January 22, 2024
Sustainable technology will continue to take center stage during 2024 as countries and corporations continue to work on meeting net-zero commitments. At the same time, individuals will increasingly leverage technology in order to minimize their personal impact on the environment.
Sustainable technology includes more environmentally-friendly ways of doing things we already do – such as the electric cars, bikes and public transport that will continue to increase their market share in 2024. It also includes novel solutions to environmental problems, such as carbon capture and storage, as well as green and renewable energy technologies. The circular economy will become an increasingly important concept as durability, recyclability and reusability are built directly into products at the design stage. And the tech world will further embrace ideas such as green cloud computing, where infrastructure and services prioritize the reduction of energy consumption and carbon emissions and sustainable apps – software tools designed to help us live in a more eco-friendly manner.
Challenges that developers and users of sustainable technology will need to face during 2024 will include a need to develop ethical and sustainable methods for sourcing and extracting materials needed for manufacturing devices, infrastructure demands created by changing consumer habits such as the adoption of electric vehicles, and potential disparities between different geographic or socio-economic groups in their ability to access green alternatives. We will also become increasingly alert to the presence of greenwashing – superficial efforts intended purely to generate positive PR around a particular technology
