Our contribution to the World Economic Forum
How Technology Will Drive the Transition to the Low-Carbon Economy: ICT and the Sustainability Imperative
Governments, businesses, and societies are all scrambling for a more efficient and greener way to operate and grow. Supporting this pressing need is a growing consumer population and a proliferation of myriad innovative services.Together these trends promise to usher in unprecedented business models and changes to social behavior.
The economic opportunity triangle: Change in life, work, and play
The first trend is the likely addition of a huge number of consumers to the global marketplace.There are various estimates about the numbers; the top end of the estimates is upward of a billion over the next decade.These consumers will come mostly from the developing countries. As education, infrastructure, and healthcare progress in these countries, a vast number of people will take advantage of these improvements for better living standards.
Five principles ensure win-win-win among the public-private government aspects of this collaborative ecosystem:
- Reward compliance rather than penalize non-compliance.
- Create business models that pass on incentives to participating citizens.
- Make it financially attractive to be compliant.
- Enable private good to lead up to and equate with public good.
- Absolutely ensure that it costs less to be green than not to be.
Other than eco-driving and support, the energy efficiency in the transport and logistics sector can be improved by deploying ICT systems such as:
- traffic management and control,
- navigation and guidance,
- access and demand management,
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freight logistics and fleet management, and
- higher penetration of in-vehicle safety devices to avoid accidents and related congestion.
Pay-as-you-drive insurance
If one adds insurance companies and an insurance regulator to the model of pervasive collaboration platform cited above, one can create another business model called pay-as-you-drive (PAYD) insurance.
PAYD service models calculate premium balances in real time based on distance, time, and speed of the vehicle, using an on-board device.The on-board device uses existing global system for mobile communication technology to transmit the data to an application at the back-office server
Conclusions
ICT is a powerful enabler of green behavior through new business models aimed at reducing emissions in almost any sector, notably in smart buildings, smart grids, reduced travel, improved energy efficiency, and so on. ICT can do this primarily by combining new business (services) opportunities that effectively help abate CO2 emissions from traditional arrangements to the tremendous potential for growth offered by an exploding marketplace.This is the economic opportunity triangle.The best of such working models secures a win-win-win ecosystem among business-society government.
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