BusinessClimate ChangeInnovationSustainability

How Technology Can Help Solve The Climate Crisis

The global climate crisis is the single largest challenge that humanity has ever faced.

The questions are unavoidable:

• How are we going to solve the climate problem?

• What will it take to do it?

• And how soon?

What is technological innovation going to bring to the fight against climate change? That’s a big question, and one that’s still being articulated by environmentalists, entrepreneurs, and scholars.

What is already clear though, is that the potential for technological impacts is enormous. There are thousands of start-ups and established companies exploring countless techniques and technologies to help mitigate or adapt to climate change.

I’ve been tracking the growth of these climate technologies and their potential for the last few years, and each time I speak with a company about their work, I think about the larger picture. I imagine the technologies that will be part of a solution to climate change. The technologies that will be part of the effort to keep us from crossing tipping points and entering a period of unstoppable climate chaos.

I often think about how we are going to invent and implement ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and use more renewable sources of energy.

And then I think about how we are going to adapt.

The idea that we’re going to avoid climate change by simply switching to renewables is outdated, and no longer supported by scientific evidence. It’s not enough to simply shift our energy supply to renewables. We have to adapt to the changing climate that our pollution has caused.

When I started to look more deeply at the technology involved, I was immediately fascinated. There are thousands of start-up businesses that are inventing climate-specific technologies, and it’s only going to get bigger.

The Movement Is Growing Daily

Over recent decades, awareness of the potential of technology to address the world's sustainability challenges has increased.

Nowhere is this more visible than in the way in which we view business. This has progressed from traditional sectors such as manufacturing, agriculture and industrial production to the so-called industrials that have grown out businesses in technology, travel, and the public sector.

Most of these sectors have embraced a combination of an environmental management model, in some cases assisted by in house environmental specialists. Together with the development and implementation of new technologies, makes these sectors the green businesses of the future.

With the growth of these new business sectors, the need to develop and supply new technologies at low cost and high efficiency has resulted in the most amazing surge of development of new green technologies. Some of these are self-sustaining, others will payback in the long term. It is these developments in technology that make the green business revolution possible.

What You Can Do Today

The next step is clear. It is now up to today's business leaders to introduce these technology solutions into the workplace. It may seem like a small step, but every small step counts. You can't climb a ladder if the rungs are too far apart. By taking those small steps one rung at a time, you are doing your part to preserve our planet and safeguard our economic future.