How we can use technology to combat climate change

Mark Elliott, CivTech Programme Director

With COP26 finally underway in Glasgow, climate change has never been higher on the agenda. We caught up with our director, Mark Elliott, to hear his personal thoughts on how utilising technology is crucial in the fight against climate change, and about the importance of the work he does with CivTech to help tech companies meet their ambitions in the race to net zero and beyond.

Why is technology key in the fight against climate change?

First, we need to establish what we mean by technology. You might think it’s simply digital, or code, but there’s more to it than that. Tech might best be described as how we apply what we know so we can create more efficient and innovative methods of achieving tasks. Essentially, it allows us to function smarter, faster, more cost effectively and simply better than before.

Technology is part of nearly every aspect of our lives. It’s what keeps the lights on (quite literally!) and what has helped to give you the skills and means to read these words. However, technology contributes greatly to climate change through carbon emissions. If we take a look at the digital currency Bitcoin, research seems to indicate it consumes 0.55% of the global electricity production a year. This is the same amount of electricity used annually by entire countries the size of Malaysia or Sweden. And that’s just one, granted the largest, of the cryptocurrencies on the market.

It’s clear to see just how detrimental technology can be to greenhouse gases. If we’re not careful (and let’s be clear, we haven’t been) then Earth’s environment will continue to rapidly deteriorate. That being said, technology is the tool for our survival. Tech has the potential to undermine climate change and still positively impact other areas of our lives.

Take a look at how we globally adjusted to working from home during the Covid-19 pandemic as an example. Just from this semi-temporary shift carbon emissions have dropped 7%. While everyone working from home isn’t exactly ideal, it shows we are capable of using technology to fight climate change while still enjoying the benefits and convenience it offers.

How can we use technology to prepare ourselves for challenges we will face in the future?

The best way we can ready ourselves for what lies ahead is to direct our collective focus towards climate change as THE primary concern. Instead of working reactively, we should be proactive in our approach to cut down greenhouse gas emissions. Had we spent time investing in greener technologies decades ago, we would undoubtedly be in a much better position now.

At CivTech we help organisations recognise their current issues and weak points. We then move outwards and ask, in effect, the entire world for their input. Each problem has a range of viable solutions that can be looked into, provided by experts coming from a diverse range of different disciplines. By working together we can tackle the challenges we face now and better equip ourselves against what we will face in the future.

As for now, the challenges are abundantly clear. We have an extreme over-reliance on fossil fuels and our natural environment is atrophying. Just look at the shrinking rainforests, declining ocean spaces, collapsing biodiversity and deteriorating coastlines. Our dependency on fossil fuels has resulted in issues manifesting themselves at every level of our society, so it is necessary to tackle each of them at every level. For example, at CivTech we are administrating challenges which encourage carbon-usage reduction on an individual and institutional scale. Alternative options include investing in green energy, such as solar and wind, to joining green initiatives such as carbon offset programmes and electric vehicles.

What change needs to happen within the tech sector to drive more net zero solutions?

Two changes need to happen: the ability to react quickly and funding.

Being able to act without hesitation and implement changes without obstacles is very important to creating net zero solutions. Mutual agreement on what we are working towards is imperative as we can then implement our technological advances sooner rather than later.

Equal to this, we need immense financial backing. We need strong and long-term investment so that we can use creative and innovative collaborations that aren’t hindered by expense. Estimates to end global climate change range between $300 billion and $50 trillion over the next two decades. To put some perspective on this, the global cosmetics market size was valued at some $380.2 billion in 2019 alone, and the USA by itself is spending almost $2 trillion a year on defence. The funding does exist, it just isn’t being funnelled in the right direction. This must change.

On one level I’m a pragmatist. We are undeniably in the midst of an environmental catastrophe, and we have to act now on a global scale before it is too late. That being said, I’m also an optimist: we have it within ourselves to solve the problems we’ve created. We need to agree that focusing on tackling climate change together is the priority, and that we should collaborate using technology to achieve this.

Technology holds the answers to our problems, we need to figure out how to use it to the planet’s benefit as well as our own.

James Lovelock – the creator of the Gaia theory that brilliant explains the world as one living eco-system and for me one of the most important scientists of the past century (though he prefers to call himself an engineer) – wrote recently: ‘warnings that once seemed like the doom scenarios of science fiction are now coming to pass. We are entering into a heat age in which the temperature and sea levels will be rising decade by decade until the world becomes unrecognisable. We could also be in for more surprises. Nature is non-linear and unpredictable, never more than at a time of transition.’

We need to act. We need to do the right things. And we need to do them fast.