The Internet of Things is the key to achieving carbon neutrality in 2021

Smart transportation applications such as vehicle-road collaboration, smart parking, and intelligent traffic planning are generally on the agenda.

Vehicle-road collaboration is based on technologies such as sensor detection, edge computing, and autonomous driving. It obtains and interacts with vehicle-road information through roadside units and on-board terminals, predicts overall road flow, traffic incidents, and road conditions, and realizes intelligent collaboration between vehicles and between vehicles and infrastructure, achieving goals such as speeding up intersections, reducing vehicle fuel consumption, and improving traffic safety redundancy.

In the field of new energy vehicles, changes in energy sources have also triggered changes in the automotive industry, bringing new industrial opportunities for battery management, electronic control systems and autonomous driving.

自动驾驶的节能效果也非常显著。根据密歇根大学的一项测算，相较于非自动驾驶车辆，搭载车间通信系统的自动驾驶车辆通过地图线路优化及刹车制动优化，节能效率达到19%。根据中金公司研究部的预测，2024年个人出行中的自动驾驶，将使二氧化碳年排放减少约1.18亿吨。

5. Compared with industry, agriculture itself has "green" attributes and multiple functions, and is an important supplier of ecological products.

As a major agricultural country, China still relies on traditional agricultural production and needs 7% of its arable land to supply food for 20% of the world's population. The land efficiency is heavily dependent on fertilizers, and the production of fertilizers also brings about a large amount of carbon emissions. In order to provide food and meat to the people, there is also huge room for optimization in the fixation and neutralization of carbon dioxide.

Precision agriculture uses predictive analytics to automatically collect and analyze data that can help improve farm efficiency and yields. Precision agriculture helps eliminate the overuse of fertilizers and can reduce the overall impact of agriculture on the environment while still increasing crop yields.

IoT-based solutions increase crop yields, reduce the use of water, pesticides and fertilizers, reduce food production costs, and reduce runoff and impacts on natural ecosystems. And IoT devices provide farmers with great opportunities to monitor the condition of their livestock remotely, and be able to obtain data about livestock and their health, which means farm managers can make better decisions faster, leading to higher profits.

As more farmers use agricultural robots and drones, farms become more efficient, producing higher quality crops with higher yields and requiring less manpower.

03. IoT companies actively participate in carbon neutrality

Currently, many IoT companies have begun to work on carbon neutrality. Here are a few typical examples:

Electricity → Smart Wind Power: Based on the EcoStruxure architecture and platform, Schneider Electric helps wind power companies improve the safety, reliability and efficiency of the entire electrical system from components to systems, from design selection to operation and maintenance management, and meets the full life cycle needs of power generation companies in optimizing the monitoring, coordination and operation and maintenance of sensitive electrical equipment, greatly improving the overall availability of the system and further optimizing operation and maintenance costs and quality.

Buildings → Green Home Appliances: The "PlatONE+ BoAT IoT Trusted Data Empowerment Platform" jointly created by Wanxiang Blockchain and Molink Technology combines the home appliance IoT system to accurately optimize the energy use of home appliances and achieve a double reduction in urban power load and carbon emissions. Based on blockchain, the power bureau can establish an effective "carbon credit" incentive and governance mechanism to encourage residents to use electricity in a positive manner, enhance residents' environmental awareness of energy conservation and emission reduction, and form a new flexible governance method.

Industry → Lighthouse Base: As an important production base of Haier, Haier Sino-German Smart Park is responsible for the production of central air conditioners, drum washing machines, special refrigerators and other products. It is also a smart manufacturing "lighthouse base" that won the Industry 4.0 Award. With the help of the Caos Smart Energy Platform, the park has completed the transformation from an industrial smart park to a carbon-neutral smart park this year, becoming the world's first carbon-neutral "lighthouse base".

Traffic → Optimize driving: After ten years of experience in the road freight industry, G7 has found that many bad driving habits can lead to increased fuel consumption, such as an inappropriate braking, a casual emergency acceleration, or long-term engine idling. The 26 engine data items obtained in real time by the G7 EMS system can identify the reasons for the difference in fuel consumption of the same vehicle on different routes. According to estimates, G7 has achieved a reduction of hundreds of millions of kilograms of carbon emissions each year through its powerful IoT capabilities and the big data foundation on the platform.

Agriculture → Agricultural machinery interconnection: Shugen Interconnection provides agricultural operators with smart agricultural machinery interconnection solutions, remotely monitors, operates and manages the health of networked agricultural machinery equipment, and realizes precise management of agricultural machinery. Agricultural machinery manufacturers use the industrial Internet to configure and upgrade agricultural machinery equipment, which can be used for unified production information management and scheduling, precise positioning, intelligent deployment, and efficient maintenance, realizing high-precision automatic operation of agricultural machinery, and improving the use efficiency and maintenance level of agricultural machinery.

This list is very long, and I can only list a few of them. More lists are constantly expanding...

----Written at the end----

The road to carbon neutrality is long and arduous, and we should neither be too optimistic nor too pessimistic. According to the preliminary analysis of the National Development and Reform Commission, based on the eight major industries, future carbon emissions will reach 3 billion to 4 billion tons per year.

Technologies such as the Internet of Things, 5G, and AI are empowering thousands of industries and changing the entire industry and society. Their integrated application with carbon neutrality technology can accelerate the realization of carbon neutrality goals.

According to estimates by the Global e-Sustainability Initiative (GeSI), ICT-related fields have the potential to help reduce global carbon emissions by 20% in the next decade by empowering other industries. Technologies such as the Internet of Things and AI have been combined with energy, construction, transportation, industry, agriculture and other industries to promote application scenarios for reducing carbon emissions.

The Global Communications Technology Empowerment Report, co-authored by GSMA and Carbon Trust, shows that mobile technology reduced global greenhouse gas emissions by approximately 2.135 billion tons in 2018, which is approximately equal to Russia's total annual carbon emissions. These empowerment reductions are mainly achieved through applications in smart buildings, smart energy, smart lifestyles and health, smart transportation and smart cities, smart agriculture, and smart manufacturing.

References:

Carbon Neutrality Economics: Macroeconomic and Industry Analysis under New Constraints, Source: CICC Research Department and CICC Research Institute

Frontier technologies to protect the environment and tackle climate change，来源：ITU

Towards Carbon Neutrality by 2060: Focusing on Opportunities and Challenges on the Road to Decarbonization, by Beijing Institute of Green Finance and Sustainable Development, Hillhouse Institute of Industry and Innovation

Leading the battle against climate change: Actions for China, Source: McKinsey

IoT Predictions: IoT will play a key role in fighting climate change, Source: Accenture

[Easy to understand] Understanding "carbon neutrality" and investment opportunities, source: Carbon Crossing

The strongest outlet! What are the money-making opportunities of "carbon neutrality"? , author: Caiqingwuchu, source: Wall Street News

Carbon neutrality in the spotlight: Financial institutions gather together, and the overall structure of the national carbon market becomes clearer. Source: Beijing News

Is IoT a silver bullet for climate change?，来源：raconteur

Combining Industrial IoT, Blockchain and Smart Contracts, Advanced ESG Software Makes Carbon Reduction Programs Measurable，作者：Andrew Athanasian，来源：IOT EVOLUTION WORLD

Reduce Carbon and Costs with the Power of AI，作者：Charlotte Degot, Sylvain Duranton, Michel Frédeau, Rich Hutchinson，来源：BCG

The Coming 5G Revolution: How Will It Affect the Environment?，作者：RENEE CHO，来源：Earth Institute, Columbia University