What is Green Technology?
By Luke Escoto
Green technology is made to migrate or reverse the effects of human activity on the environment. Green tech is related to green tech in this way where they both refer to products/services that improve operational performance while also reducing costs, energy consumption, waste, or negative effects on the environment.
Green technology can also be a stated goal of a business segment or company. These goals are found in a company's environmental, sustainable, and governance (ESG) statement. It can also be found in the mission statement of a firm. Investors are also trying to narrow down their investments to include companies that are employing or producing green technologies.
Types of green technology
Green technology is a broad category that holds several different forms of environmental remediation. Today the most pressing issues come from global warming and carbon emissions, but other green technologies seek to address the other issues that come from people.
First we have alternate energy where business men are searching to engineer an alternate source of energy that doesn’t produce carbon emission. Wind power and solar power are now the most inexpensive sources of energy. This includes solar panels that are affordable to the average U.S homeowner at a consumer scale. Recently the government has tried to research ways to deploy geothermal and tidal wave energy at scale.
Next we have electric vehicles that are slowly being implemented onto the road. We do this because according to the environmental protection agency a third of all greenhouse gas emissions come from the transportation activities we use. However , electric vehicles require a lot of innovation in different areas such as high capacity rechargeable batteries and charging infrastructure.
The last one I will share with you will be carbon capture which is a group of experimental technologies that are meant to remove greenhouse gasses. This technology has been heavily promoted by the fossil fuel industry, although they have yet to deliver on those expectations. The largest carbon capture facility can only capture about 4,000 tons of carbon dioxide a year which is miniscule when compared to the annual emissions.