Friday, Jan. 10, 2025 | 2 a.m.
Visitors come to the CES show in Las Vegas for a peek at the newest gadgets, salivating over the latest technological advances to make everything from transportation to health care more efficient.
Officials with Consumer Technology Association — the group hosting the weeklong show in the Resort Corridor — stress most of those advancements also demonstrate solutions to fight climate change and reduce carbon emissions.
Whether it be a device to track water leaks or solar-powered vehicles, technology needed to achieve green goals is everywhere at the popular Las Vegas show.
The association is working to keep pace with the Paris Agreement, an international treaty on climate change signed by 196 countries including the United States, said Walter Alcorn, vice president of environmental affairs and industry sustainability at the association. The pact was adopted in 2016 at the UN Climate Change Conference in Paris.
“All the countries who signed that (knew) there are not technologies in production and use currently sufficient to meet those goals,” Alcorn said. “Technology is absolutely going to play a key role in meeting climate goals.”
Some sustainability in technology trends will be visible, like companies reducing product packaging, but most of the trends will take place behind the scenes, like companies incorporating more recycled material into their products, Alcorn said. Sustainability has been an ongoing effort with trends, including water conservation.
“The climate crisis is a real thing,” Alcorn said. “We are working very hard to try to set and track progress toward climate goals.”
The circular economy — where materials are recycled and reused in new products to limit waste — is employed by many tech companies. For instance, kinari, a sustainable plant-based alternative to plastic, is part of circular innovations at Panasonic.
Panasonic in 2022 established the Panasonic Green Impact to set goals for carbon reduction, CEO Yuki Kusumi said in his keynote speech at CES. It aims to reduce carbon emissions by at least 300 million tons, equal to 1% of current global carbon emissions, by 2050.
Panasonic introduced the OASYS system for an energy-efficient approach to heating, ventilation and air-conditioning that can save homeowners up to 53% more than conventional HVAC systems, the company said.
“Technology moves ahead at an amazing pace,” Kusumi said. “It’s important that we be intentional in our work.”
The use of artificial intelligence technology in sustainability is also prevalent at this week’s CES.
Take Hydrific — an innovator in water conservation technology for households — which created Droplet, a device that attaches to the main water line into a single-resident home to track water usage and detect leaks, said Julia Deister, Hydrific co-founder and CEO. Employing ultrasonic sensors and AI to track household water use, Droplet notifies users via an app of what it detects.
One of the most common leaks is caused by a faulty toilet flapper, she said.
Homeowners can save up to 30% of water, which is good for water bills and helps people be more aware of water usage, she said.
“We want to make water conservation easy and enjoyable with this product,” Deister said. “Sustainability has a huge opportunity for AI-enabled products.”
Sustainability is also at the forefront of technological advances in transportation on display at CES, Alcorn said. California-based Aptera Motors, for example, is straying away from fossil fuels by building what it says is the world’s first solar-electric vehicle. With two wheels in the front and one in the back, the vehicle employs solar panels on its hood, trunk and roof to maintain power.
The vehicle, which still uses a lithium battery, can travel up to 40 miles a day using solar energy and without plugging into an electrical outlet, said Steve Fambro, co-CEO at Aptera.
“When you use solar energy, you’re going right to the source,” Fambro said. “It connects the consumer directly to the energy without any carbon change (and) without any other middleman.”
That goes to show how industry is playing an important role in the climate footprint, Alcorn said.
“Technology is both a player … and a facilitator, helping achieve new sustainability solutions,” he said. “That’s one of the fun things.”
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