Carbon footprint is a big issue right now but how modern technology can help reduce the carbon footprint where technology has reached every aspect of our life. The carbon footprint that mankind leaves is a burden weighing heavily on the planet, and this increasingly becomes difficult for our world to bear. Then, what is it that we leave in excess amounts in our everyday life, and how can it be reduced with the help of technology?
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What is a carbon footprint and how does it affect the world?
A carbon footprint is basically a shadow for each of us on this earth, in as much as it is consuming its resources. It represents the volume of carbon dioxide (CO₂) and other greenhouse gases, emitted in the atmosphere as a result of human activity, from industrial production up to everyday energy and home consumption.
Several key sectors leave the largest carbon footprints: energy, transport, industry, and agriculture.
Countries with the highest CO₂ emissions: China; USA; India; Russia; and Japan.
The more greenhouse gases we emit into the atmosphere, the warmer our planet becomes. It seems as if the blanket of gases traps the solar heat on Earth and makes the greenhouse effect possible. This way, an increase in air temperatures and warming of the Earth are made possible.
Then, it causes climate change to manifest by showing it through changes in normal weather, rising sea levels, loss of biodiversity, and other negative consequences for the environment and man.
Beginning from the period of the Industrial Revolution (the late 18th-19th centuries), mankind has exceeded the limit of producing 1.5 trillion tons of carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere.
It is necessary to reduce the level of emissions to an urgent level of temperature growth. It all requires common efforts of states and corporations on the level of each individual.
Working on an environmental problem: from awareness to action.
In the middle of the twentieth century, the world started noticing the results of traces left by human beings on the planet. One of the first people who noticed a course for climate change was Charles Keeling. He began keeping something similar to a diary of the Earth’s atmosphere in 1958. The scientist measured the level of carbon dioxide in two places: near the South Pole and on top of the Hawaiian volcano Mauna Loa.
These sites have been referred to as high-flux sites because they are remote from any source of pollution or other influence from outside that may have adulterated the exact values of CO2 measurements within the atmosphere.
His records revealed an alarming trend: carbon dioxide is becoming more and more abundant. This curve has been termed the Keeling curve, which tends to increase carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of our Earth. This has been a part of the strongest arguments supporting confirmation of the hypothesis of global warming.
Progress in carbon awareness led to global policy initiatives in the 1980s and 1990s.
This marked the period during which the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was established, and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Kyoto Protocol were adopted.
It was he who gave a powerful impetus to the development and implementation of new technologies to combat CO₂.
The apogee of the initiatives in this direction is the Paris Agreement of 2015, signed by 196 countries. All accepted commitments to develop national plans for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and adaptation plans.
Meanwhile, according to the agreement, “net zero” (or “carbon neutrality”) is to be achieved no later than 2050—a balance is to be reached between the volume of human-generated greenhouse gas emissions and its absorption from the atmosphere by various technological methods.
All these works have been developed step by step, leading to some real actions and different methods developed to fight for a healthy planet, as we will see.
How artificial intelligence can help reduce your carbon footprint?
Key point: The contribution of digitalization to the reduction of carbon emissions worldwide is very high. CO₂-reduction technologies scaling up will help in reducing this level by 20% in 2050.
And, due to artificial intelligence (AI), such big new possibilities are opening up today to bring improvement in efficiency in resource management, optimal energy consumption, and saving of waste in the three dirtiest sectors: energy, industry, and transport.
AI in Energy
The shift will be helped by innovation in more sustainable and efficient systems, given that carbon pollution from industry is already at record heights. It has grown about 50% since the turn of the century to reach a new record level of 37.2 billion tons in 2023.
The promise of holding from their potential to revolutionize the sector, AI is. The AI algorithm could, therefore, derive energy consumption data for the building and would help in an automatic adjustment of heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems to waste minimal energy.
For example, Google optimized the cooling system in its data centers by using the machine learning algorithm DeepMind. This enabled us to reduce the amount of energy consumed by 40%.
Industrial facilities also have their own developed Energy Management System by Siemens, using machine learning for more efficient use through its analysis.
AI in industry
One of the most promising areas in this sector is predictive maintenance. In general, it involves monitoring equipment data using machine learning techniques to predict the fault before it occurs. With this, businesses can only affect maintenance when needed, thus reducing consumption of resources and downtimes. This will allow running the machinery in a more optimized manner for CO2 emission reduction. Already, General Electric is using this technology. Developed its platform, Predix, which provides solutions for predictive maintenance to be used in driving efficiency up and lowering a carbon footprint in the company’s operations.
AI vehicles
Statistics show that passenger cars and vans account for about 10 percent of global CO₂ emissions.
Machine-learning algorithms analyze large data sets on traffic, weather conditions, and other factors so that they can choose the most suitable route for the occasion. That way, the system would reduce the consumption of fuel and hence lessen the emission of carbon.
For example, in over 1,000 cities, AI is used by Optibus to help in the optimization of public transport routes for effective service delivery. This indicates that the Optibus platform can assist in movements for the vehicle and driver according to planning to reduce costs and carbon emissions. That is 1.2 million tons of carbon emissions that were averted from suffocating the world by Google Maps, through machine learning. This is equivalent to slamming on the brakes of a half-million vehicles all at once.
The firm soon started turning a green solution by adding an option in its way of driving on roads that would consume less fuel and hence aid in carbon emission.
The technology has huge potential because many routing tasks are still far from ideal. For all that 97% of which Google insists are correct predictions, we, from our driving experience, know that the navigators do not distribute traffic well in helping with car flow. Real accuracy of the routes is going to be a big growth point for optimization; this is going to help us realize the goal of “net zero.
In conclusion, technology can help reduce the carbon footprint
Still, relatively little data has emerged on the very fresh systems to reach a solid conclusion about their use in cutting CO2 emissions. That’s still pretty far from what we need to achieve carbon neutrality. The development of digital technologies into daily living and their integration into our daily lives, with an orientation to both finance-saving and money-making (including home energy), brings us to a point of perspective wherein ten years, research will seem on the leading contribution of such solutions made.
That’s for sure, and all the more artificial intelligence itself should learn. It is essential to change the habits of everyone as far as it is possible and reasonable. The more people get involved with the problem, the more the result will be, and especially in interaction with new smart technologies.
Feel free the send your feedback on how we can reduce the carbon footprint.