Emerging Technologies and Trends Impact Radar: Environmental Sustainability

Gartner Report

Global Warming Countdown

On April 4, 2022, the IPCC UN climate experts released their third report dedicated to recommendations and solutions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHG), to achieve the 2015 Paris Agreement goals to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

They first suggest replacing fossil fuels with low-carbon or neutral energy sources. They also recommend implementing CO2 tracking and removal techniques and structural changes to reduce energy demand and accelerate energy sobriety. These steps include reducing meat consumption, limiting any type of wastage and especially food, improving building insulation, developing soft mobility and rethinking urban-area development, etc.).

Decarbonation, a Challenge for All Businesses

Gartner, echoing these statements, explains that “on the path of a ‘net zero’ future by around 2050, renewable energy sources and energy efficiency will address around 55% of GHG emission reductions. The proliferation of microgrids, energy harvesting technologies and organizations adopting strategies for asset optimization will therefore be crucial.”

Gartner further states that “the remaining 45% are derived from everyday activities and specifically the production, distribution and consumption of general products, services and goods. Therefore, every company has to become a sustainable business and will have to embrace sustainability by design and the principles of the circular economy.”

Technologies and Techs for Environmental Sustainability

In its “Emerging Technologies and Trends Impact Radar: Environmental Sustainability”¹ report, released in April 2022, Gartner identified 26 emerging technologies and trends grouped in five key themes – Energy, Sustainable Business, Climate, Circularity, and Biodiversity & Food & Agriculture – that can help technology service providers (TSPs) face decarbonation challenges, in two ways:

By making sure that “environmental sustainability becoming an integral part of TSPs’ product strategy“
By explaining “how TSPs, as enablers of sustainability efforts, can strive forward in helping their customers to meet their environmental sustainability goals”.

Among other technologies, Gartner highlights that “one key driver for improved data collection will be the proliferation of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled devices” and explains that “they will increase data capture in terms of quantity, quality (accuracy) and timeliness (real time)”. Gartner notes that “for example, the growing adoption of standardized carbon measurement tools and subsequent reporting by large organizations has improved the visibility of carbon emissions significantly over the past three years”.

Time to Act!

We believe CxOs, product, technology, operations and marketing leaders will find concrete and useful analysis of the maturity, market momentum and influence of emerging technologies to:

Define appropriate strategy to increase product-and-service ecological stewardship throughout their lifecycles,
Integrate a “sustainability by design” strategy to build differentiators and defend leadership,
Map offering capabilities to answer both their own organizations’ and customers’ sustainability goals, and
Rethink and shift paradigms around business models, circular economy, energy efficiency and renewable.

¹Gartner, “Emerging Technologies and Trends Impact Radar: Environmental Sustainability”, By Annette Zimmermann, Aapo Markkanen, Bettina Tratz-Ryan, Ed Anderson, Roberta Cozza, Eric Goodness, Lauren Wheatley, Lloyd Jones, Milly Xiang, Bill Ray, Sridhar Srinivasan, Sarah Watt, Rajesh Kandaswamy, Svetlana Golden, 4 April 2022.

Gartner Disclaimer:

This graphic was published by Gartner, Inc. as part of a larger research document and should be evaluated in the context of the entire document. The Gartner document is available upon request Kerlink.