According to a climate report from the World Meteorological Organization, global temperatures and sea levels are hitting record highs, while glacier mass is shrinking to all-time lows. As the environmental crisis deepens, questions about technology’s role — both as a contributor to the problem as well as a solution — are coming to the forefront. Although technologies like artificial intelligence have been knocked for causing environmental damage, a category known as “sustainable technology” shows what a more positive relationship between technology and the environment could look like.
Sustainable Technology Definition
Sustainable technology encompasses any technology designed to further environmental, social and governance (ESG) initiatives. Through this framework, companies can develop products and processes that better address climate change and the social good.
Technology is considered “sustainable” when it reduces environmental harm and promotes societal well-being across a company’s operations. This includes things like energy-efficient data centers, electric vehicles and carbon capture storage. In the business world, sustainable technology advances environmental, social and governance (ESG) efforts, helping organizations align their products, services and processes around principles that prioritize a healthier world and the greater good.
What Is Sustainable Technology?
Sustainable technology refers to platforms, devices and systems that are designed to reduce environmental impact, support social responsibility and promote ethical business practices. As a result, these technologies play a key role in advancing ESG initiatives, helping organizations develop products and processes that use fewer resources, generate less waste and contribute to long-term societal well-being.
While greentech and cleantech are terms often associated with sustainable tech, they’re narrower in scope. Greentech focuses on reducing environmental harm specifically through the design and use of a product. Meanwhile, cleantech refers mainly to technologies that limit carbon emissions and air pollution. In addition to covering all technologies that offer environmental benefits, sustainable tech considers what happens to a product once it goes out of use — and how it could potentially impact later generations.
Goals and Benefits of Sustainable Technology
With the objective of reducing companies’ environmental footprint, sustainable technology offers upsides for businesses and society as a whole.
Reducing Carbon Emissions
Traditional sources of energy like oil and gas can produce large amounts of carbon, increasing overall pollution. By promoting the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy, sustainable technologies can help companies lower their carbon emissions and improve the health of the planet.
Preserving Natural Resources
At its heart, sustainability is the idea of using resources in ways that ensure they last over the long term. Sustainable technologies accomplish this by encouraging organizations to conserve the amount of energy their facilities and processes demand. They also emphasize practices like reusing materials and limiting resource extraction, ensuring resources remain for future generations.
Promoting Circular Economy Practices
Closely related to the principle of conserving resources is the framework of establishing a circular economy. The ultimate goal of this type of economy is to eliminate all waste or reduce it as much as possible. Repairing devices, reusing products and repurposing materials for another purpose are some methods of a circular economy.
Improving Long-Term Economic Efficiency
Investing in sustainable technologies can boost business’ budgets in the long run. For example, companies can save money by using less electricity to maintain office buildings. Organizations can also use sustainable tech to cut down on unnecessary processes and waste, developing leaner and more effective operations.
Supporting Social Equity and Global Development Goals
Society in general can benefit from the wide adoption of sustainable technology. With reductions in pollution and toxic waste, cities can eliminate so-called “sacrifice zones” that expose residents to high amounts of harmful chemicals. The push for technologies like public transit systems can also grant broader access to mobility while conserving energy. And the need for sustainable tech can lead to new jobs and industries, stimulating economic growth in various countries.
Examples of Sustainable Technologies
Sustainable technology spans physical hardware and software and tools that encourage healthy practices. Here are just a few examples.
Renewable Energy Systems
Solar panels, wind turbines and hydroelectric systems are examples of technology that use renewable resources to supply electricity to plants, offices and other structures. In the case of solar panels, thousands of them can be used to run solar farms. Microgrids may use renewable energy sources like solar or wind power to operate as well.
Green Building Technologies
Green building is a sustainability-focused approach that begins long before construction begins. It involves designing structures with eco-friendly materials and working with communities to ensure construction impacts the surrounding ecosystem as little as possible. Later on, companies can incorporate devices like smart lighting systems and climate control systems to help a building use less energy.
Sustainable Agriculture
Farmers use agricultural robots and drones to pick crops and monitor overall conditions, enabling more precise farming. Systems that combine AI and sensors can also track variables like water and nutrients in the soil, leading to more water-efficient irrigation. And farmers have embraced vertical farming — growing crops on vertical surfaces in indoor facilities year-round.
Circular Economy Innovations
A circular economy strives to reduce — or entirely eliminate — waste by keeping products and materials in circulation through practices like reusing, recycling and repurposing. Companies can contribute to a circular economy by building products that consist of easily replaceable parts, so consumers don’t immediately throw them away. Businesses can also create products with materials that can be broken down and repurposed for other uses.
Eco-Friendly Transportation
Drivers can cut back on their carbon emissions by switching to electric vehicles, and battery swapping limits the number of times drivers need to consume energy at charging stations. Another sustainable form of transportation is mobility as a service. This approach centralizes different forms of transportation on a single platform, so users can quickly navigate public transit and other travel options while reducing their dependence on personal cars.
Low-Power Computing and Sustainable Data Centers
Organizations can adopt green computing to minimize their environmental impact and use IT resources more efficiently. The idea is to reduce the amount of energy computers use by keeping technologies updated, storing data in local environments and using virtual machines, among other practices. On a similar note, companies that build AI products can power their infrastructure with renewable energy sources and make sure they perform well during the most ideal times of the day.
Challenges and Limitations of Sustainable Technology
Sustainable technology is an overwhelmingly positive development, but there are some obstacles companies need to keep in mind before implementing it.
Unsustainable Resource Extraction
While sustainable technologies like electric vehicles offer long-term environmental benefits, the materials needed to build them — lithium, cobalt and various rare earth metals — often come with significant challenges. Extracting and processing these resources can be costly, energy-intensive and damaging to the surrounding environment, leading to habitat destruction and pollution. Plus, there are ethical concerns around the labor practices used to mine these materials.
All of this is to say that even sustainable technology carries its own set of environmental and social complexities.
High Upfront Costs
Although sustainable technologies promise greater efficiency and savings later down the road, they can come with hefty upfront costs due to investments in research and development, new infrastructure, specialized materials and so on. Building electric vehicles or new farming technologies can be a major commitment, and not all businesses have the capital to bear the brunt of these initial costs.
Limited Infrastructure or Access
Adopting technologies like smart devices may require organizations to rework existing tech stacks and infrastructure — a move that some companies may be unwilling or unable to make. And those living in areas that lack access to basic technologies may not be able to secure the materials needed to support sustainable tech.
Greenwashing and Lack of Transparency
Greenwashing occurs when organizations make misleading or inaccurate statements about their sustainability practices. Businesses that fall into this method — whether intentional or not — risk losing the trust of their customers and undermining the credibility of sustainability initiatives overall. A simple way to combat greenwashing is to be as transparent about sustainability efforts as possible, establishing clear-cut goals and methods for measuring progress.
Resource-Intensive Processes
Sustainable technologies often involve additional tools and resources for maintenance. More complex systems demand significant computing power, as well as extensive hardware, software and infrastructure like cables. Managing this can be a tedious process that not all organizations have the resources and personnel to handle.
Regulatory and Standardization Gaps
As of now, there is no officially recognized global framework for establishing and adopting sustainable technologies. How sustainability is viewed in each country can change as well. For example, the Trump administration aims to weaken U.S. energy regulations. It’s difficult to develop sustainable technologies when the goals and standards around them are unclear.
The Future of Sustainable Technology
Advancements in several areas suggest sustainable technology will continue to grow in the coming years, despite the field facing strong policy headwinds.
Cloud and Green AI Approaches
Together, cloud computing and artificial intelligence offer many possibilities for sustainability. Migrating data and tech stacks to cloud platforms has allowed companies to digitize their operations and reduce their CO2 emissions. To become even more efficient, organizations can employ AI to navigate cloud databases, generate predictive analytics and help businesses find other ways to extract insights from the cloud.
Of course, AI requires plenty of resources to operate, but researchers have explored ways to make the technology greener. For example, researchers at Hugging Face built an AI model that chooses the smallest models possible for completing a task. This addresses the issue of popular AI tools always using large language models, which deliver high performance at the cost of consuming a lot of energy. Yale University is experimenting with this approach as well, using a smaller AI model to cut its energy consumption and develop a more sustainable campus.
Biodegradable Electronics
To remove waste from production, researchers are searching for alternatives to non-recyclable materials like plastic. At Dresden University of Technology, researchers have created a prototype for a biodegradable circuit board using leaves, so circuit boards can be composted instead of tossed. Meanwhile, Swiss scientists have crafted a biodegradable 3D-printed battery by mixing fungal cells with the printing ink. These fungi-generated batteries can digest themselves after use, eliminating e-waste from a battery’s life cycle.
Carbon Capture Technology
Carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology separates CO2 from other gases during industrial processes, capturing and compressing it. It then stores the CO2 and repurposes it as needed.
Amid the push for more renewable energy solutions, CCS tech has become more prominent globally. India has made it a core component of its goal to achieve net-zero emissions by 2070, and Canada is pivoting to CCS with a carbon capture gigafactory in British Columbia that can produce carbon capture and removal filters. Putting a more unique spin on CCS, the United Kingdom is working on a project that involves capturing carbon released from the sea. The hope is that this technique will be more efficient than capturing carbon from industrial processes, since greater concentrations of carbon are found in water than in air.
Local Climate Research
The Trump administration has signaled less federal support for sustainable technologies. Within his first month of taking office, Trump introduced policies that favored fossil fuels over renewable energy sources like solar and wind, threatening offshore wind projects and electric vehicle initiatives. This pushback against renewable energy has destabilized efforts by companies to minimize the energy consumption of AI infrastructure as well.
As a result, any kind of sustainable tech innovation in the U.S. is likely to happen at the state level. The University of Massachusetts has embraced this idea, with university president Marty Meehan reaffirming the school as a hub for clean energy, climate tech and sustainability. This comes on the heels of the Massachusetts legislature creating a law that dedicates $1.4 billion in state funding to climate technology. Even with a shifting political landscape, sustainable tech seems set to remain a focus on a more local level.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the most sustainable technology?
There’s no single technology that’s more sustainable than all others. Common examples of sustainable technologies include solar panels, wind turbines, electric vehicles, agricultural robots and energy-efficient appliances.
Is green and sustainable the same thing?
“Green” often refers to technologies that specifically help companies scale back their environmental impact. Sustainable is a broader term that includes technologies that improve not just an organization’s environmental impact, but also its impact on society for the sake of the greater good.
