Striving for a better future has always been one of humanity’s mottos. Amidst the challenges that the Earth and its inhabitants have faced throughout history, and with even greater emphasis today, it is no surprise that in September 2015, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. This action plan aims to benefit the planet, and consequently, its people and prosperity, with the intention of strengthening universal peace and ensuring access to justice.
Nearly seven years since the establishment of this resolution by the United Nations member states, the Agenda, outlining the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), remains one of the world’s greatest current challenges in the quest to eradicate poverty and achieve sustainable development. These goals, intended to be effective in various economic, social, environmental, and political fronts, require not only intentions but also tools to facilitate the success of their purpose.
Therefore, since the advent of the Internet of Things (IoT), understood as the technological innovation of processes enabling the connection of the Internet to everyday physical elements applicable to thousands of resources, with the aim of increasingly bridging the physical and digital worlds, its instant and systematic affinity with the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) proposed and adopted by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has been established.
The information exchange proposed by the Internet of Things, facilitating various actions from domestic and everyday activities to fields such as medicine, agriculture, business, and general industry, up to the concept of smart cities, aligns perfectly with some of these goals. Mentioning the achievement of some of these goals reveals the essence of the solutions that can be associated with the Internet of Things. These include ensuring food security, promoting sustainable agriculture, ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education, ensuring the availability and sustainable management of water, ensuring access to affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern energy.
Other goals encompass fostering economic growth, developing resilient infrastructure, promoting inclusive industrialization, and encouraging innovation. Additionally, achieving inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable cities and human settlements, ensuring sustainable consumption and production patterns, protecting, restoring, and promoting the sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably managing forests, combating desertification, halting and reversing land degradation, and halting biodiversity loss. These Sustainable Development Goals pose an urgent need, especially for regions like Latin America, to connect society and its development environment in real-time.
The Internet of Things (IoT) has been constantly evolving thanks to its value model. The various solutions it offers enable the capture and processing of information, and through the connectivity provided by telecommunications, it powers infrastructure units that facilitate the transfer and transformation of data.
The positive impact of the Internet of Things (IoT) on these Sustainable Development Goals set by the United Nations lies in the ability of these solutions to address them. In fact, in some cases, their impact can correlate with more than one of these goals, providing growth metrics in productivity and innovation in decision-making related to industries, services, and individuals. A decade ago, AZLOGICA® began to make an impact in the technological field with the development of ECODRIVE®, an IoT solution designed for all private companies, public entities, and governments to measure, verify, and report the effectiveness of their actions towards energy efficiency and environmental sustainability. This is aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the production processes of companies and in the daily lives of people.
Through the Internet of Things, this type of solution, thanks to the quantification, visualization, and prediction of data, provides access to real-time monitoring of energy consumption, GHG emissions, carbon footprint, waste, and control variables, allowing for an agile response capable of contributing sustainably to processes. For example, through ECODRIVE®, comparative parameters can be established regarding the use of vehicles powered by gasoline, diesel, gas, or even electricity, determining how their usage can reduce environmental impact.
Thanks to the strategic alliances established by AZLOGICA®, one of its purposes is to collaborate in achieving these Sustainable Development Goals set by the United Nations, especially those related to sustainable cities and communities, climate action, clean and affordable energy, as well as responsible consumption and production. Since 2014, with the issuance of Green Bonds, investors have found a new financial instrument to include climate projects in their portfolios. However, as the Green Bonds market has grown, it has become necessary for investors to have absolute transparency and compatibility to evaluate this instrument.
The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) then created the innovative Green Bonds Transparency Platform, which allows these investors and their external reviewers to analyze how the proceeds generated by the bonds are used, compare their environmental performance, present their conclusions before and after issuance, and know at any time the specific performance of their bonds. For this, a Measurement, Reporting, and Verification (MRV) tool is needed that aligns with the operability offered by ECODRIVE®.
As consultants in Green Finance, we have seen the need for tools that validate the actual performance of projects for GHG mitigation and reduction. Tools that allow for the control, supervision, and auditing of results with reliable, truthful, secure information and objective evidence for evaluation, and in that sense, ECODRIVE® is the ideal platform to apply the Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence to meet this need. Ivan Barragan – Green Finance Consultant.
Thus, ECODRIVE® is a tailor-made solution, focused on reducing the technological gap associated with energy efficiency and environmental sustainability. One of its strengths lies in its ability to have a positive impact on climate change through intelligent reports, contributing to operational, managerial, and strategic actions that also result in cost reduction.”
