Technology is the answer to achieving a net-zero sustainable landscape as we approach 2030. The World is on a mission to undo the damage it has caused in the recent decades and is now investing millions of pounds and dollars to reduce the negative impact we are having on our planet and to slow down climate change. But what are the problems we are trying to solve? And what role does mobile app development have in achieving such ambitious targets?
One of the key issues we are trying to tackle with achieving a net-zero strategy is the Climate problem we have caused by unsustainable methods of generating and using energy. It’s important to understand that Net Zero does not mean the strategy is completely clean or green. It just means when you add up the processes used in a system, the net result is that the sustainable methods have balanced against the unsustainable methods and contributed towards a globally balanced eco-system.
Whilst we are reliant on physical alternatives to energy sources to become clean and green such as Green Hydrogen, Solar Power, Wind Power or others, we are increasingly becoming reliant on the software that can intelligently utilise these sources in ways that can accelerate the move towards becoming more sustainable.
We are working on a mobile app, designed for an electric car charging manufacturer that will use software technology to enhance the way in which energy is used to make the advancement towards net-zero more accessible. By introducing a more proactive way schedule towards charging a car we can reduce the pressure put on the national grid by maximizing the unused energy in a process. How? When everyone arrives in their drive between 5-7pm and need to charge a car that will take 5 hours to charge, it seems unnecessary to put that pressure on the national grid when most people’s car will be on their drive for around 12 hours until the next day.
Case Study 1
Why couldn’t the energy in your car do the opposite to charging when you get home and discharge what is left back to the grid and charge later in the night when far less energy is being consumed at the same time? This is a perfect scenario where the use of software can not only contribute towards the net-zero target with the use of simple AI and computing algorithms but move towards a carbon-negative footprint.
At Agile App Co. we are starting to see interest in research and development projects in the climate space and we believe that over the next 30 years mobile apps will become the interface into creating carbon negative. Microsoft has claimed that they will be carbon negative by 2030 which is a bold claim when you look at all the organisations’ business streams. For example, the huge cloud service Microsoft Azure must consume huge amounts of electricity to sustain itself so it would be interesting to understand what solutions Microsoft has in mind to consume the energy of this quantity in a carbon-negative manner.
Case Study 2
We have also been working with some large organisations on electric car technology using predictive route analysis to lower energy consumption and improve efficiency. Initially demonstrated through an interactive user interface. Software is being used to calculate the best distribution of energy using journey context to better strategise the way in which energy is distributed to a car’s components. Again just one of thousands of ways we think will be shown via the use of software and mobile apps over the coming months and years.
We’re in an incredibly exciting time and we haven’t really seen anything yet. What software has done in the last 20 years has probably, in reflection, blown your mind. But imagine what we will see in the next 20 years as software becomes exponentially more advanced. We think that mobile app and software technology will be the foundation on which our recognition for climate change action needed will become a reality.