How AI is Making Smart Buildings Greener, More Sustainable
Advances in digital systems are making it possible to build and retrofit office buildings, datacenters, factories, and hotels to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and support maximum sustainability.
As CIOs and other executives look for ways to expand sustainability initiatives, there’s a growing awareness that initiatives can’t stop at the four walls of the data center or office building. Today’s structures can contain hundreds of thousands of components that consume energy and add to an organization’s carbon footprint.
In fact, buildings consume one-third of all energy globally and produce one-quarter of all greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs), according to The World Resources Institute. What’s more, business and IT leaders are often narrowly focused on improving sustainability in data centers and procuring greener computing systems. Yet they overlook critical ways that technology can shrink a carbon footprint.
“There is a growing awareness that buildings and workspaces are a crucial part of sustainability initiatives,” states Bryon Carlock, National Real Estate Practice Leader for consulting firm PwC. “Understanding and managing energy use and embedded carbon in buildings plays an important role in limiting Scope 1 and Scope 2 CO2 emissions.”
To be sure, significant advances in digital systems -- the Internet of Things (IoT), analytics software, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), 3-D printing and more -- are making it possible to build and retrofit office buildings, data centers, factories, hotels and other structures to support maximum sustainability.
Says Carlock: “The technology now exists to transform the way we build and manage energy systems within buildings. We’re able to put data to use and drive enormous improvements in energy use and overall sustainability.”