services or to reduce the impact of greenhouse effect of IoT itself.”
The Green IoT life cycle spans the entire IoT product lifecycle – from design to production to deployment, and to recycling – to have minimum negative impact on the environment by facilitating reduction in energy consumption and carbon emissions. A circular economy model, where sustainability starts at the design stage instead of the recycling stage is recommended.
By using energy-efficient sensors, application of AI and machine learning, as well as green software solutions across the IoT product lifecycle, organizations can march towards practical sustainability with reduced carbon emissions and enhanced energy efficiency.
Application of greater power efficiency in IoT deployments refers to both hardware and software. It includes designing energy efficient computing devices with minimal emissions and communication protocols and networking architectures that use energy efficient routing schemes like green wireless sensor networks or cognitive radio systems. There is also a need to develop green software by making appropriate choice of programming language, AI models, and software development techniques for minimal computational and, therefore, environmental impact. Greenness in software, in fact, is emerging as a quality attribute. The nonprofit Green Software Foundation promotes green software development focusing on sustainable software which reduces carbon emissions. Sustainability needs to be a core priority for software teams, just as performance, security, and cost are.
Organizations also need to look at green data centers (with high service proximity and the capacity for self-adaptation or self-scalability) and green cloud (a practice that focuses on optimizing cloud energy and resource consumption) and transition to energy-efficient smarter, greener facilities to help meet ESG goals.
As smart, connected devices grow across industries, it is anticipated that the global economic impact of IoT will be between $3.9 trillion to $11.1 trillion a year by 2025. While emerging technologies are unlocking new use cases in enterprises and driving business efficiencies, environmental sustainability must be a core focus to allay concerns around collateral energy consumption and emissions.
Green IoT can enable a healthier, safer environment while taking advantage of smart and intelligent connectivity. Development of low-power components, energy harvesting, green installations, efficient networking and communication, greener software practices, etc., together contribute to the development of Green IoT that is imperative for organizations to meet their sustainability goals.
Future developments around self-sustaining power sources, intelligent sleep mode algorithms for IoT devices, deployment of autonomous and sustainable IoT networks, and innovative energy harvesting solutions will further minimize environmental disruption, and can greatly contribute to a sustainable, intelligent, and green ecosystem.
The author is the Vice President and Global Head of Sustainability and Design Consulting Services, Infosys
Disclaimer: The views expressed are solely of the author and ETCIO.com does not necessarily subscribe to it. ETCIO.com shall not be responsible for any damage caused to any person/organization directly or indirectly.
