Green tech is poised to help companies around the globe achieve carbon emission reduction goals. Climate tech solutions are critical for reaching net zero in the coming years, but effectively fighting climate change requires understanding what green tech is and how its impact is measured.
What is green tech?
Green technology is a broad category of new technologies designed to reduce humanity’s climate impact and preserve the environment. Green tech uses science to facilitate initiatives like carbon emissions reductions and renewable energy usage that promote environmental sustainability.
Startup companies and entrepreneurs typically create these eco-friendly inventions to help larger, established corporations adopt environmentally conscious business models.
This can include reducing their carbon footprint by abandoning fossil fuels, using green transportation, or many other efforts.
Cleantech is a type of green tech that reduces negative environmental impact and enables efficient operation. It targets pollution, waste, and offsets damage from other technologies while purifying natural resources.
Are green tech and climate tech the same thing?
Climate technology is another subtype of green tech; it focuses on addressing the causes of climate change. Most climate tech solutions aim to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions through initiatives such as afforestation, carbon capture, geoengineering, and agri-tech.
While cleantech does overlap with climate tech somewhat, as they are both types of green tech dedicated to clean energy solutions, the latter focuses on climate impact.
Environmental technology is another category of green tech. It enables the conservation of ecological resources through sustainability. Even deep tech will play an important role in solving the climate crisis.
How is climate change measured?
Knowing how climate change is measured helps green tech companies develop practical tools for curbing slow yet substantial climate change trends. Every branch of science has its way of measuring climate change, including biologists, geologists, oceanographers, chemists, and physicists.
Some of the methods are:
Gaining insight from consecutive growth rings in old tree trunks, coral, and stalagmites that tell us about climate conditions over the centuries.
Analyzing ancient air bubbles and water trapped in places like Antarctic ice slabs, which shed light on the atmosphere and temperatures hundreds of thousands of years ago.
Measuring carbon dioxide gas in the air every year and tracking the types and amounts over time.
Deploying robots into the ocean to collect data on the water’s temperature and salinity.
Aggregating yearly weather patterns and records to notice long-term patterns.
Using satellites to monitor melting glaciers and sea ice.
Tracing the temperature of the Earth’s surface and sea.
New technologies allow scientists to calculate changes in the climate that were not possible to measure previously. They can use climate models to run simulations well into the future and back in the past.
The most reliable measurement methods of climate impact use a blend of ecological, historical, and technological data.
What are the types of green technology?
There are over a dozen different types of green tech, each designed to cultivate a different aspect of the Earth’s natural balance. Major examples include:
Solar energy: Solar panels are an affordable and scalable form of renewable energy in locations with consistent sunshine.
Wind energy: Wind turbines provide cheaper energy than even coal plants do. Engineers are still improving turbine designs to address intermittency and other issues.
Tidal energy: Tidal energy is a renewable energy source that generates power by harnessing the kinetic energy produced by the movement of tides, though its implementation can be complex and costly.
Energy storage: Different types of batteries are being created to better store green energy for distribution and use among modernized households.
Eco Transportation: The automotive industry is making a concerted effort to launch new zero-emission electric vehicles. Hydrogen power is still under consideration, too.
Water purification: Groundwater and surface water are being polluted by contaminated wastewater, so technology aims to preserve clean water supplies.
Recycling and waste management: An overabundance of non-compostable trash has been plaguing the world for years. Many tech companies are striving to solve the plastic waste problem through new recycling methods.
Self-sufficient buildings: More structures are running independently of energy grids by having their own sustainable sources of energy like solar panels.
Vertical farming: Crops grown in stacked vertical layers use less space, soil, and water than traditional field farming. This could help solve food production problems.
Emissions treatment: Many industrial companies are already regulating their facilities’ exhaust air by controlling methane and carbon dioxide emissions. Carbon capture, utilization, and storage technologies help power plants accomplish this.
Waste-to-Energy: W2E technology does exactly what it says by finding waste treatment and transformation processes that convert trash into energy.
Biofuels: In contrast to fossil fuels that come from exhaustible resources, biofuels come from renewable sources, emit less greenhouse gas, and are fully biodegradable.
What are the benefits of green tech?
Green technology offers many advantages for the Earth, its inhabitants, and our way of life. Using green tech to unlock better energy sources and mitigate environmental harm can:
Reduce utility bills in residential and business buildings
Make the air clean to breathe and water clean to drink
Decrease trash that ends up in landfills taking up space and contaminating the environment
Improve people’s physical health and mental well-being through better standards of living
Lessen the need for harmful energy procurement methods like fracking
Create new jobs in urban and rural areas
Become cheaper the more it’s improved and distributed
Protect the long-term state of the Earth by offsetting climate change
How is green technology a solution to climate change?
Does green tech offer mitigation to fight climate change? Yes! Many green technologies have proven to be effective in the abatement of GHG emissions and in restoring ecosystems. And when it comes to saving our planet, every effort counts!
Green technology and climate change are closely related, as eco-friendly tech is vital in curbing global emissions and promoting sustainable development. Developing more eco-conscious innovations will reduce the deterioration of our natural resources and ecosystems.
The best green technologies neutralize or even offset the adverse effects of other technologies on the environment.
Ways that green technology fights climate change include:
Forecasting the potential impact of negative practices and positive initiatives via deep tech climate models
Calculating the reduction potential of new methodologies on CO2 emissions
Gathering real-time data from data sources around the globe to track climate changes and trends
Giving corporations the means to achieve decarbonization
Replacing outdated, toxic operations with low-carbon alternatives and reduced energy consumption
Powering offices and factories with renewable energy and improving energy efficiency
Empowering better land use that doesn’t waste natural resources
Using gas-less EVs for supply chain transportation and distribution channels
How do we know which green technologies are making an impact? Certain key performance indicators correlate to the environmental impact of green tech, measuring its impact:
Reduction in energy consumption
Transition to renewable energy sources
Carbon emissions reductions
Reduction in negative environmental impact
Clean energy produced
Each of these aspects has specific metrics to measure improvement, such as carbon footprint tools, energy efficiency tools, and sustainability tools.
This is how the United Nations plans to measure green technology’s effects. Its Goal 7 targets concern affordable and clean energy and focus on significantly improving clean infrastructures and providers.
Looking for a green tech company?
The green tech industry is waiting for you! There are numerous employment vacancies in the industry that need your tech skills to bring about global change through climate tech solutions.
More and more tech companies are enacting environmental, social, and governance (ESG) rules. Decision-making stakeholders are hiring green tech experts to help them enact positive improvements and avoid greenwashing.
They’re following the example of big corporations like Alphabet and Apple that have gone carbon neutral, as well as early-stage startups like Form Energy and AMP Robotics inventing new tools to fight climate change.
Want to join a company that’s taking climate action? Apply to join MVP Match. We connect freelance tech professionals with businesses seeking enthusiastic, experienced candidates like you. We’ll set you up to make a positive impact on the environment with a career in green tech.
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