The 'Clean Dozen' that will help enterprises meet their sustainability goals

At the end of last week, we at Transforma Insights published a comprehensive report looking at the ways in which disruptive new technologies might be applied to help enterprises meet their sustainability goals. The report, ‘Sustainability Enabled by Digital Transformation’, specifically calls out twelve solution areas that enterprises will find useful for reducing CO2 emissions, hydrocarbon fuel consumption, and electricity and water usage, as well as meeting other ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) goals. We also looked at which might help in addressing business goals too. After all, saving the planet is all the easier if it also involves saving money. I've named these solution areas the 'Clean Dozen'.

The 12, which are discussed at great length in the 112 page report are:

• Fleet Operations, including a range of applications associated with the efficient operation and maintenance of vehicle fleets.
• Supply Chain includes a range of applications used to improve the working and efficiency of supply chain operations such as sourcing, logistics, transportation, warehousing, manufacturing and production.
• Smart Cities comprises of wide spectrum of smart city applications ranging from street lighting control to traffic management and parking space monitoring.
• Smart Public Transport solutions that enable tracking of buses, assets that are part of sharing schemes (such as bikes, e-scooters, cars).
• Smart Buildings, technologies used to monitor and control the uses of resources (such as electricity, heating, cooling, water) in a building.
• Smart Grid, including all aspects of grid operations, energy generation, smart metering, transmission and distribution.
• Campus Microgrids refers to a network of distributed energy resources (DERs) for managing electricity flow in a campus location.
• Remote Monitoring & Maintenance includes a range of applications for remote monitoring and maintaining the condition of machines.
• Smart Healthcare solutions used to remotely monitor the health of people.
• Drone-based Solutions that enable efficient maintenance and monitoring of infrastructure in buildings, wind farms with drone-based inspection.
• Smart Agriculture includes a range of applications used to make farming methods more efficient while increasing yield.
• Efficient Operations, other technology use cases that contribute towards sustainability initiatives but that are not related to IoT.

Between them, these solutions account for enormous potential savings in greenhouse gases and other metrics relevant for meeting ESG goals. Smart Buildings is arguably the number one use case, with significant impact on CO2 reduction, hydrocarbon fuel use, electricity and water. With buildings accounting for 55% of global energy consumption, it's no surprise that even modest savings here can have a very positive effect on overall environmental impact. It also has a fantastic impact on other ESGs, particularly around improving the home and working environment. And hand-in-hand with this, the savings accruing from reducing power consumption through optimising heating or air-conditioning or switching off light, are massive, meaning that such an approach has a very positive effect on a company's bottom line.

The report examines, for each of the Clean Dozen, the ways in which they have been deployed, lessons on likely impact from real-world case studies and illustrative scenarios of potential savings. All of this aimed at helping enterprises understand the best ways in which they can meet their ESG goals.