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20 Dissertation Topics on Sustainability and Green Technology

Published by Carmen Troy at January 9th, 2023 , Revised On August 16, 2023

Introduction

Looking for interesting and manageable topics on sustainability and green technology for your dissertation or thesis? Well, you have come to the right place.

The subject of sustainability, green technology, and environmental friendliness has gained tremendous importance over the last years – thanks to the ever-increasing pollution, climate change, and high production costs throughout the world.

Without wasting any more of your time, here are the 20 dissertation topics ideas in this trendy field, so you choose the one that is not only intriguing but also manageable for you.

These topics have been developed by PhD writers of our team , so you can trust to use these topics for drafting your dissertation.

You may also want to start your dissertation by requesting  a brief research proposal  from our writers on any of these topics, which includes an  introduction  to the topic,  research question ,  aim and objectives ,  literature review  along with the proposed  methodology  of research to be conducted.  Let us know  if you need any help in getting started.

Check our  dissertation examples  to get an idea of  how to structure your dissertation .

Review the full list of  dissertation topics for 2022 here.

2022 Research Topics on Sustainability and Green Technology

Topic 1: the role of artificial intelligence (ai) and green technology in the develpment of smart and sustainable towns.

Research Aim: This study intends to find the role of artificial intelligence (AI) and green technology in developing smart and sustainable towns. It will review the concepts of smart and sustainable towns to show their importance in the modern era to reduce global warming. Then it will assess the role of AI by analyzing various machine learning and deep learning models to show how these models can help develop smart and sustainable towns. Lastly, it will review what work has already been done in this area and what should be done.

Topic 2: Impact of Research and Development (R&D) Expenditure in Green Technology on the Sustainability Outcomes of the Construction Industry- A Case of Malaysian Construction Industry

Research Aim: This study intends to analyze the impact of Research and Development (R&D) expenditure in green technology on the sustainability outcomes of the construction industry in Malaysia. It will review the current green technology used in the Malaysian construction industry and its development. Moreover, it will show how the construction industry is spending to develop new green technology and how much it requires to make it completely sustainable. It will also identify various national and international sources which can invest in this industry to make it more sustainable.

Topic 3: What are the Motivating and Demotivating Factors for Green Supply Chain Practices? An Exploratory Study Finding the Factors Affecting Green Supply Chain Practices in the UK

Research Aim: This research will identify various motivating and demotivating factors (return on green investment, production output, local and global competitiveness, political support, international support, investors support, etc.) for green supply chain practices. It will study various industries in the UK, such as construction, hotel industry, retail industry, etc., find out how the abovementioned factors affected their interest in green technology and green supply chain practices. Moreover, it will assess the work done in this area and how various institutions can motivate these industries.

Topic 4: Influence of Green Advertising on the Consumer View of Green Technology and Sustainability in the US

Research Aim: This study shows the impact of green advertising on the consumer perception of green technology and sustainability. It will assess how various components of green advertising work and how they affect the consumer perception of the need for green technology. Moreover, it will analyze different green advertising strategies used by companies in the US to influence consumer perception and how these strategies can be improved to make US consumers more interested in the products, which are a product of environment-friendly production process.

Topic 5: Green Economy a Necessity? Impact of Green Technology on Sustainable Economic Growth and Development- A Case of ASEAN Economies

Research Aim: It proposes a framework to analyze the impact of green technology on sustainable economic growth and development. It will show whether the green economy is essential for growth and development or not. It will assess various effects of green technology on the economy and ecology. And show how improving ecology can benefit human development, which can be good for long-term economic growth in the ASEAN countries. Lastly, it will analyze the current progress of these countries in creating a green economy.

Covid-19 Sustainability and Green Technology Research Topics

Topic 1: covid-19 and the need to expand sustainable energy.

Research Aim: It’s high time to expand sustainable energy during COVID-19.

Topic 2: COVID-19 and the environment

Research Aim: This study will focus on the positive and negative impacts of COVID-19 on the environment.

Topic 3: Economic expenditure on the green environment during COVID-19

Research Aim: This study will review the economic expenditure and plans on the green environment during COVID-19.

Topic 4: The green economy after COVID-19

Research Aim: This study will analyse the current issues related to green technology and predict the future of a green environment after COVID-19.

Dissertation Topics Ideas on Sustainability and Green Technology for 2021

Topic 1: research on sustainable gardens.

Research Aim: This research aims to conduct research on creating sustainable gardens and identify their benefits.

Topic 2: Sustainable outdoor designs using recycled materials

Research Aim: This research aims to identify various methods of creating sustainable outdoor designs using recycled materials and identify their benefits.

Topic 3: Pollution-free disposal and recycling of trash

Research Aim: This research aims to identify various methods to ensure pollution-free disposal and recycling of trash

Topic 4: Importance of gardening- awareness and ideas for the city, terrace/roof gardening

Research Aim: This research aims to address the importance of gardening and its awareness among the public. It will also focus on identifying cost-effective and innovative ideas for the city, terrace/roof gardening.

20 Dissertation Topics Ideas on Sustainability and Green Technology for 2020

Topic 1: examining the economic impacts of green technology.

Research Aim: The research will involve comparing the costs incurred in developing green energy and the economic benefits. The services will be saved once alternative forms of materials and energy sources are used. It will be relevant in identifying whether it is worth investing in green technology from an economic perspective. It will also help in developing supportive policies that guide green technology.

Topic 2: How do national and regional politics affect environmental sustainability?

Research Aim: This research study will analyse the role of politics in the environment. It will explore the positive or negative impacts of individual political inclinations.

Topic 3: How sustainable is the environment in the current and forthcoming eras?

Research Aim: This research will analyse global trends and their impacts on environmental trends. Developments such as increasing population, climate change, and using various materials affect the people. It will inform about how sustainability measures can be structured to align with the trends.

Topic 4: Adoption of green energy by low-end users

Research Aim: The research will be based on realising a market niche that cannot afford or are not willing to spend on an expensive product. Additionally, the embrace of some advanced technologies varies across classes, mainly based on exposure. There is also the notion that green technology can be expensive, making the stated users reluctant to use it. Accordingly, the research will focus on the factors that make the users have their respective levels of using green technology.

Topic 5: How green technology can affect organisational processes

Research Aim: This research will analyze how processes that can include procuring and sourcing, producing, sales, marketing, and delivering products, among others, can be impacted once green technology is introduced. It will help analyse cost and time effectiveness and the satisfaction of the organization’s stakeholders. It can help recommend structural changes when an organisation is considering green technology.

Topic 6: To what extent does green technology contribute to environmental sustainability?

Research Aim:  notably, several factors are contributing to environmental degradation and pollution. While green technology has been identified in previous research to ensure sustainability, its contribution can be compared with the other factors. Accordingly, recommendations can be made about whether it is the absolute solution to sustainability.

Topic 7: Green technology and global environmental sustainability frameworks

Research Aim: The study will assess how the frameworks affect the use of green technology. Various global environmental practices are commonly developed. The research will suggest any amendments to the frameworks to positively correlate them with green technology. Also, the topic will evaluate how the frameworks are implemented in various regions.

Topic 8: Green technology practices in developing countries

Research Aim: The research will explore the extent to which developing countries use and promote green technology. They are characterised by having a lower economy. The priority they have on sustainability will be established.

Topic 9: How do policies affect the use of green technology in a country?

Research Aim: The research acknowledges that regulatory bodies devise policies to guide various industries. The guidelines can be supportive or suppressive in the development and use of green technology. For instance, the bodies’ incentives can encourage green technology, while factors like high taxation can discourage it. Therefore, focusing on a particular country’s policies can be insightful into the level at which the technology is incorporated.

Topic 10: Incentives for green technology and environmental sustainability

Research Aim: The study will be purposed on how green technology can be promoted among users and manufacturers. It will first identify the challenges the users can use and apply the technology. It will also evaluate the level of sensitisation about green technology that people in a region have. The various stakeholders can execute the incentives in environmental sustainability.

How Can ResearchProspect Help?

ResearchProspect writers can send several custom topic ideas to your email address. Once you have chosen a topic that suits your needs and interests, you can order for our dissertation outline service , which will include a brief introduction to the topic, research questions , literature review , methodology , expected results , and conclusion . The dissertation outline will enable you to review the quality of our work before placing the order for our full dissertation writing service !

More Research Titles on Sustainability and Green Technology

Topic 1: what roles do ngos have on environmental sustainability and green technology.

Research Aim: The research will establish how NGOs can be incorporated into sustainability. NGOs have distinct objectives. While some are specific to environmental conservation, others focus on aspects that indirectly affect the environment positively or negatively. The study will then suggest how the NGOs can be motivated to advance their operations and promote green technology.

Topic 2: Impactful green thinking to achieve sustainability

Research Aim: The research analyses humans’ behaviour on issues that can promote sustainability. It explores how people can change their perspective on the environment and take measures at individual and collective levels. It will recommend some habitual changes that can positively impact the environment.

Topic 3: A holistic approach to environmental sustainability

Research Aim: Sustainability comprises various factors, ranging from behavioural, resources, technological, and procedural. Most studies have focused on particular sets of characteristics. However, it can be intriguing how integrating sustainability factors can be achieved. Also, it will be realised if implementing some measures of sustainability has any correlation to others.

Topic 4: Can there be a balance between lifestyle and green technology?

Research Aim: the study will assess the relationship between current lifestyle and green technology. It will be relevant in identifying the personal understanding of green technology’s contribution and how people are ready to adjust their lifestyle to technology. It will further show how green technology affects lifestyles.

Topic 5: How do businesses perceive green energy and environmental sustainability?

Research Aim: The research aims to identify how profit-making organisations approach green technology. It will focus on whether they find it less costly and useful. Also, it will establish whether they find products that involve green technology are usually marketable. Further, it will identify the organisation’s preference for the working environment, whether in regions that promote environmental sustainability or those that do not.

Topic 6: Examining sustainability policies in developed and developing countries

Research Aim: The research will compare regulations instituted in the two sets of countries. It will also assess the extent of implementation of the policies in the countries.

Topic 7: Challenges facing green technology as one of the drivers towards sustainability

Research Aim: The research will be based on green technology recognition as a crucial attribute to environmental sustainability. Despite the assertion, the technology has not attained universal coverage as it would be more impactful. The challenges can vary from economic, social, geographical, and regulatory, and it can then be recommended that the research focuses on a particular region. The results can also be analysed to identify any general challenges in the areas.

Topic 8: What is the consumer perspective towards green production?

Research Aim: Businesses target to satisfy the needs of consumers. The study will assess whether the consumer has a force towards producers that can make the latter inclined towards using green technology. This research study will essentially focus on the consumables industry.

Topic 9: Stakeholders’ contribution to green technology

Research Aim: The research will establish all the stakeholders in green energy. It will reveal their interests and drivers towards green technology. There will be an insight into whether there is a conflict of interests between the stakeholders and how they can be resolved. It will also help identify how the stakeholders can collaborate and integrate their resources and ideas.

Topic 10: Current trends in green technology and the future of technology

Research Aim: the research will aim to overview how green energy has been advancing over time. The trend will then help in predicting the future of green technology. Besides, it will be informative about the contribution green energy has had on environmental sustainability at various levels. It will then make recommendations about the optimum technology as per the available information and developments.

Also Read: Dissertation Topics in Engineering Management

How ResearchProspect Can Help You?

We are aware of the problems students are likely to face when it comes to finding a suitable topic in sustainability and green technology. Therefore our expert writers are always looking forward to assisting you with your topic search.

We hope you could find a suitable topic from the 20 topic suggestions in green technology and sustainability as provided in this article. But even if you didn’t find any of these topics suitable for your needs, you can always contact us to get custom topics ideas from our expert writers.

Our team of expert writers in any field you like your work to be carried out in will facilitate you and ensure you get the grades that you are worthy of and deserve.

Important Notes:

As a student of sustainability and green technology looking to get good grades, it is essential to develop new ideas and experiment with existing sustainability and green technology theories – i.e., to add value and interest to your research topic.

Sustainability and green technology are vast and interrelated to many other academic disciplines like environmental engineering . That is why it is imperative to create a sustainability and green technology dissertation topic that is particular, sound, and solves a practical problem that may be rampant in the field.

We can’t stress how important it is to develop a logical research topic based on your fundamental research. There are several significant downfalls to getting your issue wrong; your supervisor may not be interested in working on it, the topic has no academic creditability, the research may not make logical sense, and there is a possibility that the study is not viable.

This impacts your time and efforts in writing your dissertation , as you may end up in the cycle of rejection at the initial stage of the dissertation. That is why we recommend reviewing existing research to develop a topic, taking advice from your supervisor, and even asking for help in this particular stage of your dissertation.

While developing a research topic, keeping our advice in mind will allow you to pick one of the best sustainability and green technology dissertation topics that fulfil your requirement of writing a research paper and add to the body of knowledge.

Therefore, it is recommended that when finalising your dissertation topic, you read recently published literature to identify gaps in the research that you may help fill.

Remember- dissertation topics need to be unique, solve an identified problem, be logical, and be practically implemented. Please look at some of our sample sustainability and green technology dissertation topics to get an idea for your dissertation.

How to Structure your Dissertation on Sustainability & Green Technology

A well-structured dissertation can help students to achieve a high overall academic grade.

  • A Title Page
  • Acknowledgements
  • Declaration
  • Abstract: A summary of the research completed
  • Table of Contents
  • Introduction : This chapter includes the project rationale, research background, key research aims and objectives, and the research problems. An outline of the structure of a dissertation can also be added to this chapter.
  • Literature Review : This chapter presents relevant theories and frameworks by analysing published and unpublished literature on the chosen research topic to address research questions . The purpose is to highlight and discuss the selected research area’s relative weaknesses and strengths whilst identifying any research gaps. Break down the topic, and binding terms can positively impact your dissertation and your tutor.
  • Methodology : The data collection and analysis methods and techniques employed by the researcher are presented in the Methodology chapter, which usually includes research design , research philosophy, research limitations, code of conduct, ethical consideration, data collection methods, and data analysis strategy .
  • Findings and Analysis : Findings of the research are analysed in detail under the Findings and Analysis chapter. All key findings/results are outlined in this chapter without interpreting the data or drawing any conclusions. It can be useful to include graphs, charts, and tables in this chapter to identify meaningful trends and relationships.
  • Discussion and Conclusion : The researcher presents his interpretation of results in this chapter and states whether the research hypothesis has been verified or not. An essential aspect of this section of the paper is to link the results and evidence from the literature. Recommendations with regards to implications of the findings and directions for the future may also be provided. Finally, a summary of the overall research, along with final judgments, opinions, and comments, must be included in the form of suggestions for improvement.
  • References : This should be completed following your University’s requirements
  • Bibliography
  • Appendices : Any additional information, diagrams, and graphs used to complete the dissertation but not part of the dissertation should be included in the Appendices chapter. Essentially, the purpose is to expand the information/data.

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How to find sustainability and green technology dissertation topics.

For sustainability and green technology dissertation topics:

  • Research recent environmental challenges.
  • Explore innovative green solutions.
  • Examine policy and industry trends.
  • Analyze potential socio-economic impacts.
  • Focus on interdisciplinary approaches.
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80 sustainability research topics for students to explore green campus issues

You’re planning your thesis, paper or capstone? You want to do a student research project with impact. We have outlined a range of sustainability research topics for you. The list specifically focuses on how to green your campus . Take action to make your university more sustainable!

Our list of sustainability research topics helps students investigate green campus issues.

Sustainability research topics: Education

Some sustainability research topics on education for sustainable development :

  • What are the strengths and weaknesses of different definitions of sustainability education? Which definition could your university adopt?
  • To what extent is sustainability education already implemented in the curriculum of your university?
  • What are the strengths and limitations of advancing sustainability education within your curriculum?
  • Where does your university stand with regards to sustainability education compared to other institutions of higher education?
  • What is the demand among students for more, different or better sustainability education?
  • How can existing sustainability projects on campus be used for educational purposes, e.g. visit solar cells on rooftops as part of engineering classes?

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  • What definition of sustainability research should your university embrace?
  • To what extent is sustainability research already practised at your university?
  • What are the strengths and weaknesses of the institution’s sustainability research portfolio compared to other institutions of higher education?
  • What are the drivers of and barriers to sustainability research at your university?
  • How could sustainability research help students to study sustainability issues on campus and inform practical change projects?
  • What are the opportunities and costs associated with promoting sustainability research? What could a plan of action look like to strategically advance it?

Some sustainability research topics on community engagement and awareness:

  • What are the perceptions of and attitudes towards sustainability by students and staff?
  • What are ways to promote sustainable lifestyles among students?
  • To what extent are students and staff aware of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) ?
  • How aware are students and staff about the institution’s sustainability ambitions?
  • What are the benefits and disadvantages of approaches to communicate the university’s sustainability efforts better?
  • What are the challenges to involve students and staff in the university’s sustainability efforts?
  • Which ways to increase the engagement of the campus community exist, for example by organising sustainability events ?

For inspiration, read our post on 10 projects to engage students on the SDGs .

Explore sustainability topics for research papers on different issues related to greening campus operations:

  • What are the opportunities and costs of improving the building insulations to save energy?
  • What lighting systems exist on the market that are more energy efficient?
  • What would a business case look like to install a new lighting system?
  • Where are the main consumers of energy on campus?
  • What innovative energy technologies are developed at the institution itself? To what extent could those be directly installed and tested in buildings?
  • What lux values are sufficient for work and study places so that places are appropriately lit without wasting too much electricity?
  • What are the strengths and weaknesses of different sustainable building standards?
  • Which building standards would be most appropriate to inform the institution’s sustainable building policy?
  • What are the costs and benefits associated with different types of green roofs?
  • On which buildings could green roofs be installed?
  • To what extent are catering and food products certified as organic or fair trade food?
  • How much and why do students attach importance to organic and fair trade products sold in the cafeteria?
  • How can students and employees be made more aware of the multiple benefits – e.g. health, environment, economics – of sustainable (organic, fair trade, local) food ?
  • How much are students willing to pay for more organic or fair trade products?
  • What types and amounts of waste are produced by whom and where at the institution?
  • How did waste streams develop over the last years?
  • What are innovative practices in reducing waste going to landfill or incineration? How could those be applied?
  • What are the costs and benefits associated with waste recycling ?
  • What options exist to switch from paper-based to more digital forms of working and studying to reduce paper consumption?
  • What are the environmental, economic, and social benefits and disadvantages of different options to advance more digital working and studying?

More sustainability research topics on campus operations:

Biodiversity

  • What species live at different campus locations?
  • To what extent do students, faculty and staff value this biodiversity?
  • What are ways to enhance biodiversity on campus?

Greenhouse-gase (GHG)

  • What are the pros and cons of different GHG accounting standards?
  • Which standard should the institution use to develop a GHG emissions inventory ?
  • Where are GHG emissions released at the institution?
  • How big is the institution’s GHG footprint?

Procurement

  • What does sustainable procurement mean in the context of a university?
  • How is procurement currently organised? To what extent are sustainability criteria already applied in tenders?
  • To what extent could the university implement sustainability criteria that go beyond the legal minimum to advance the environmental, economic and social benefits of tenders?
  • What are the largest consumers of water?
  • What is the direct and indirect water-footprint of the institution?
  • What are opportunities and costs to reduce water usage?

Transportation and mobility

  • How do students and staff currently travel to the university and as part of their study or work?
  • What is the environmental impact of these travel behaviours? How could the impact be reduced?
  • What best practices exist among companies and other institutions of higher education to reduce staff travel or incentivize different travel behaviours?

Behaviour change

  • What is the potential to reduce resource consumption through behaviour change?
  • What are the best practices of behaviour change interventions at institutions of higher education?
  • To what extent could these projects be also applied at your university?

Sustainability research topics on governance, strategy and reporting

Sustainability research topics on governance issues:

  • What does sustainability mean for institutions of higher education?
  • How does a comprehensive concept of a sustainable institution of higher education look like?
  • How could the university’s long-term sustainability vision look like? How could this vision be realized through a roadmap?
  • What are innovative ways to develop sustainability strategies for a university through a bottom-up approach?
  • What ethical imperatives would demand that institutions of higher education care for their impact on the planet, people and profit?
  • What are the responsibilities of institutions of higher education to contribute to global challenges, such as poverty, gender inequality, and climate change?

Monitoring and reporting

  • What data is important to monitor the institution’s environmental impact? How can this data be collected and analysed?
  • What are the advantages and disadvantages of different sustainability reporting standards?
  • Which sustainability reporting standards should the university adhere to?
  • What are efficient ways to organize sustainability reporting within the organization?
  • What is the best way to communicate results among students, staff and outside actors?
  • What are the strengths and weaknesses of different methodologies (e.g. payback or Net Present Value) to calculate the financial costs and benefits of sustainability investments?
  • Which methodology should the institution apply?
  • To what extent could sustainability projects be financed through a revolving loan fund?
  • What are the possibilities to involve outside organizations through energy contracting?
  • What subsidies are available at the European, national and city level to develop a green campus?
  • How could the university use these financing options to advance its energy transition?
  • What are approaches to integrate negative externalities into the accounting schemes of the university?
  • What would be the opportunities, benefits and risks associated with establishing an energy company that’s owned by the university?
  • What are the best practices to finance energy efficiency and renewable energy projects at public institutions around the world?
  • How can incentive schemes be changed so that energy end-users directly benefit from reductions in energy usage?

We hope this list inspired you to find a sustainability topic for research papers.

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Green Technology Essays (Examples)

1000+ documents containing “green technology” .

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Green Technology Relationship between World population Growth and Global Development The concern of shortage in natural resources, caused by the rapid growth of human population is one of the main debates which are discussing the matter of relationship between population and environment. This is issue was first set out in 1798 by Robert Malthus. According to him, the power of the population is significantly larger than that in the earth required to produce subsistence for human beings. By this, Malthus implied that the growth of human population is superior to the capacity of the earth with regard to production of natural resources. The repercussions of this fact are increased hunger as well as increased mortality rate all over the world. In addition, there is also delayed marriages and significant reduction in the size of the families. All these consequences play a substantial role in slowing down the demographic growth. Nevertheless, the Malthus….

Green Technology Jim Lorick Discusses

Setting an example is extremely important, as it will stimulate the drive and demand for green technologies. Governments and powerful organizations can afford to invest in emerging green technologies. Lorick encourages investment in green technology because market trends suggest future growth. Consumers, at least in the first world, should quickly respond to industry-wide as well as public policy changes toward green technology. Companies, organizations, and governments need to redirect their focus to at least offering a green face to please consumers and shareholders. Green technologies are still in their infancy and far more research and development is necessary. Therefore, investing in green technology now will stimulate future growth in the industry. Thus, in the long run, significant developments and breakthroughs will emerge and green technology will become immensely profitable. Focusing on emerging technologies that replace "dirty" technologies like coal, Lorick notes that while going green might cost a lot….

Green Technology Past Present and Future

Green technology-Past, Present and future The past of green technology Current trends in green technology Corporate world and green technology Future of green technology Green technology-Past, Present and future The Past of green technology Previously, there might have not been a lot of emphasis on green technology, maybe this way because of the normal conditions that had not changed due to the global warming as it is in the present time. Lately, green has become the new terminology in politics, business, lifestyle and virtually everywhere in the world today. Green is an ideology which aims at the creation of a society which is ecologically sustainable which is deeply rooted in environmentalism or is inclined towards the improvement and conservation of the environment. Going green should not be a daunting task which means sweeping life changes but it is a great choice for the environment, your pocket and even your health. Current trends in green technology More and more people….

Kennedy, R. (2010). 5 Things You Can Do to Help Make Your School Green. Retrieved September 3, 2013 from  http://privateschool.about.com/od/greenschools/qt/greenschools.htm  nicholeknupp. (2013). 8 Companies That Have Gone Green. Retrieved September 3, 2013 from  http://www.smallbusinesscan.com/8-companies-that-have-gone-green/ 

Metcalf, E. (2013). 10 Ways to Protect the Environment -- and Your Own Health. Retrieved September 3, 2013 from  http://www.everydayhealth.com/green-health-photos/ways-to-protect-the-environment-and-your-health.aspx

Living Buildings Society's Dependence on Green Technology

Living Buildings Society's dependence on green technology and environmentally friendly building practices are at the forefront of the construction industry in today's world. Engineers, designers, builders and trades people are all involved in reshaping the industry to an organization dedicated to help preserving the Earth's natural resources and its own way of doing things. Sustainable construction is a real and positive force in the building world an it is important to understand how these processes work and are beneficial for communities who practice such efforts. The purpose of this essay is to explain and contextualize the Declare Database which is a segment of the Living Building Challenge. This program is helping construction teams build with confidence that their projects are eco-friendly and are mindful of the damage that these efforts normally have without this emphasis. The essay will first describe the program before explaining how the complex database integrates data and information….

Declare Products Website (nd). Declare and The Living Building Challenge. Viewed 3 Nov 2013. Retrieved from  http://www.declareproducts.com/content/declare-and-living-building-challenge 

Ross Spiegel and Dru Meadows, Green Building Materials: A Guide to Product Selection and Specification, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York, 1999

The United States Environmental Protection Agency (nd). Choosing Green Materials and Products. Viewed 3 Nov 2013. Retrieved from  http://www.epa.gov /greenhomes/SmarterMaterialChoices.htm

W Spaces Boston University's Focus on Green Technology

W/Spaces) Boston University's focus on green technology and practices is one of the most appealing aspects of the institution and one of the main reasons I hope to attend the university. Developing renewable forms of energy is a concept already close to my heart from having grown up in a alestinian community that constantly endures the difficulties, inconveniences, and consequences of limited access to electricity that is barely sufficient to support ordinary life. That was my original motivation for subscribing to Renewable Energy World Magazine and for participating in the Applied Research Institute in Jerusalem, a non-profit organization dedicated to solving such problems. In the West, renewable energy is an issue whose importance relies largely on conceptualizing future implications of current circumstances. However, in many parts of the Middle East, such as in my home community, the consequences and privations attributable to the inadequate availability of green technology have already manifested….

Partly because of the need to overcome the barriers imposed by limited access to electric power, I spent several months in 2011, together with a team of friends, developing a cheap MP3 system designed to enable sight-impaired users to upload and listen to audio books. In conjunction with the National Society for the Visually Impaired, we read books aloud, recorded them electronically, and uploaded them onto CDs. After the organization received complaints about the difficulty of tracking and finding desired books, we were inspired to develop a technological solution modeled after Apple's "iPod shuffle" system. We increased the capacity of our system to store large numbers of books in a portable format that included a "VoiceOver" title-identification function that allowed users to hear the title's name. To keep the product affordable, we duplicated iPod components in an electrical factory in Ramallah, Palestine. Our finished product cost one-third of the price of the iPod Shuffle and allowed 10 times the storage capacity. It was doubly meaningful achievement, because of the technical challenges and the tremendous value it added to the lives of users by allowing them to overcome their barriers to accessing, connecting, and participating in the world of their peers.

Finally, I hope to bring to Boston University my experiences as a participant in the Environmental Education Center's Clean-Up Campaign. While recycling trash, we also developed creative uses for trash that appealed greatly to the children in the community and that served as an effective learning tool to introduce concepts such as environmental responsibility and ecology to young students. We created modernistic sculptures of an unexpected variety of forms, including musical instruments and holiday themes, such as a large Christmas tree, entirely from recycled trash. We discovered that these types of projects provide effective recruiting tools to capture the interest of children. Initially, they were much more interested in this "artistic recycling" but their involvement then seemed to inspire their genuine interest in the recycling concept and in learning about ecology. Ultimately, what had begun as a casual pastime resulted in artistic displays that were featured at the Bethlehem Peace Center.

As a Boston University student, I hope to contribute to the institution's focus on Green issues in three different ways. I hope that my first-hand experiences living in a community plagued by insufficient access to usable energy in the present will help some of my colleagues appreciate that the global energy crisis is already a reality and not merely a problem of the future. I hope to contribute to technological solutions to the problem. Finally, I hope to contribute to developing approaches to increase popular awareness about Green issues in the larger community.

Green Business The Only Hope

Unless this model is fundamentally reformed as to take into account the overall health of the planet, the prospect of a sustainable future looks grim. eferences Hawken, P., Lovins, A., & Lovins, H.L. (1999) Natural capitalism: creating the next industrial revolution. Boston: Little, Brown. Heuer, M. (2010). Foundations and capstone; core values and hot topics; ethics-lx; skytech; and the green business laboratory: simulations for sustainability education. Academy Of Management Learning & Education, 9(3), 556-561. Hirshberg, G. (2008, June 16) Stirring it up: how to make money and save the world. Wall Street Journal. etrieved on 21 Nov., 2011, from http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121330973266469601.html Johnson, M.W., & Suskewicz, J. (2009). How to jump-start the clean tech economy. Harvard Business eview, 87(11), 52-60. Marcus, A.A., & Fremeth, A.. (2009). Green management matters regardless. Academy Of Management Perspectives, 23(3), 17-26. Morgan, L. (2011). Green job training in prisons benefits everyone. Corrections Today, 73(2), 34. Norberg, J. (2005) In defense of capitalism. New Delhi:….

Hawken, P., Lovins, A., & Lovins, H.L. (1999) Natural capitalism: creating the next industrial revolution. Boston: Little, Brown.

Heuer, M. (2010). Foundations and capstone; core values and hot topics; ethics-lx; skytech; and the green business laboratory: simulations for sustainability education. Academy Of Management Learning & Education, 9(3), 556-561.

Hirshberg, G. (2008, June 16) Stirring it up: how to make money and save the world. Wall Street Journal. Retrieved on 21 Nov., 2011, from  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121330973266469601.html 

Johnson, M.W., & Suskewicz, J. (2009). How to jump-start the clean tech economy. Harvard Business Review, 87(11), 52-60.

Green Is the New Green Blog Update on Energy Savings

Green Is the New Green Here at Adobe, we're proud to win the Platinum Certification Award from the U.S. Green Building Council for our work in energy savings and greening up the company. We're also proud we were the first office building in the world that the Council awarded this distinction. What helps us keep on reducing, reusing, and recycling every day are the efforts of you, our employees, who are always the first to create new ideas and methods to save energy and make our company even more green. Our platinum status was based on "sustainability; water efficiency; energy efficiency and atmospheric quality; use of materials and resources; indoor environmental quality; and innovations in upgrades, operations and maintenance." Now, we want to take those elements to a higher level, with your help. In the past, we have "reduced electricity use by 35%, natural gas use by 41%, domestic water use by….

Green Marketing Over the Last

She also mentions the huge energy giant British Petroleum (BP) came up with some honest and effective marketing in its green promotions. And while it is laudable for an oil company to invest in green technologies, BP did it with "appropriate humility that admits its own guilt while setting the stage for conversion to alternative energy sources" (Ottman, 2002). Meantime she says to Exxon, "ake Up!" because Exxon was at that time running "green-themed" ads that spoke to the need to "find more oil." In still another green marketing-themed article from Ottman, she writes in the publication in Business that while the George . Bush Administration "abdicates responsibility for a strong response to slowing down" global climate change, Bush's lack of leadership on the issue opened a "unique window of opportunity for America's advertisers and marketers" (Ottman, 2002). That advice to advertisers and marketers is this: using the same effective communication….

Works Cited

Bird, Lori, and Swezey, Blair. 2006. Green Power Marketing in the United States: A Status

Report (Ninth Edition). National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Retrieved February 18,

2010 from  http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy09osti/44094.pdf .

Business.Gov. 2009. Green Marketing Regulations. Retrieved February 20, 2010, from  http://www.business.gov/expland/green-business/green-marketing/regulations.html .

Green Building Value of Green

Building new green homes and making existing unsold homes green is the core of such a strategy, as applied to the housing market today. Green building can refer to a wide range of industry practices, spanning from simply installing energy-efficient windows, doors, and light bulbs to reduce environmental wastage and enhance customer value to more radical ideas like solar power, or constructing entire apartment units that require the use of environmentally-friendly cleaning products. hile adding value through 'greening' a building can be added at any stage of the building's lifecycle, "from design and construction, to renovation and deconstruction. However, the most significant benefits can be obtained if the design and construction team takes an integrated approach from the earliest stages of a building project" (hy build green, 2009, EPA). Customers, worried about the long-term health of the U.S. economy and the planet, can see their self-interest and the interest of….

Kotelnikov, Vadim. (2009). Value innovation. 1000 ventures. Retrieved March 27, 2009

at  http://www.1000ventures.com/business_guide/innovation_value.html 

New residential sales in February 2009. (2009). U.S. Department of housing and Urban

Development (HUD). Retrieved March 27, 2009

Green With Information Technology There Has Been

Green with Information Technology There has been a corresponding growth in innovations in information technology and the recognition that companies of all sizes and types must reduce their impact on their environment by adopting so-called green practices. For micro-businesses with just one or a few employees, this may mean something as simple as recycling aluminum cans and paper, but for larger enterprises, going green may mean the investment of significant amounts of resources up front with the expectation that the payback on these investments will be worthwhile, both in terms of energy savings as well as through an improved corporate image. To determine how companies can benefit from going green today, this paper provides a review of the relevant literature to provide a definition of going green with information technology, an analysis of the impact of going green with information technology on the environment, and a discussion concerning the pros….

Basile, T.J. (2008, July). A green formula. PM Network, 4, 22.

Chen, A., Dietrich, K.N. & Huo, X. (2011, April). Developmental neurotoxicants in e-waste: An emerging health concern. Environmental Health Perspectives, 119(4), 37-39.

Huang, Y-C, Ding, H-B & Kao, M-R. (2009, July). Salient stakeholder voices: Family business and green innovation adoption. Journal of Management and Organization, 15(3), 9-10.

Morey, T. (2012, March/April). Going green beyond the greenhouse. The Agricultural Education

Green Here to Stay The

Soon the war effort worked its way into popular culture, just as the green movement it doing today. The key to a good media campaign is to use respected figures to promote the cause. Green is a rapidly growing phenomenon that has been dubbed "greenwashing" by advertisers (Makower). Lauren Zalanick, president of Bravo Media identified three key customers as the target audience of the green market. They include college grads, and the former hippies of the flower power movement (Makower). According to Makower, Zalanick revealed several plans that will be rather expensive endeavors to promote green practices within the network, such as replacing the company vehicles with hybrids and using recycled paper. This is considerable expense for something that is just a surface marketing effort to attract a larger viewer audience. Hollywood stars such as Sheryl Crow, Leonardo DiCaprio and Cameron Diaz have all been outspoken their support of the green….

Friedman, T. The Power of Green. April 15, 2007. New York Times.  http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/15/magazine/15green.t.html?_r=2&oref=slogin  Accessed December 2, 2007.

Koerner, B. Rise of the Green Machine. April 2005. Issue 13.04. Wired.  http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.04/hybrid.html . Accessed December 2, 2007.

Makower, J. NBC's 'GreenWeek': Not Business as usual. November 13, 2007. CNNMoney.com.  http://money.cnn.com/2007/11/13/news/companies/makower_NBC/index.htm?postversion=2007111311  Accessed December 2, 2007.

Miller, J. We Can Do it!. Produced by Westinghouse for the War Production Co-Coordinating Committee NARA Still Picture Branch (NWDNS-179-WP-1563). www.archives.gov/exhibits/powers_of_persuasion/its_a_womans_war_too/images_html/we_can_do_it.html

Green Home Building Industry SWOT

..the stimulus plan calls for laying 3,000 miles of new transmission lines -- considered crucial for moving wind and solar power to different corners of the country" (LaMonica 2008). This sets a shining example for the nation for the need to make current and future structures environmentally sustainable. Even if prices of fossil fuels decline, there are also other pressures that increase public awareness about the need for green housing -- finite timber resources, increasing overpopulation, and also the expansion of the densely populated developing world in China and India will make green building a continued priority on an international level. The sad rise of asthma due to mold and other allergies contained in sick buildings may make a green building that can reduce mold, mildew and other build-up a necessity rather than a debatable luxury for many home owners in the future. The current administration is working to bring down mortgage rates.….

Del Percio, Stephen. (2008, March 28). Green building in crisis. Green buildings NYC.

Retrieved March 9, 2009 at http://www.greenbuildingsnyc.com/2008/03/18/green-building-in-crisis-bear-stearns-meltdown-may-drown-beer-belly-building/

Homeowner affordability and stability plan. (2009, February 9). Department of the Treasury.

Retrieved March 9, 2009 at  http://www.treas.gov/press/releases/tg33.htm

How Technology Can Reduce Energy Usage

Technology Saving Environment The author of this response has been asked to write an argumentative essay that centers on whether human technology can save the world when it comes to things like climate change. The question is not an easy one to answer. There are those that say that even if the data set known to humankind is not complete, this cannot persuade us not to act because we should not wait until it is too late. There are others that suggest that the planet will impose its will on humankind no matter what humans do or do not do and the presence or use of technology will not change that. However, most people fall somewhere in the middle or perhaps even believe that the way to save the planet is already known and just needs to be implemented. hile it sounds good to suggest that humans can plot the future….

Chatsko, Maxx. "Bill Gates' Dream For A Nuclear-Powered Future Is Almost Here -- The Motley Fool." The Motley Fool. n.p., 2016. Web. 6 June 2016.

Chivers, Tom. "12 Technologies Which Could Save the World." BuzzFeed. n.p., 2016. Web. 6 June 2016.

Kemp, Rene. "World Environment Day: Can Technology Save Us? - Our World." Ourworld.unu.edu. n.p., 2016. Web. 6 June 2016.

Kho, Jennifer. "Can Technology Save the World?." Greentechmedia.com. n.p., 2016. Web. 6 June 2016.

Green Roofs and Living Walls

Suc plants include: prairie popseed, catmint, stonecrops, cornflowers and susans, among oters. Tese plants are of all colors and are very beautiful wen planted togeter. Having seen tese benefits, it is quite ard to still argue against green roofs. Yet if one finds oneself in tis positing tere are a variety of specific tings tat green roofs and do for umans. Tey include: cleaning and retaining rainwater, reducing te overeating in cities and reducing pollution, adding beauty, lowering air temperatures, improving air quality, lowering eating and cooling bills, expending te life of a roof membrane. Tese are seven good reasons wy green roofs are so important to our overall ealt and better lifestyle quality. Tere are also many tings tat one can do wit green roofs tat can keep tem going for a long time, including suc tings as waterproofing, for example, and many more. Living walls, in addition to green roofs, can….

http://www.eltlivingwalls.com/living-walls/

Living Walls, Youtube. Accessed November 19, 2011.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ar2qSiw_BQE

Green Business - Townsend Townsend

Use energy sound furniture; find ways to share resources when possible. The copy-machine is a deadly waster -- try to publish as much as possible electronically (memos, presentations, etc.). Chapter 7 -- Greening Your Products and Services- This is the face, and the crux, of the green company. Changes in philosophy and policy will help the environment internally, but to really "go green," the company must product a green or eco-friendly product. Within this, it is important to examine the product life-cycle at every step and green accordingly. Similarly, the supply chain needs to be green -- it does not work to have green practices but purchase materials made with toxins or in countries that use non-sustainable products or labor. It is, therefore, possible that some companies may face a very tough decision in discontinuing some of its products, and developing new ones, depending on the eco-audit process. In some cases, this….

image

Green Technology Relationship between World population Growth and Global Development The concern of shortage in natural resources, caused by the rapid growth of human population is one of the main debates…

Setting an example is extremely important, as it will stimulate the drive and demand for green technologies. Governments and powerful organizations can afford to invest in emerging green…

Research Paper

Transportation - Environmental Issues

Green technology-Past, Present and future The past of green technology Current trends in green technology Corporate world and green technology Future of green technology Green technology-Past, Present and future The Past of green technology Previously, there…

Architecture

Living Buildings Society's dependence on green technology and environmentally friendly building practices are at the forefront of the construction industry in today's world. Engineers, designers, builders and trades people are…

W/Spaces) Boston University's focus on green technology and practices is one of the most appealing aspects of the institution and one of the main reasons I hope to attend…

Unless this model is fundamentally reformed as to take into account the overall health of the planet, the prospect of a sustainable future looks grim. eferences Hawken, P., Lovins, A.,…

Green Is the New Green Here at Adobe, we're proud to win the Platinum Certification Award from the U.S. Green Building Council for our work in energy savings and greening…

She also mentions the huge energy giant British Petroleum (BP) came up with some honest and effective marketing in its green promotions. And while it is laudable for an…

Business - Advertising

Building new green homes and making existing unsold homes green is the core of such a strategy, as applied to the housing market today. Green building can refer…

Education - Computers

Green with Information Technology There has been a corresponding growth in innovations in information technology and the recognition that companies of all sizes and types must reduce their impact…

Soon the war effort worked its way into popular culture, just as the green movement it doing today. The key to a good media campaign is to use respected…

Research Proposal

Urban Studies

..the stimulus plan calls for laying 3,000 miles of new transmission lines -- considered crucial for moving wind and solar power to different corners of the country" (LaMonica 2008).…

Family and Marriage

Technology Saving Environment The author of this response has been asked to write an argumentative essay that centers on whether human technology can save the world when it comes to…

Annotated Bibliography

Suc plants include: prairie popseed, catmint, stonecrops, cornflowers and susans, among oters. Tese plants are of all colors and are very beautiful wen planted togeter. Having seen tese benefits, it…

Book Review

Use energy sound furniture; find ways to share resources when possible. The copy-machine is a deadly waster -- try to publish as much as possible electronically (memos, presentations, etc.). Chapter 7…

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Sustainability Dissertation Topics

Students can use the campus to test solutions to real-world sustainability challenges as part of a Living Lab project. Here are some sustainability dissertation ideas.

UCL Living Lab Programme

19 November 2022

Dissertation topics

Living lab for a positive climate .

Our goal is to have net zero-arbon buildings by 2024 and to be a net zero-carbon institution by 2030.

Research topics include:

  • Review UCL buildings for climate change resilience and implement adaptation measures
  • Research into enhancing video conferencing for large events
  • Sourcing renewable energy providers for gas to enable a zero-carbon heating supply
  • Research on academic travel reduction initiatives
  • Research on UCL’s new Climate Accountability Scheme (combining a carbon price with behavioural nudges) to incentivise climate action by departments.
  • Reducing the climate impact of UCL’s hospitality

Living lab on reducing waste and consumption

Our goal is to reduce waste per person by 20% and to become a single-use plastic-free campus by 2024.

  • How to eliminate plastic across UCL
  • How to increase recycling at UCL (campaign)
  • Labels and messaging on food

Consumers are becoming more aware of sustainability considerations in food production and consumption. In addition to the traditional dietary and nutritional requirements, consumers are seeking labels and certifications to know where and how food is made, what it is made from, its carbon footprint and sustainability credentials. UCL would like to investigate what information we should supply, how this should be displayed, communicated and marketed, to allow our communities to make informed decisions and promote a flexitarian diet. It is anticipated this would require the following activity:

  • Developing questionnaires for opinions on carbon footprinting, carbon pricing and other sustainability information they want to know about, to inform point-of-sale purchasing choices in outlets.
  • Comparing marketing of food as “vegan” or “plant-based” and the impacts on consumer’s perceptions.
  • Investigating the notion of “label fatigue “where consumers are overwhelmed by information on packaging, and the impact of the project on this.
  • Baselining data on food choices.
  • Developing a labelling system for packaging/ refectory display boards – using data and survey responses.
  • Trialling the labelling system.
  • Surveying responses.
  • Recording food choices and comparing to baseline, to identify behavioural change.

Living lab on biodiversity

Our aim is to create 10,0000m2 of extra biodiverse space by 2024 – equivalent to more than one and a half football pitches as well as increasing health and wellbeing for the Bloomsbury community.

Research topics include: 

  • Research on different types of green infrastructure e.g. green walls, roofs, community gardens, and where UCL could implement them.
  • Research on biodiversity and wildlife across UCL’s estate.
  • Research on air pollution levels across UCL’s estate

Dissertation guide 

Step 1: choose your topic.

  • Take a look at the sustainability research topics list to see if they interest you.
  • If you require data on energy, travel, procurement, UCL’s sustainability engagement programmes or water please email Sustainable UCL to request this.
  • If you have alternative research topic ideas for a sustainable living lab dissertation or project please contact us.

Step 2: Discuss with your department

  • Speak with your supervisor or someone in your department about undertaking a living lab dissertation and refining your topic.
  • They can advise you on scales, time scales and marking criteria.

Step 3: Contact Sustainable UCL

  • Arrange a meeting with Sustainable UCL to ensure your project can make a valuable contribution to UCL.
  • Sustainable UCL can provide data and put you in touch with relevant operational staff such as catering members and plumbers to test out your ideas.
  • You can invite your supervisor to this meeting, but it is not a requirement.

Step 4: Undertake your dissertation

  • Sustainable UCL can meet a further 2 times or 2 hours maximum to support your dissertation or project.

Step 5: Sharing data and findings

  • One of the principles of the Living Lab Project is to make available any additional data you generate for others to build on, so the work can keep ‘living’
  • Once your dissertation is completed, we require a concise 2-3 page briefing or presentation on your findings so that we can implement your ideas onto campus or future students and staff can build on your research. Living Lab projects usually spark plenty of ideas for further research, including aspects you were not able to cover during the project.

green technology thesis ideas

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Green IoT for Eco-Friendly and Sustainable Smart Cities: Future Directions and Opportunities

  • Open access
  • Published: 17 August 2021
  • Volume 28 , pages 178–202, ( 2023 )

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  • Faris. A. Almalki 1 ,
  • S. H. Alsamhi   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-2857-6979 2 , 3 ,
  • Radhya Sahal 4 , 5 ,
  • Jahan Hassan 6 ,
  • Ammar Hawbani 7 ,
  • N. S. Rajput 8 ,
  • Abdu Saif 9 ,
  • Jeff Morgan 10 &
  • John Breslin 10  

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The development of the Internet of Things (IoT) technology and their integration in smart cities have changed the way we work and live, and enriched our society. However, IoT technologies present several challenges such as increases in energy consumption, and produces toxic pollution as well as E-waste in smart cities. Smart city applications must be environmentally-friendly, hence require a move towards green IoT. Green IoT leads to an eco-friendly environment, which is more sustainable for smart cities. Therefore, it is essential to address the techniques and strategies for reducing pollution hazards, traffic waste, resource usage, energy consumption, providing public safety, life quality, and sustaining the environment and cost management. This survey focuses on providing a comprehensive review of the techniques and strategies for making cities smarter, sustainable, and eco-friendly. Furthermore, the survey focuses on IoT and its capabilities to merge into aspects of potential to address the needs of smart cities. Finally, we discuss challenges and opportunities for future research in smart city applications.

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Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.

1 Introduction

Due to the tremendous development in communication and sensing technologies, ‘things’ around us are being connected together to provide various smart city applications, enhancing our life quality [ 1 ]. This connectivity between things in the smart city is commonly referred to as the Internet of Things (IoT). IoT includes everything in smart cities, to be connected at any time, anywhere, and using any medium [ 2 , 3 ]. The development of IoT technologies continue to grow, making IoT components smarter through an adaptive communication network, processing, analysis, and storage. For context, some IoT devices include cameras, sensors, Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), actuators, drones, mobile phones, etc. All of these have the potential to communicate and work together to reach common goals [ 1 , 4 ]. With such components and communication technologies, IoT devices are set to provide a broad range of applications for real time monitoring, as seen in environmental monitoring [ 5 , 6 ], e-healthcare [ 7 ], transportation autonomy [ 8 ], industry digitalization and automation [ 9 , 10 ] and home automation [ 11 , 12 ]. Furthermore, IoT is an enabler of software Agents, to help share information, make collaborative decisions, and optimally accomplish tasks [ 10 ].

IoT is capable of collecting and delivering vast amounts of data using advanced communication technologies that can be analyzed for intelligent decision making. The Big data requirements of IoT needs storage capacity [ 13 ], cloud computing [ 14 ], and wide bandwidth for transmission, to make IoT ubiquitous. This big processing and transmitting of data consumes high amounts of energy in the IoT devices. However, using efficient and smart techniques could lead to a decrease in power consumption. Therefore, the combination of IoT and the practical techniques to reduce power consumption of big data processing and transmission can improve the quality of life in smart cities, and contribute to making the world greener, more sustainable, and collectively a safer place to live [ 15 , 16 , 17 ]. Shuja et al. summarized this relationship between green IoT and big data to create sustainable, green, and smart cities by decreasing pollution hazards and reducing energy demand and efficient resource utilization [ 18 ].

Presently there is new potential in smart cities to become even smarter than before with the application of advanced technologies, such as Artificial Intelligence (AI). Examples of this can be seen in smart city components including sensor integrated smart transportation systems, cameras in smart monitoring systems, and so on. Vidyasekar et al. [ 19 ] introduced the critical aspects of potential smart cities in 2020, in which things are smarter through smart energy, smart building, smart mobility, smart citizens, smart infrastructure, smart healthcare, smart technology, and smart education and governance. These aspects are shown in Fig.  1 .

figure 1

Aspects of smart cities

IoT plays a tremendous role in improving smart cities, affecting in different ways with its numerous applications in enhancing public transformation, reducing traffic congestion, creating cost-effective municipal services, keeping citizens safe and healthier, reducing energy consumption, improving monitoring systems, and reducing pollution, as shown in Fig.  2 . However, IoT environmental issues, such as, energy consumption, carbon emission, energy-saving, trading, carbon labeling and footprint, have attracted researchers’ attention. Therefore, carbon emission reduction and energy efficiency technologies based IoT are summarized [ 20 ]. The study discusses IoT technologies to facilitate real-time intelligent perception of the environment, and generate and collect energy consumption in manufacturing the entire life cycle.

figure 2

Smart city applications

To fulfill goals of smart cities and sustainability, green IoT is a key technology to decrease carbon emission and power consumption [ 21 , 22 , 23 ]. The increasing number of IoT devices leads to increased energy consumption. For example, wake up protocols and sleep schedules of IoT devices are introduced for energy consumption and resource utilization [ 21 ]. The authors of [ 23 ] provided the techniques that can reduce the energy consumption in IoT via efficient energy of data transmission from IoT devices, data center efficient energy, and design energy-efficient policies. Further, authors in [ 22 ] introduced Information and Communication Technology (ICT) impacts on carbon emissions and smart cities’ energy consumption.

1.1 Related work

The preliminary literature on smart cities based on greening IoT is dispersed [ 23 , 24 , 25 , 26 ], leading to inadequate recognition of the importance of green IoT. There is an apparent lack of depth in current literature which can explain in detail the enabling techniques for IoT systems in smart cities which can reduce C O 2 emission, minimizing power consumption, enhancing QoS [ 27 , 28 , 29 , 30 , 31 , 32 , 33 , 34 , 35 , 36 , 37 , 38 , 39 , 40 ], and enabling ICT. Existing surveys are not comprehensively focusing on smart cities strategies strategies and techniques for enabling greener smart cities. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, there is no existing survey dedicated to reviewing the strategies and techniques for greener smart cities, through enabling ICT, reducing energy consumption, reducing C O 2 emissions, reducing waste management, and improving sustainability.

As a comparison, Arshad et al. [ 23 ] discussed green IoT based on minimizing energy consumption. The study focuses only on designing energy efficient policies, energy efficient policies, energy efficient data centers, and data transmission from IoT devices. However, the study does not cover all of the potential ideas, while our survey will focus on techniques and strategies, for enabling IoT to improve the eco-friendly and sustainability of smart cities. The work presented in [ 25 ] discussed the negative impact of IoT technology and suggested solutions to minimize it. Some negative impacts of IoT were included in this study, e.g., greenhouse gas emissions, and energy usage, etc. The study explored the principles of green IoT to improve life quality, economic growth, and environments in smart cities. It showed evidence that green IoT usage can support sustainable natural resource utilization in agriculture, forestry, and aquaculture. However, the authors did not fully discuss all potential negative impacts of IoT technology in various applications. As such, Our work not only includes a broader coverage of the negative impacts, but also focuses on the use of green IoT to improve eco-friendly and sustainability for smart cities.

In [ 24 ], the authors introduced IoT for smart cities, and addressed techniques for minimizing energy consumption for green IoT, and as such, introduced the green ICT principle. However, the authors did not further discuss the green ICT for IoT applications in smart cities. As such, this paper will fill this gap in the literature. Shaikh et al. [ 26 ] presented how to deploy IoT technology efficiently to fulfill a green IoT. They identified IoT applications where energy consumption can be reduced for a green environment. Several techniques were introduced for enabling green IoT to facilitate energy efficiency. The authors of [ 41 ] discussed the concept of IoT for smart cities and their advantages, benefits, and different applications. The study focused mainly on the use of IoT for smart cities such as smart homes, smart parks, smart transports, weather, and pollution management. The authors focused on the benefits and applications of IoT for smart cities applications, however, the study does not discuss the techniques for improving IoT for enhancing the eco-friendlinesss and sustainability of smart cities. A comparison of existing surveys and the present work is summarized in Table  1 .

1.2 Contribution

This literature review is intended to develop smart cities’ strategies and techniques based on collaborative IoT to improve life quality, sustainability, echo-friendliness, citizen safety, and the health of the environment.This work will contribute to the research literature by broadening discussions on:

Enabling IoT techniques for eco-friendly ICT. Specifically the significant impacts of ICT for reducing energy consumption and C O 2 emissions for a sustainable smart city,

Different strategies and techniques used for energy-efficiency, reduced C O 2 , reduced traffic, and reduced resource usage in smart cities,

Waste management techniques to improve smart cities,

Advanced techniques used for smart city sustainability,

Surveyed current ongoing research works and possible future techniques for smart cities’ sustainability and energy efficiency, based on collaborative IoT.

1.3 The scope of study and structure

In a smart city, IoT plays a critical role in improving the life quality, safe environments, sustainability, and ecosystem. This paper will survey the techniques and strategies used to improve smart cities to be eco-friendly and sustainable. The authors focus on techniques which lead to fewer emissions, reduce traffic, improve waste management, reduce resource usage, reduce energy consumption, reduce pollution and improve Quality of Service (QoS) of communication networks. To the authors’ best knowledge, no previous research work in the survey has addressed the techniques and strategies that lead to eco-friendly and sustainable smart cities. Relevant challenges are addressed, and the solutions are conceived for other purposes, yet related work will be introduced.

The rest of this paper is organized as follows (see Fig.  3 ). ICT technology for smart cities is presented in Section  2 . Section  3 discusses energy efficiency. In Section  4 , reducing pollution hazards is considered. Waste management and sustainability are discussed in Sections  5 and  6 , respectively. The future directions and opportunities are discussed in Sections  7 and  8 , respectively. Finally, we conclude the paper in Section  9 .

figure 3

Paper Organization

2 ICT technology for smart cities

IoT is a global, ambient communication network, immersive, and an invisible computing environment built depending on smart sensors, cameras, software, databases, and data centers in smart cities [ 42 ]. In [ 43 ], the authors presented IoT for constructing a green campus environment based on energy efficiency. Despite prior evidence presented in [ 42 ], IoT elements have been presented in [ 4 ], where the benefits of IoT and how to create a green area by employing efficient techniques were discussed. In [ 44 ], the authors discussed different technical directions towards realizing future green Internet.

Consequently, IoT leads to saving natural resources, minimizing the technological impact on the environments and human health, and reducing costs. Thus, green IoT focuses on green manufacturing, green design, green utilization, and green disposal [ 41 ]. The authors in [ 41 ] discussed all of the above categories and their importance for improving smart cities.

Furthermore, Solutions for green IoT includes reducing C O 2 emissions and reducing IoT energy usage to fulfill the smart world with the sustainability of intelligent everything. Green IoT includes designing and leveraging green aspects. The design elements of green IoT include developing computing devices, energy efficiency, communication protocols, and networking architectures [ 45 ]. Leveraging the IoT element is to reduce the emissions of C O 2 , and enhance energy efficiency. Uddin et al. [ 46 ] presented the techniques for improving energy efficiency and reducing C O 2 for enabling green ICT. Gathering data from smart city environments represents the essential element of smart cities that create an intelligent model for appreciated decision making.

ICT plays an essential role in improving green IoT in smart cities to be friendly and sustainable. ICT can reduce cost, resource consumption, and pollution; interact with city services; and enhance life quality. Therefore, without ICT, the idea of smart cities cannot exist. ICT improves the smart cities’ application by automated, simplified, enabling IoT, automatic security threat isolated, and scalability, as shown in Table  2 . Furthermore, ICT technologies can reduce climate change globally [ 42 , 43 , 44 , 47 , 48 ], with ICT application growth with energy efficiency due to environmental awareness. Greening IoT refers to the advanced technologies that make the IoT environmentally friendly by using facilities and storage that enables subscribers to gather, store, access, and manage various information [ 23 ].

Green ICT enables subscribers to gather, access, store, and manage information [ 24 ]. ICTs play a critical role in greening IoT and providing many benefits to society, i.e., saving energy used for designing, manufacturing, and distributing ICT equipment and devices. Various research have been done on green ICT technologies, such as [ 24 , 49 , 50 , 51 , 52 , 53 ]. These are exciting, but they have been applied for limited applications and ways. In [ 49 ], the authors discussed using ICT applications and strategies to reduce C O 2 emissions and energy consumption. The authors [ 50 ] discussed green IoT principles for enhancing life quality, growth, economy, and environment. They provide the numerous benefits of reducing the negative impact of the latest technology on society, human health, and the environment. In the case of stainability, ICT can manage data centers optimization through techniques of sharing infrastructure, which leads to energy efficiency with reduced C O 2 emissions and e-waste of material disposals [ 54 ]. Furthermore, the authors [ 22 ] discussed the enabling technologies for green IoT, which include RFID, wireless sensor networks (WSN), machine to machine (M2M), data center, cloud computing, and communication networks, as shown in Fig.  4 . However, they did not consider the techniques used for greening IoT by reducing energy consumption and C O 2 emissions. Also, the authors [ 51 ] support the idea of [ 24 ] to satisfy greening IoT by transmitting the needful information, reduce the energy consumption of facilities, and use renewable energy sources. Kai et al. [ 53 ] proved that the Device to Device (D2D) communication plays a key technology to make cities greener and smarter. They investigated the combination of power allocation optimization and uplink subcarrier assignment in the D2D underlying cellular networks. Therefore, all users’ power consumption in network was decreased, while guaranteeing the required throughput of both cellular user and device to the device user equipment.

figure 4

ICT technologies for smart cities

ICT technologies play a vital role in reducing C O 2 emissions and energy consumption to green IoT applications in smart cities, i.e., smart transportation, smart building, smart parking, and so on [ 55 ]. The authors of [ 56 ] described the green ICT and green IoT depending on green smart grid, green communication, and green computing technologies. The benefits of greening enabling IoT are illustrated in Table  3 . It shows the enhancement of green ICT technologies to reduce energy consumption, reduce C O 2 emissions, reduce costs, and change the climate.

Going towards greening IoT involves finding new resources, exploiting environmental conservation, minimizing the use of available resource and costs, and minimizing negative impacts of IoT on human health and environment (e.g., C O 2 emission , N O 2 and other pollution) [ 45 , 57 , 58 , 59 ]. The authors of [ 49 ] provided the details on how industrial emissions influence the environment over time. Therefore, reducing IoT device energy consumption is required to make the environment healthier [ 20 ]. Furthermore, greening ICT technologies help to support environmental sustainability and economic growth [ 45 , 50 ], and therefore, emerging IoT technologies make the world greener and smarter. Table  4 shows the critical trends in IoT for smart cities applications domains such as smart healthcare, smart transportation, smart retail, smart, smart industries, smart house, smart grid, smart agriculture, smart wearable.

2.1 Smart data center for smart cities

Data Center is a repository and technology for smart city management, data storage, and dissemination gathered from smart cities’ devices. A massive number of IoT devices need permanent internet connectivity over the smart city. However, data management and transformation of data into information over a smart city would not be possible without the data center. It consumes a huge amounts of energy [ 22 ], high costs of operation, and high C O 2 footprints due to dealing with different data from different applications. Furthermore, the production of big data is rising through various ubiquitous things, i.e., mobile devices, actuators, sensors, RFID, etc. For the energy efficiency of the data center, the authors of [ 24 , 60 , 61 ] discussed several techniques (i.e., renewable energy, utilizing efficient dynamic power-management, designing more energy-efficient hardware, constructing efficient, designing novel energy-efficient data center architectures, using accurate data center power models, drawing support from communication and computing techniques, and improving air management, consolidating servers, finding optimal environment, improving the processing technology and boost airflow). An eco-friendly datacenter comprises enhancing the airflow and processing, finding optimal environment, improving the air management, and consolidating the server.

Furthermore, the authors of [ 51 ] introduced many techniques for enhancing and predicting the energy efficiency of the data center and its components. In addition to the work of authors [ 51 ], authors in [ 52 , 53 ] presented the optimization technique for the data center energy efficiency with supporting Quality of Service (QoS). The study in [ 62 ] provided a method to reduce the power consumption without degrading the data center cooling efficiency. Peoples et al. [ 63 ] explored the energy-efficient context-aware broker framework mechanisms to manage data center next-generation. However, the study in [ 64 ] offers a green data center of air conditioning via cloud techniques, consisting of two subsystems (i.e., air conditioning in the data center system and cloud management platform). The air conditioning system’s data center includes environmental monitoring, air conditioning, communication, temperature control, and ventilation. Simultaneously, the cloud platform provides data storage, up-layer application, and big data analysis and prediction. Furthermore, an Ant Colony System (ACS) based virtual machine (VM) can be used for reducing the power consumption of the data center while maintaining QoS requirements [ 65 , 66 ] by a near-optimal solution, while virtual machine is considered to reduce the energy consumption of the cloud data center and maintain the desired QoS [ 67 ]. The authors of [ 50 ] discussed the mitigation of VMs for QoS constraints via bandwidth management and minimalizing energy for 5G networks [ 61 ]. Figure  5 illustrates the required impacts for greening the data center for smart cities.

figure 5

Required impacts for greening the data center

The dynamic speed scaling technique plays a vital role in reducing power consumption, as discussed in details in [ 68 ]. In the case of speed scaling, various researches have addressed signal processing [ 69 ], and network devices [ 70 , 71 ], and parallel processors [56] for saving energy by speed scaling. However, the authors in [ 72 ] combined sleep state and varying the speed when the tasks are processed for reducing energy usage. The study in [ 72 ] supported by Liu et al. [ 73 ], developed SleepScale for power efficiency and fulfilling QoS agreements. In addition to the work of [ 72 , 73 ], the authors in [ 74 ] used hybrid technology to reduce network energy consumption by using idle periods and adapting the rate of network operators to the requested workload.

The authors in [ 75 ] proposed a centralized network power controller based on collected data of traffic. Statistic servers form, and collected data are used to perform the aggregation of transportation and VM assignment, which was used for migrating the target data center. Authors found that the bandwidth and VM reduced the network power consumption for any data center topology. To optimize the power usage in data center networks with guaranteed connectivity and bandwidth utilization, Zhang et al. [ 76 ] discussed two levels for doing the needful. These levels are core level and pod level, in which the purpose of the core level is to define the core switches, while the pod level defines the aggregation switches. They evaluated the hierarchical energy optimization for various traffic patterns, small, large, or random traffic.

Furthermore, the study [ 77 ] focused on reducing energy by two steps:(i) by allocating VM to the server to minimize the traffic amount and (ii) balancing traffic flows by reducing the number of active switches. Zheng et al. [ 78 ] used PowerNets for improving the energy savings of a data center network. The proposed technique gradually improved VM and traffic consolidation performance with lower VM migration overheads by energy savings for a data center.

For power distribution, Meisner et al. [ 79 ] developed a technique to eliminate idle power waste in servers based on the PowerNap and RAILS.The finding showed that both techniques minimized the average power consumption in the server by 74%. Therefore, the proposed methods supported transitioning quickly between near-zero-power idle and high-performance active states in response to immediate load variations. However, the authors in [ 80 ] proposed a method to reduce the utilized power in installing the infrastructure, and they used power routing across redundant power feed for schedule servers.

Renewable energy is another route towards a green data center which minimizes the negative environmental implications. Therefore, Zhang et al. [ 81 ] designed the middleware system to optimize the dynamically distributed requests through various data centers via linear-fractional programming. They found that the proposed system could significantly increase renewable energy usage at different locations without impacting operational cost budges. Furthermore, authors in [ 82 , 83 ] considered the electrical grid and solar array for data center powering. They proposed two schedulers called GreenHadoop and GreenSlot for data processing jobs and parallel batch jobs, respectively. These schedules are used to predict the solar energy amount to maximize the green energy usage. Both schedulers could increase green energy consumption efficiently. Table  5 illustrates the summary of techniques and strategies for energy efficiency, resource management, thermal control, and green metrics for greening data centers.

Availability and sustainability are the factors that can determine the future of data centers. Therefore, smart cities are required for the data center with the high capacity to process big data coming from sensors dispersed in the city. To enhance the technological infrastructure and reduce the cost, the processing of big data needs communication networks, virtualization systems, and storage access. Here, the smart data center will manage the smart cities effectively and efficiently. Therefore, smart data centers represent smart cities’ core, increasing access security, providing passive sensitometry, achieving balanced sustainability, taking care of the city environment, and providing sustainable development for city development. Furthermore, the smart data center will have the capability to effectively and efficiently coordinate and manage the resources required by smart cities. For instance, they are measuring and controlling energy from renewable resources, managing the mobility and traffic, measuring the emissions and pollutions, managing the growth of resources, i.e., air, water, light, ect., and leading other services such as recycling waste, public safety, health, etc. Smart data centers’ future will help create new technologies and architectures for managing smart cities to improve citizens’ quality of life.

2.1.1 Cloud computing for smart cities

Cloud computing is a critical technology for smart cities’ physical infrastructure. The deployment of smart cities requires the combination of a decentralized cloud and a distributed open-source network.Cloud computing services are essential for smart city applications. Therefore, the massive amounts of heterogeneous data collected from different devices surrounding smart cities require the services of cloud computing. Smart cities refer to the high quality of life, management the natural resources, and economic development. Smart cities should intelligently provide the many facilities to improve smart city applications, such as police transport, public safety, security, electric supply, water supply, internet connectivity, smart parking, etc.

Cloud computing provides unlimited computational service delivery via the internet and unlimited storage. It is shown that different devices (i.e., tablet, camera, laptop, mobile, etc.) are connected to gather via the cloud. The combining of cloud computing and IoT together has a comprehensive research scope. The aim of cloud computing is to promote eco-friendly products, which are facilely reused and recycled. Thus, the authors of [ 18 ] proposed green computing with a focus on ICTs. Also, they discussed the trade-off between green computing and high- performance policies. Furthermore, Baccarelli et al. [ 90 ] introduced a green solution to IoT over the fog-supported network.

Therefore, efficient cloud computing plays a vital role in maximizing energy consumption, reducing hazardous materials, and enhancing old products’ recyclability. Moreover, efficient cloud computing achieves product longevity resource allocation and paperless virtualization due to the management of power used. Furthermore, Sivakumar et al. [ 91 ] introduced the integration of IoT and cloud computing in various architectures, applications, protocols, database technologies, service models, and algorithms.

Further, efficient cloud computing plays a vital role in maximizing energy consumption, reducing the use of hazardous materials, and enhancing the recyclability of old products. Moreover, efficient cloud computing achieves product longevity resource allocation and paperless virtualization due to the management of power used. The idea is supported by a study in [ 47 ], which discusses the various technologies for greening cloud computing by reducing energy consumption. It focused on how the combination of cloud and sensors can be used for green IoT agriculture and healthcare domains. Furthermore, Sivakumar et al. [ 91 ] introduced the integration of IoT and cloud computing in various architectures, applications, protocols, database technologies, service models, and algorithms.

Zhu et al. [ 92 ] presented a multi-method data delivery technique for low cost, sensor-cloud (SC) users, and immediate delivery time. Multi-method data delivery includes four kinds of transportation, i.e., delivery from the wireless sensor network to SC users, delivery from cloudlet to SC users, delivery from cloud to SC users, and delivery from SC users to SC users. Minimizing utility power is the main idea of green cloud computing [ 93 ]. Thus, the authors of [ 93 ] introduced the essential technique for improving the data center’s power performance. Private and public clouds required energy consumption in data processing, switching, transmission, and storage [ 94 ]. Table  6 summaries the used techniques and strategies in cloud computing for smart cities.

Despite the numerous works in [ 22 , 81 , 95 , 96 ] which carried out on green cloud computing and provided potential solutions be shown as the adoption of software and hardware for decreasing energy consumption, power-saving using VM techniques, various energy-efficient resource allocation mechanisms and related tasks, and efficient methods for energy-saving systems. The authors in [ 82 ] explored the trade-off of the energy performance for consolidation, which resulted in the desired workload distribution across servers and saves energy. The authors of [ 83 ] summarized the strategies used for economic and green cloud based on multi-tenancy, dynamic provisioning, server utilization, and data center efficiency.

Regarding green cloud computing, the relationships and similarities are discussed between service rate, packet arrival rate, and response time for efficiency improvement in power cost and server utilization [ 97 ]. However, a VM scheduling algorithm plays a vital role in greening cloud computing, which leads to energy consumption minimization [ 98 , 99 ]. In the case of [ 98 ], a machine algorithm is used for migration of loads of hosts, dynamic voltage frequency scaling, and shutdown of underutilized host features. The result of using algorithms led to improving power consumption. Cloud computing availability in smart cities could help ease big data storage, transforming in real-time data processing, and analyzing in real-time. Therefore, cloud computing will enhance speed, sharpness, and cost savings by providing network access on demand for sharing computing resources, which can be scaled as required and rapidly provisioned. The combination of IoT and cloud computing plays a vital role in healthcare applications such as disease prediction intelligently in smart cities [ 100 ].

Furthermore, [ 101 ] presented an intelligent model for healthcare services in smart cities using parallel particle swarm optimization and particle swarm optimization. The proposed model solves task scheduling, reduce medical requests execution time, and maximize medical resources utilization. The economic benefits and costs were discussed in [ 102 ] based on the combination of AI, cloud computing, and IoT. The authors of [ 91 ] proposed fog, cloud, and IoT to mitigate processing loads, reduce cost and time.

2.2 Communication network for smart cities

Greening wireless communication technologies play a crucial role in making IoT greener. Green communications refer to sustainable, energy-efficient, energy-aware, environmentally aware communications. The idea of a green communication network is referring to low C O 2 emissions, low radiation exposure, and low energy consumption. In [ 103 ], the authors proposed a genetic algorithm optimization for the network planning, where the finding showed significantly C O 2 reduction cost and low radiation exposure. The idea supported by a study in [ 104 ], discussed how to maximize the data rate, minimize C O 2 emissions in cognitive WSNs. In addition to the work of authors [ 103 , 104 ], Chan et al. [ 105 ] provided several models to evaluate the use-phase power consumption and C O 2 emissions of wireless telecommunication networks. The designing of Vehicular Ad hoc NETworks (VANETs) was proposed to decrease energy consumption [ 106 ].

The investigation of the energy efficiency in 5G based mobile communication networks are presented in three aspects, i.e., theory models, application, and technology developments [ 107 ]. Furthermore, Abrol et al. [ 108 ] showed the influence and the growing technologies supporting the energy efficiency of Next Generation Networks (NGN) technology. The need for adopting energy efficiency and C O 2 emission is to increase capacity, enhance data rate, and improve QoS of the NGN. Several researchers have addressed solar for saving energy and enhancing QoS, such as [ 27 , 39 , 109 , 110 , 111 , 112 ], reliable storage for saving energy [ 113 ]. Furthermore, the stochastic geometry approach is applied to achieve energy efficiency and maintaining QoS [ 114 ].

Moreover, the utility-based adaptive duty cycle algorithm proposed to reduce delay, increase energy efficiency, and keep a long lifetime [ 115 ]. However, the hypertext transfer protocol was applied to minimize delay and enhance the lifetime for providing reliability [ 116 ]. The development of wireless communication will improve a next-generation network’s performance according to the requirements based on decreasing energy usage, reducing the emission of C O 2 for providing a healthy environment, and green cities.

5G focuses on reducing energy utilization and results to green communication with healthy environments. In 2020, the prediction of green communication is observed that all communication devices and objects will communicate effectively and efficiently using smart and green techniques for a healthy and green life. 5G technology is essential for enhancing the reliability and improving QoS of communication among machines and humans. Also, 5G technology supports a large area’s connectivity, reduces latency, saves energy, and provides higher data rate. The services of 5G for our society are including robotics communication, e-health, interaction human and robotics, media,transport and logistics, e-learning, public safety, e-governance, automotive and industrial systems, etc.[ 117 , 118 , 119 , 120 ].

Many techniques have been used for energy harvesting and energy-efficient methods discussed in [ 121 ]. Regarding energy-saving methods, Wang et al. [ 122 ] proposed a resource allocation approach for minimizing the network’s energy rate. Maximizing the power-efficiency was by relay station with subcarrier for an orthogonal frequency division multiple access. However, the energy efficiency was optimized by using an energy-efficient incentive resource allocation technique for enhancing the cooperation of communication networks [ 123 ], in which the combination of genetic and water drops method for improving energy consumption effectively and efficiently.

Regarding harvesting energy, many studies focus on greening the communication network based on harvested energy, such as [ 124 , 125 , 126 ]. In [ 124 ], the authors focused on resource allocation techniques used for maximizing the energy efficiency of the green cognitive radio network. Furthermore, Ge et al. [ 125 ] discussed the cognitive radio network secured based on multiple-input single-output using to minim transmit the information signal’s power. However, Zheng et al. [ 126 ] introduced the smart grid’s performance and power consumption based on analyzing IEEE802.11ah. The authors [ 127 ] introduced different techniques for greening communication networks in term of energy-efficiency metrics. The power consumption of the network equipment has taken into account transparency and accuracy [ 128 ]. Yang et al. [ 129 ] differentiated renewable and non-renewable energy for green internet routing. However, Hoque et al. [ 130 ] examined techniques to enhance mobile hand-held devices’ energy efficiency. Table  7 summaries the used techniques and strategies in a communication network for smart cities.

2.2.1 Wireless sensor network for smart cities

The combination of sensing and wireless communication has led to WSNs. WSNs have been used in many applications such as fire detection [ 132 , 133 , 134 ], object tracking [ 135 , 136 , 137 ], environmental monitoring [ 138 , 139 , 140 , 141 , 142 ], evolving constraints in the military [ 143 ], control machine health, and monitoring industrial process [ 121 ]. WSNs represent the critical technology that has made IoT flourish. A sensor combines an enormous number of small, low-power, and low-cost electronic devices [ 139 ]. WSN components are including base stations or sinks and a large number of sensors nodes. The sensor node consists of communication unit, sensing unit, processing unit, and power unit [ 139 ]. Sensor nodes are used to measuring global and local environments such as pollution, weather, healthcare, agricultural fields, and so on. Sensors also communicate via wireless channels and deliver the nearest base station’s sensory data using ad-hoc technology. The authors of [ 144 , 145 ] introduced sleep mode for saving sensor power for a long time and supporting green IoT. For energy conservation of WSNs, Khalil et al. proposed the nearest most used routing algorithm, in which the nearest node is active (transmit and receive data), and the rest of the nodes are in sleep mode and keep sensing in idle mode [ 146 ] . Therefore, any node wanting to send data to another node, it will wake up all the nodes along to its roots and then send data accordingly.

Consequently, when the sending data finished, all the nodes will be reset to sleep mode. Sensors can utilize energy harvested directly from the environment, such as the sun, vibrations, kinetic energy, temperature differentials, etc. [ 147 , 148 , 149 , 150 , 151 , 152 ]. Also, the combination of WSN and energy harvested technologies plays a vital role in the green world [ 153 ], on account of energy harvesting is cost comparable with long batteries life. Many techniques are enabling sensor networks for green IoT, such as sensing selection [ 154 ], energy overheads for context-aware sensing [ 155 ], and sleeping schedule [ 156 ] to save energy, reduce the communication delay between sensors nodes.

Battery power is considered the most critical resource in WSN that directly influences network lifetime. Thus, the main goal is to reduce energy consumption and contribute reliable/robust transmission without compromising the overall QoS [ 203 ]. The idea of energy efficiency is supported by Mehmood et al. [ 157 ], which introduced routing protocols for energy efficiency. Similarly, Rani et al. [ 158 ] discussed flexible IoT and the designing hierarchical network’s energy-efficiency. In addition to [ 58 , 157 ], the authors in [ 159 ] introduced green WSN to improve routing and lifetime of WSN. However, the authors of [ 158 ] discussed green WSN for enabling greening IoT based on increasing energy efficiency, reducing relay nodes, extending the network lifetime, and improving the system budget.

Furthermore, the authors of [ 160 ] investigated a cooperative approach to save energy for greening WSNs. A collaborative approach is based on the cluster technique in which multi-hop works as a relay station to ensure the communication between sensors. Furthermore, energy consumption and network resilience provisioning are discussed for enhancing green WSN for fog computing platforms [ 161 ]. Four steps implemented this work: the creation of hierarchical system frameworks, sensor/actuator nodes localization, nodes clustering, creation of optimization model to realize green IoT, and finally the computing the discovering the minimal energy routing path. The results showed that the proposed approach was pliable, energy-saving, and cost-effective. Furthermore, it applies to the different type of IoT applications such as smart city and smart farming applications.

Mahapatra et al. [ 162 ] introduced wake-up radio, error control coding, wireless energy harvesting to enhance the performance of green WSNs while minimizing the C O 2 emissions. Furthermore, the combination of WSN and cloud computing leads to a decrease in demanded high power consumption and C O 2 emission, which significantly affects the environment [ 163 ]. A balanced tree-based WSN is designed for network lifetime maximization and reduces sensor nodes’ energy consumption [ 164 ]. However, the green cooperative cognitive radio was proposed in WSN [ 104 ]. Also, Araujo et al. [ 165 ] proposed cognitive WSN for reducing a large amount of power. Their work was demonstrated and evaluated in three scenarios to enable the development of power reductions and green protocols for cognitive WSN. Regarding green WSN, the following techniques could be adopted [ 22 , 95 , 116 , 166 ] such as sleep and active sensor nodes to save energy consumption, energy depletion, optimization of radio techniques, data reduction mechanisms and energy-efficient routing techniques, hybrid transmission protocol to maximize lifetime reliability. Table  8 summarizes the used techniques and strategies in WSN for smart cities.

Smart cities are recently suffering from several problems such as traffic, pollution, waste management, and high energy consumption. The rapid development and sustainability solutions demand increasing mobility in order to improve environmental impacts. The authors [ 167 ] introduced smart mobility with autonomous vehicles and connected and discussed smart cities’ challenges. The advantages of mobility for enhancing smart cities’ sustainability are discussed [ 168 ], including increasing people’s safety, reducing noise pollution, reducing pollution, improving transfer speed, reducing traffic, and reducing the transferring costs. Furthermore, [ 169 ] discussed how information shared with IoT help in a sustainable value chain network.

3 Efficient energy for smart cities

The drone plays an essential role in greening IoT. It provides efficient energy utilization and hence reducing IoT device’s power consumption. For sending data over long distances, IoT devices need high transmission power. Therefore, the drone can move towards closer to IoT devices to collect data, processing data, and sending data to another device that is in another place. Authors in [ 170 ] introduced a genetic algorithm for improving drone-assisted IoT devices based on energy consumption, sensor density, fly risk level, and flight time. Furthermore, Mozaffari et al. [ 171 ] evaluated the optimal values for small drone cells’ altitude, which leads to the maximum coverage area and minimum transmit power.

Processing in each machine is the primary object of IoT equipment. Drone-equipped IoT devices are used to capture data, process, analyze, manage, storge, and deliver to the cloud. The combination of drones and WSN was discussed [ 172 ]. The framework of drone and WSN is composed of sensor nodes, fixed-group leaders, and drone-Sink. The finding was that the election process and energy consumption were reduced. The techniques of drone-based WSN for data collection were discussed [ 173 ]. The used procedures were able to reduce flying time, energy consumption, and latency of data collection. The authors in [ 174 ] introduced an algorithm for data collection of WSNs by using mobile agents and drones. Therefore, drones and mobile agents are contributed to save time and reduce sensor nodes’ energy consumption. Also, Zorbas et al. [ 175 ] developed a mathematical model for the energy efficiency of IoT devices. The developed model’s performance detects the events that happened on the ground with minimizing power consumption in the coverage area. Furthermore, Sharma et al. [ 176 ] introduced drones’ cooperation with WSN to provide energy-efficient relaying for a better life.

The power needed for a drone is found that energy-efficient components in emerging technologies can improve the energy efficiency [ 177 ]. Choi et al. [ 178 ] formulated the drone efficient energy based relaying by taking into consideration the traffic load and speed factors. On the other hand, the wired drone docking system was developed to perform several functions via the collaboration of drone and IoT devices for reducing wasted resources, reducing energy consumption, and ensuring transmission security [ 179 ]. Moreover, Seo et al. [ 180 ] proposed drones for IoT monitoring, security platform, and emergency response in buildings by utilizing beacons.The authors in [ 181 ] developed an automatic battery replacement mechanism of drone battery lifetime. An automatic battery was used in drones to operate without battery manual replacement.

The selection of the shortest path for packet transmission plays an important role in conserving energy and high efficiency. Engergy 4.0 fault diagnosis framework was presented based on wind turbines [ 182 ]. For improving WSN efficiency, intelligent path optimization is proposed to maximize the rate of network utilization and create the shortest routing path [ 183 ]. The proposed method shows significant improvement in traffic load and network utilization rate for enhancing network performance.

Mahapatra et al. [ 184 ] discussed smart homes’ energy management for making sustainable and green smart cities. Furthermore, the authors proposed NN-based Q–learning for efficient energy management in Canadian homes by decreasing the peak load. Big data analytics represents the most critical part of developing smart city applications. IoT devices are intended to improve smart cities, where they are connected to improve life quality. Therefore, authors in [ 185 ] introduced a new protocol QoS –IoT to reduce the delay of collecting big data from sensors nodes in smart cities and enhance energy efficiency. The study in [ 91 ] discusses an essential issue related to IoT devices’ hardware lifespan in smart cities and energy conservation. Table  9 summarizes the techniques and strategies for energy-efficient for smart cities.

4 Reducing pollution hazardous in smart cities

Recently, monitoring air pollution has become the ultimate essential issue in our environment, life and society. Smart sensors are utilized for pollution monitoring. However, their transmission power is limited for sending data in real-time. Therefore, these sensors can be carried by drones, and it will be easy for gathering data and sending to the destination in real-time. Thus, Villa et al. [ 187 ] developed the best way for gas sensors and a particle number concentration monitor onboard a hexacopter. The authors showed that developed drone system was capable of identifying the point source emissions. The study focuses on airflow behavior and evaluates CO, NO, C O 2 , and N O 2 sensors for monitoring the pollution emissions in a particular area. The potential drone applications explore for interacting with sensor devices to perform remote crop monitoring, soil moisture sensing, water quality monitoring, infrastructure monitoring, and remote sensor deployment [ 165 , 188 ]. The greenhouse pollution should also be considered for controlling the gas emission from the greenhouse. Hamilton et al. [ 189 ] introduced a solar-powered drone carried C O 2 sensing integrated with a WSN. The authors of [ 190 ] proposed drone for remote autonomous food safety and quality. Due to the dynamic and flexible deployment, air pollution monitoring has been found suitable as one of many applications [ 191 , 192 ]. Authors in [ 193 ], reviewed the existing techniques for drone monitoring applications. Furthermore, author of [ 194 ] proposed drones equipped with off-the-shelf sensors for tracking tasks, but they ignored the guidance system. To solve this issue, few authors suggested adopting the pollution-based drone control system. It was based on the chemotaxis meta heuristic and PSO technique, which monitors certain areas on the most polluted zones [ 195 ]. Authors [ 196 ] proposed drone equipped Pixhawk Autopilot to control the drone and a Raspberry Pi for storing and sensing environmental pollution data. Furthermore, authors in [ 197 ] developed an efficient drone platform model to monitor multiple air pollutants. Also, Šmídl et al. [ 198 ] developed the idea of autonomously navigated drones for pollution monitoring. Authors remonstrated the applications of the drone platform in air pollution. It was focusing on air pollution profiling of roadside and air pollution episodes in emergency monitoring. Furthermore, Zang et al. [ 199 ] demonstrated experiences in applying drones to investigate water pollution in Southwest China because of low air pressure, high altitude, severe weather, strong air turbulence, and clouds over. Furthermore, the prediction of carbon footprint in ICT sectors was discussed in [ 200 ].

Air pollution is one of the impact of climate change. However, drone technology currently represent the key technology for monitoring air pollution in order to improve life quality in smart cities. It is used for many scenarios to monitor air pollution and predict air pollution.

5 Waste management in smart cities

Smart cities are running to become smarter and greener. Therefore, companies and governments are searching for efficient solutions to maximize the collection level using intelligent techniques and smart devices, i.e., smart sensors, cloud platforms, IoT, etc. Therefore, Gutierrez et al. [ 201 ] introduced intelligent waste collection cyber-physical system for smart cities based on IoT sensing prototype. IoT sensing prototype measures the waste level in trash bins and sends data to the cloud over the Internet for processing and storage. Based on the collected data, the optimization process can efficiently and dynamically manage the waste collection by forwarding the worker’s necessary action. The authors focused on improving the strategies of waste collection efficacy in real-time through ensuring that when the trash bins were full, the workers would collect in real-time, and therefore, the waste overflow was reduced. Thus, IoT has enabled waste monitoring and management solutions in smart cities within the connected sensors implemented in the container.

Moreover, creating a comprehensive system can help to make cities smarter, healthier, and greener. Hence, the smart waste management (SWM) system helps in decision-making and processing, ensuring the employers follow the procedures and enhance waste collection services delivery [ 202 ]. The SWM system was analyzed in the public university, such as Oradea University [ 203 ]. The designed system at Oradea University was to reduce pollution, protect the environment, and encourage recycling. Employing the SWM at Oradea University was significantly enhanced. Moreover, the authors in [ 204 ] presented ICT application for smart management in Europe and Italy’s circular economy. Likewise, The authors in [ 205 , 206 , 207 , 208 ] [ 205 , 206 , 207 , 208 ] discussed SWM includes IoT technology for smart cities application.

The smart city development system is essential for automated waste collection. Companies and governments are looking for an efficient solution for collecting all kinds of waste using smart IoT devices, edge intelligence, cloud, etc. Therefore, designing, implementing, and developing an automated system to collect waste is required to increase usage, storage, and production capacity. IoT can improve automated waste collection systems by providing real-time monitoring and communication with the cloud. Furthermore, the authors in [ 209 ] focused on increasing automated waste collection systems and improved productivity and capacity. They studied how the system could be integrated with the infrastructure of the smart city. Here, IoT allowed real-time monitoring and data collection in real-time and connected with a cloud of the automated waste collection system. IoT plays a vital role in enhancing the system’s performance by connecting devices and processing and analyzing data in real-time. Therefore, the proposed system could monitor the different types of waste in the containers in real-time. The proposed system helped provide the total amount of waste collected in containers, and optimal discharging equipment status, the optimized route for waste discharged storage system status. However, exploring the possibilities of increasing profit and productivity in waste collection architectures can be considered for future work. In [ 210 ], the authors introduced the existing Italian legislation tools that aimed toward sustainable waste management for smart cities. The waste management technique should foresee the hazard level and the quantity reduction of waste for sustainable development in smart cities.

To enhance environmental protection, and achieve increased efficiency, handle waste for sustainable smart cities is required. Many technologies control waste, such as automatic waste collection, recycling rate, route optimization, and renewable energy. In the case of automated waste collection, IoT devices such as sensors that produced alarms in case of the container are filled up and need to be serviced, thus mange the waste efficiently. Furthermore, smart in-vehicle monitoring makes the waste process faster and ensuring driver safety. IoT is the new technology that can be used for waste management and provide an efficient solution in different ways such as IoT software in waste management, cost efficiency, waste collection, and reduce Greenhouse gas emissions. Furthermore, advanced technologies such as AI and IoT have immensely contributed to reducing the cost and complexity of automated waste systems via improving efficiency, productivity, and safety and minimizing environmental impacts. Disposed waste represents a challenge due to health issues.

6 Sustainability in smart cities

Urban planning has become essential for our very survival in the development of sustainable and green smart cities. Maintaining the wellbeing of every citizen and health are significant factors. The areas are integrated with human right down to waste disposal. Levels of obesity are low, and then the citizens mental health is positive. The structure and design of sustainable green cities are directly connected with human health as well as wellbeing. Through smart networking and environmentally friendly habitats ecological resources are examined, maintained, and environmental benefits are immense. These technologies applications are not for making human life healthy only but also healthy trees, wildlife, and plants. Energy-efficient practices are the key in a green sustainable city. The smart and green disposal techniques help curtail the catastrophic dilemma of green-house gas emissions.

Furthermore, water and food have an impact on growing sustainable smart cities. The role of clean water is vital to the economy in smart cities’ development. Integrated advanced technologies play a crucial role in creating the relationship between government, citizens, environment, ecosystems, infrastructure, and resource utilization. Therefore, sustainable and green cities lead to change in technical and social innovations. On the other hand, sustainable and green cities are also referring to green spaces and smart agricultural resources. Renewable resources, reducing the ecological footprint, and reducing pollution are necessary to keep the city smart and green. IoT plays a vital role in improving smart cities to become more livable, resilient, green, and sustainable.

IoT and smart city technology represent the critical key for developing society and improving life quality. A smart city is created on an intelligent framework and complex manner of ubiquitous networks, objects, government, and connectivity to send and receive data. The data gathered in a cloud of smart cities of any application is managed and analyzed accordingly, for decision making based on the available data, and transform action in real-time to improve the way we work and live. The study [ 211 ] finds out an analysis of the smart cities’ role in making sustainable cities. It is mainly focused on air quality, green energy, renewable, energy efficiency, water quality, and environmental monitoring.

Green IoT plays a vital role in smart cities to make it a greener and sustainable place for working and living. Green IoT techniques and technologies achieve good performance in big data analysis, making smart cities significantly safer, smarter, and more sustainable. The authors of [ 212 ] discussed the big data achievements in improving life quality by reducing pollution and utilizing resources more efficiently. For managing resources utilized by IoT for sustainable and green smart cities, the authors of [ 213 ] introduced delay tolerant streaming and hybrid adaptive bandwidth and power techniques during media transmission in a smart city. Furthermore, the authors of [ 214 ] discussed a sustainable green-IoT environment. However, in [ 215 ] the authors presented greening the technologies process for sustainable smart cities by exploring the greening IoT in improving the environment, life quality, and economy while minimizing the negative impact on the environment and human health.

A smart sustainable city uses ICT to improve life quality, the efficiency of urban services and operation, and competitiveness while ensuring that it meets present and future generations’ economic, social, and environmental needs. A sustainable smart city is an innovative city that uses ICT and IoT technologies to improve life quality, service quality, and competitiveness. Furthermore, it ensures meeting the need of the present and future people regarding social, economic, cultural, and environmental aspects. Due to many people shifting to live in urban and smart cities, the energy resource management, sustainability and sharing, and utilities of emerging technologies need further discussion. Furthermore, addressing the requirements are the most important such as optimizing resources management, growth of business potential, environmental impact, and improving peoples’ life quality

7 Future directions

The upcoming cutting edge disruptive technologies with efficient techniques and strategies will change our future ambience to become healthier, smarter, and greener, delivering very high QoS. This tomorrow would be sustainable environmentally, socially, and economically. The following research fields will seek in depth investigation to improvise and optimize existing solutions for improving smart cities more efficiently.

7.1 Drones for gathering data from the smart cities

The drone is a promising technology which can improvise many real-time applications. Drone technology is a promising solution for making IoT green from both IoT power consumption and device recharging points of views. For example, drones will reduce power consumption of the IoT devices by getting closer to the nodes during data gathering, capture pollution data from agricultural farm lands, and support real-time traffic monitoring and mitigation. Therefore, drones will lead to greener IoT at low cost and with high efficiency and penetration. For pollution monitoring, few IoT devices can be carried out as payloads on a drone to capture real-time data from a large area, and cover different areas dynamically, in a time division mode for energy saving and economy in management expenditures.

Drones can contribute directly in reducing E-waste by wirelessly recharging the IoT devices, enhancing their lifetime. This is particularly useful in large IoT deployments wherein replacing batteries in the massive number of IoT devices would be impractical, thus new deployments would be considered resulting in producing E-waste.

7.2 Transmission data

The data transmission from sensors to the mobile cloud is more beneficial. Sensor-cloud model is now integrating the WSN with the mobile cloud. It is an upcoming technology for greening IoT to improve the sustainability of smart cities. Furthermore, a green social network as a service (SNaaS) may improve the system’s energy efficiency, service provisioning, sensor networks, and management of the WSN on the cloud.

7.3 Networking

It may be perceived from literature that attaining outstanding performance and high QoS on the network is the future direction for green IoT. Finding suitable and efficient techniques for improving QoS parameters (i.e., bandwidth, delay, and throughput) can efficiently improve the smart city’s eco-friendliness. Furthermore, researches are required to design IoT networks which help in reducing C O 2 emission and energy usage. The most critical tasks requiring urgent attention for smart and eco-friendly environment include energy efficiency, resource utilization, and C O 2 emission reduction.

7.4 Sustainable environment

While shaping up a sustainable and eco-friendly network environment for future, it will require less energy demand, newer resources and minimization of the negative impact of IoT on the health of the humankind without disturbing the environment. While machines are getting connected to machines via the Internet to reduce energy, smart devices have to be smarter and greener to enable automation in smart city. Therefore, machine based automation delays can be reduced in case of traffic and taking immediate action. Furthermore, during the machine to machine communication, energy balancing is required in which the radio frequency energy harvesting should be taken into consideration.

7.5 Waste management

Briefly, the future directions in waste management can be categorized based on enabling impacts, emerging technologies, and objectives. Waste gathering and recovery infrastructure have to focus on the automatizing process, implement the best practices with values. IoT devices and technologies have received enough attention in the smart cities domain. Waste management and smart communities need to be addressed and defined. In emerging technologies, smart cities propose to use many smart devices based on processing and computing capabilities that support green automation, monitoring and data collection. In enabling factors, planning, society, economics are essential to understand the waste management platform and creating value from the controlled collection and disposal of waste. Furthermore, the waste management and collection of smart city infrastructures should be taken into considerations. The connection between waste management and smart communities’ activities need to be addressed in a coherent manner.

7.6 Big data

The challenge in the accumulated big data is the prediction and estimation of the required energy for analysis of the gathered data. Rapid analysis of big data may be taken into consideration. If the volume of big data increases, it will increase the exponential scale-up of the cost and resources required for the analysis. Hence, big data analytics may be considered to enhance the prediction of energy efficiency versus the improvement of the life quality [202]. Deep learning techniques can be applied to getting accurate estimation for energy efficiency and the ways to reduce it further to meet greener ranges of system design and deployments. Table  10 summaries the comparison of recent studies with suggestion for future improvement.

8 Opportunities

Smart cities’ technologies bring many advantages by using IoT devices such as sensors, actuators, wearable devices. To improve smart cities, autonomous cars with potential services enabled by vehicle to vehicle and vehicle to internet wireless communication is a technology disruption. It will change the ways in which taxies have been run and owned thus far. For example, improving traffic flow and reducing accidents via intelligent systems and collaborative IoT devices will enhance communication with autonomous cars. Furthermore, autonomous vehicles can also get passengers in demand based on loading and unloading areas. Moreover, improving traffic flow can allow public service to optimize evacuation planning in natural disasters [ 225 , 226 , 227 ]. In order to make our life easier, machine learning and IoT devices are necessary for improving efficiency. Smarter waste management, using IoT technology, utilizes the consideration of our waste disposal by data gathered and how much waste is produced to collect data and then use collected data to implement models to reduce waste in the nearest future by recycling and separation. Today, IoT technology plays a vital role in making city cleaner, healthier, and happier citizens. Improving healthcare and quality of life via the monitoring of environment, air quality, and reduce health stress. Therefore, there are many opportunities for prospective future to create a smarter, healthier, greener, and happier citizen, leading to a cleaner, greener planet.

9 Conclusion

Tremendous developments of various technologies in the 21 st century has improved life quality in smart cities. Recently, IoT technology has demonstrated heightened benefits in enhancing our life quality in smart cities. However, the technologies development demands high energy accompanied by unintentional e-waste and pollution emissions. This survey studied the strategies and techniques to improve our life quality by making the cities smarter, greener, sustainable, and safer. In specific, we highlighted the green IoT for efficient resource utilization, creating a sustainable, reducing energy consumption, reducing pollution, and reducing e-waste. This survey provided a practical insight for anyone who wishes to find out research in the field of eco-friendly and sustainable city- based on emerging IoT technologies. Based on the critical factors of enabling technologies, the smart things in smart cities become smarter to perform their tasks autonomously. These things communicate among themselves and humans with efficient bandwidth utilization, energy efficiency, mitigation of hazardous emissions, and reducing e-waste to make the city eco-friendly and sustainable. We also identified the challenges and prospective future research direction in developing eco-friendly and sustainable smart cities.

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Acknowledgements

This research has emanated from research supported by a research grant from Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) under Grant Number SFI/16/RC/3918 (Confirm), and Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 847577 co-funded by the European Regional Development Fund.

The authors are grateful to the Deanship of Scientific Research at Taif University, Kingdom ofSaudi Arabia for funding this project through Taif University ResearchersSupporting Project Number (TURSP-2020/265).

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Almalki, F.A., Alsamhi, S.H., Sahal, R. et al. Green IoT for Eco-Friendly and Sustainable Smart Cities: Future Directions and Opportunities. Mobile Netw Appl 28 , 178–202 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11036-021-01790-w

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Original research article, research on the impact of green technology innovation on energy total factor productivity, based on provincial data of china.

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  • 1 Guangzhou Institute of International Finance, Guangzhou University, Guangzhou, China
  • 2 School of Economics and Statistics, Guangzhou University, Guangzhou, China

Against the background of carbon peaking and carbon neutralization, green technology innovation plays an important role in promoting the energy total factor productivity (TFP). This study verifies the impact of green technology innovation on energy TFP in a complete sample and the subsamples by region, by constructing a panel threshold model, and analyzes its influence mechanism on the basis of the mediating effect test based on annual provincial data of mainland China from 2005 to 2018. The empirical results reveal the following: first, with the level of economic development as the threshold variable, there is a threshold effect in the impact of green technology innovation on the energy TFP; second, green technology innovation has an impact on the energy TFP through industrial structure upgrading; that is, industrial structure has a mediating effect in the influence mechanism; and third, there is heterogeneity in the impact of green technology innovation on the energy TFP among different regions in China, and the threshold effect only exists in the western region, since the central and eastern regions have crossed a certain developmental stage.

Introduction

Energy TFP is usually defined by the ratio of energy input to output ( Perez-Lombard et al., 2013 ). The promotion of energy TFP plays an important role in the sustainable development of the economy. The energy TFP includes the input of a series of means of production such as labor, energy, and capital, and is accompanied by the expected output GDP and the non-expected output carbon dioxide emissions. From the perspective of input, the promotion of energy efficiency avoids excessive energy consumption, and in terms of the output, it reduces the excessive damage to the environment. The energy TFP can reflect the efficiency of comprehensive development and utilization of energy to a large extent, and also helps to identify the state of economic growth, that is, whether economic growth depends on the consumption of energy scale or the improvement of energy use efficiency. A lot of literature works related to energy TFP have discussed ways to improve efficiency. Xie et al. (2014) measured energy TFP in the OECD and BRIC countries and found that the adjustment of the energy structure has a certain impact on energy TFP. Energy consumption can be reduced by restructuring industries so as to improve energy TFP ( Xiong et al., 2019 ; Zhu et al., 2019 ; Yu, 2020 ). The efficiency of technological innovation is the main reason for energy TFP improvement in the industrial sector, and the effect of the technological progress on energy TFP is gradually increasing ( Fisher-Vanden et al., 2006 ; Baccarelli et al., 2016 ; Naranjo et al., 2019 ). Miao et al. (2018) demonstrate the significant positive driving effect of technology innovation on energy TFP. Hellsmark et al. (2016) believed that industrial technology innovation can rapidly improve energy TFP so as to achieve rapid industrial growth and expansion. From the perspectives of changing energy structure, adjusting industrial structure, and technology innovation, the related literature fully demonstrates the effectiveness of technology innovation in improving energy TFP. However, the adjustment of energy structure and industrial structure is more dependent on the resource endowment of economic subjects, while technological innovation improves the energy utilization efficiency through improvement at the technological level, which has a more realistic value.

Energy TFP measurement needs to focus not only on the desired output but also on the undesired output. Based on the consideration of environmental factors, energy TFP measurement involves two aspects of the output: desired output and undesired output. The desired output refers to the output, such as GDP, which can increase human material products and services to a certain extent. The undesired output refers to additional products that have a negative effect on the human environment and health due to the consumption of energy and other elements in the production process, such as the greenhouse effect caused by carbon dioxide emissions in the production process. Too many studies have mainly focused on the contribution of energy to economic development, with less consideration on the impact of energy consumption on environmental quality, that is, ignoring the issue of the relationship between energy consumption and sustainable development. With the increasing prominence of environmental problems, more and more studies have included environmental factors into the consideration of energy TFP measurement to reduce the deviation in the process of energy TFP measurement ( Zhang et al., 2011 ; He et al., 2013 ; Yang and Wang, 2013 ; Simsek, 2014 ; Vlontzos et al., 2014 ). Environmental regulation significantly promotes green technology innovation and reduces environmental pollution in the process of economic development ( Du et al., 2021 ). Hu and Wang (2006) constructed a full-factor energy efficiency analysis framework to maximize the energy TFP output to improve energy TFP, which means that improving energy TFP should not only increase the desired output but also pay attention to the weakening of the undesired output. Environmental regulation can reduce the undesired output such as carbon dioxide, while improving energy TFP through technological innovation can play an essential role and have global strategic significance.

Technological innovation promotes the maturity of production technology and the development of new products, thus improving efficiency significantly. From the perspective of the innovation system, the improvement of energy TFP by technological innovation is to reduce the leakage in the process of energy use by means of process transformation, and then to improve the total factor productivity of energy. From the perspective of industrial ecological chain, technological innovation promotes the upgrading of the regional structure and the exchange and cooperation between the industrial structure, and innovation jointly promotes technological innovation and industrial structure upgrading ( Greunz, 2004 ; Motohashi and Yun, 2007 ; Altenburg et al., 2008 ), and adjusting industrial structure can improve energy utilization efficiency as well ( Zhao et al., 2010 ; Zhou et al., 2013 ; Yu et al., 2016 ; Wang et al., 2020 ). The technical level of energy TFP production depends on the technological innovation ability; empirical results show that the enhancement of technological innovation ability can effectively improve energy efficiency and reduce energy consumption intensity ( Du and Yan, 2009 ; Zhong and Li, 2020 ). Wagner et al. (2014) found from innovative activities, with potential environmental impact that the potential of technological innovation is unlimited. Although technological innovation has a strong effect on efficiency, pure technological innovation does not take into account the external effects of the environment, so green technology innovation is more in line with the goal of sustainable development ( Li and Liao, 2020 ). Considering that technological innovation promotes the upgrading of the industrial structure and thus has an impact on energy TFP, this study chooses the upgrading of the industrial structure as a mediating variable to study the indirect impact of green technological innovation on total factor productivity of energy.

Green technology innovation belongs to the scope of technological innovation, which is the general name of management and technology innovation aimed at protecting the environment. In the process of innovation practice, although some innovations can greatly improve productivity, they do not consider the external effects on the environment; for example, technological innovation is simply about increasing the output in energy-intensive industries. As a result, various industries abide by the green principle and pay more and more attention to economic development and environmental problems ( Gorelick and Walmsley, 2020 ; Sukharev, 2020 ). Green technology follows the ecological principle and the law of ecological economy, considers the saving of resources and energy in the process of innovation, avoids, eliminates or reduces the pollution and damage to the ecological environment in the process of innovation, and maintains the minimum ecological negative effect in technological innovation. Green technology innovation aims to achieve long-term sustainable development; produce economic, environmental, and social benefits; save resources and energy; and eliminate or reduce environmental pollution and degradation ( Zhou et al., 2014 ; Li et al., 2018 ). Because green technology innovation considers the external efficiency of the environment, there may be conflicts between self-interests and social benefits in the process of enterprises’ implementing green technology innovation, thus reducing the power of green technology innovation ( Braun and Wield, 1994 ; Li et al., 2019a ).

The significant effect of technological innovation on energy TFP is based on the consistency of interests which belong to stakeholders, but the impact of green technology innovation on the interests of stakeholders may be different. Green technology innovation may increase the production cost of enterprises, and the improvement of energy TFP requires more consideration of environmental externalities. Therefore, whether green technology innovation has an impact on energy TFP needs to be explored in both theory and practice. Based on this, this article studies the impact of green technology innovation on energy TFP.

This article focuses on the impact of green technology innovation on energy TFP. Its marginal contributions are as follows: first, green technology innovation that will involve subject behavior and external environmental effects related to the subject’s behavior is considered in a framework. Most of the existing literature works only consider green technology innovation or the total factor productivity of energy, and less considers external effects such as environment. In this article, green technology innovation is separated from the innovation system, the undesired output is included in TFP measurement, green technology innovation is included in the behavior of the innovation subject, and external effect of environment is considered in energy TFP measurement. Second, the threshold effect of green technology innovation on energy TFP is studied. In the process of empirical analysis, it is found that green technology innovation does not necessarily have a significant impact on energy TFP, but through the threshold effect model, it is found that when the level of economic development is the threshold variable, there is a threshold effect in the impact of green technology innovation on energy TFP. Third, the mediating effect mechanism of green technology innovation on energy TFP was studied. Through the selection and experiment of different mediating variables, this article empirically tests the mediating effect of the industrial structure in the impact of green technology innovation on energy TFP. Fourth, there is spatial heterogeneity in the impact of green technological innovation on energy TFP. Since China’s economy has very strong regional heterogeneity, according to the basic situation of economic development in the area of space, this article divides the full sample into three subsamples: the eastern, the central, and the western regions, to study the heterogeneity.

The structure of the rest of this article is as follows: the second section is about the measurement of the impact of green technology innovation on energy TFP, including model setting, variables, data sources, and test results. The third section focuses on the influence mechanism analysis of green technology innovation on energy TFP. In terms of the technology of testing the mediating effect, this part estimates the parameters and analyzes the mediating effect by setting the mediating effect model. The fourth section is about the heterogeneity analysis of the impact of green technology innovation on energy TFP. According to the basic situation of economic development, the full sample is divided into three subsamples, and the heterogeneity is analyzed. The fifth section draws the basic conclusion.

Econometric Test of the Impact of Green Technology Innovation on Energy Total Factor Productivity

Panel threshold model setting.

The improvement of energy TFP by technological innovation has been proven in a lot of literature works, but whether green technology innovation affects energy TFP needs to be tested with more empirical evidence. From the perspective of the relationship between technological innovation and energy TFP, technological innovation requires costs; the greater uncertainty of green technological innovation means that enterprises are facing greater uncertainty in technological innovation; this uncertainty makes enterprises, as the main body of technological innovation, more inclined to realize their self-interests when making decisions, and then tend to ignore the strategic interests. Accordingly, in the face of various external constraints, enterprises have very great differences in their green technology innovation motivation, so green technology innovation has an impact on total factor productivity, but this impact needs to be verified through econometric tests.

In different stages of economic development, the strength and consciousness of enterprises to support green technology innovation are different. For example, in regions with a high degree of economic development, people have higher demand for products and environmental quality, and the corresponding innovation subjects can bear greater risks of technological innovation and research. Therefore, there is a certain threshold for the impact of green technology innovation on energy TFP in theory.

On that basis, this study assumes that green technology innovation has a significant effect on energy TFP, and this effect is nonlinear and has a threshold effect, and the variable of the core threshold effect is the level of economic development. The threshold effect model can examine the function between the two and the threshold effect ( Liu et al., 2020 ). In this study, the level of economic development is taken as the threshold variable, and the panel threshold model proposed by Hansen is adopted ( Hansen, 1999 ). The basic form of the model is as follows:

where EE it represents the energy TFP, which is used to measure energy efficiency; GTI it represents the green technology innovation; threshold variable EDI it is the economic development level; γ is the threshold value to be estimated; I ( · ) is the indicator function; and when the condition in parentheses is satisfied,  I ( · ) = 1 ; otherwise, it is 0. μ i is a fixed effect, which is used to describe the heterogeneity of different provinces at different levels of economic development; ε it is the error term. In addition, i represents different provinces and t represents different years.

After the threshold and slope values are estimated, the significance of the threshold effect should be tested. The basic principle of testing the threshold effect is as follows. Taking single threshold as an example, the null hypothesis and test statistics of the model are obtained as follows:

If the null hypothesis is rejected, there is threshold effect in the impact of green technological innovation on energy TFP. S 0 is the sum of squares of residuals obtained under the null hypothesis H 0 , and S 0 ≥ S 1 ( γ ^ ) . Under the null hypothesis, the threshold value γ of the economic development level needs to be evaluated, so the distribution of F 1 is nonstandard, but the bootstrap method can be used to simulate its asymptotic distribution, so the confidence interval of distribution F 1 in Eq. 2 can be obtained.

After determining the threshold effect of the economic development level, it is necessary to test whether the threshold estimated value γ ^ is equal to its true value. The null hypothesis of the single threshold model and the corresponding test statistics are as follows:

where the LR distribution is also nonstandard. This study adopts a formula proposed by Hansen (1999) ; that is, when L R 1 ( γ ) > − 2 l n ( 1 − 1 − α ) ( α is the significant level), the null hypothesis is rejected.

Variable and Data Description

Variable description.

Energy TFP is the explained variable, which is measured by the ratio of energy consumption to GDP in many studies. This method of measuring energy efficiency is not responsive to the dynamic change of efficiency ( Hang and Tu, 2007 ; Adom and Kwakwa, 2014 ). In the continuous research of energy TFP, some methods such as index decomposition analysis (IDA), parametric stochastic Frontier analysis (SFA), and nonparametric data envelopment analysis (DEA) have been proposed to measure energy efficiency or total factor productivity ( Zhou et al., 2012 ; Filippini and Hunt, 2015 ; Li et al., 2019b ; Liao and Drakeford, 2019 ; Zheng et al., 2020 ). These methods can dynamically investigate the dynamic changes of energy efficiency or total factor productivity, and then study the effects of other factors on energy TFP, but these methods do not consider the interest correlation between the evaluation subjects. The cross-efficiency evaluation can dynamically investigate the dynamic changes of energy TFP on the basis of self-evaluation and other evaluation so that the evaluation results are comparable, and a complete ranking result can be obtained. Therefore, this study selects the DEA cross-efficiency model to measure energy TFP. The basic form is as follows:

Let S be the number of provinces selected in this study; then the vectors of m energy input indexes and n energy output of the decision-making unit DMU i are expressed as X i = ( x 1 i , x 2 i , · · · · · · , x m i ) T > 0 , Y i = ( y 1 i , y 2 i , · · · · · · , y n i ) T > 0,1 ≤ i ≤ s ,

• The constraints are

where θ ^ d i represents the cross-efficiency value of D M U i ( 1 ≤ i ≤ s ) based on D M U d . The value of the final energy TFP of D M U i is expressed by the average value of the cross-efficiency values of decision-making units D M U d from D M U 1 to D M U s .

In the energy TFP calculation, it usually takes into account the input of the means of production, while this study also focuses on the expected and unexpected outputs. Labor, capital stock, and energy consumption are used as input indicators. The number of urban employment is used to measure the labor force, the perpetual inventory is used to estimate capital stock, and the basic equation is K i , T = K i , T − 1 ( 1 − δ i , T ) + I i , T , where i and T are the i-th province and the T-th period, δ is the economic depreciation rate, I is the total fixed capital formation, the initial capital stock is obtained by dividing the fixed capital in the initial year by 10%, and the economic depreciation rate δ is set at 9.6% ( Zhang, 2008 ). Energy consumption is measured by the total amount of energy consumption in each province.

The desired output of energy TFP is measured by GDP, and the undesired output is measured by carbon dioxide emission. The details are shown in Table 1 . Data of GDP are converted to real regional GDP with the year 2000 as the base year. Carbon emissions are estimated by the direct method: C O 2 i = σ c V c + σ o V o + σ q V q , where V c ,     V o ,    and  V q represent the energy consumption of coal, oil, and natural gas, respectively, for the production of region i , and σ c , σ o , and σ q represent the carbon emission coefficients of coal, oil, and natural gas, respectively.

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TABLE 1 . Input–output variables used to measure energy TFP.

The explanatory variable is green technology innovation, expressed by the number of green patent application, including green invention patents and green utility model patents. The control variables of the model include foreign direct investment (FDI), industrial structure (IS), and energy price. FDI which is closely related to economic development is measured by the proportion of foreign direct investment in regional GDP ( Li et al., 2019c ), IS was measured by the proportion of the output value of secondary industry in GDP, and the energy price is calculated by this formula: P E = λ c P c + λ o P o + λ e P e , where λ c ,   λ o , and  λ e represent the proportion of coal, oil, and electricity in total energy consumption in each year, respectively, and P c ,   P o ,  and  P e represent the average price of coal, oil, and electricity in turn, respectively. The energy price is calculated by multiplying the annual fuel and power purchase index of each province by the energy price of the previous year. The threshold variable is the level of economic development, measured by per-capita GDP in each region and adjusted to a constant price based on 2000 ( Matei, 2020 ). The mediating variable is the upgrading of the industrial structure, which is measured by the hierarchical coefficient of the industrial structure. The specific formula is W = 3 q ( 3 ) + 2 q ( 2 ) + q ( 1 ) , where q ( 1 ) ,   q ( 2 ) ,  and  q ( 3 ) are the proportions of the added value of the primary, secondary, and tertiary industries, respectively.

Data Sources

The sample data are from 30 provinces of mainland China (the sample does not include Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan, and Tibet due to data problems) in 2005–2018. The time frequency of the data is set to year. The green patent data come from CNRDS green patent-GPRD database. The data of urban employment, total energy consumption, and the added value of the primary, secondary, and tertiary industries are derived from the China Energy Database. The output value of the secondary industry and the regional GDP are derived from the annual statistical yearbooks published by the National Bureau of Statistics. Gross fixed capital formation of the whole society comes from the Wind Database. Foreign direct investment data are from the provincial statistical yearbooks. The purchase price indexes of fuel and power come from the China Price Yearbook. The “China Price Yearbook (2004)” has a relatively comprehensive record of various energy prices, so they can be used to calculate the average price of the three energy sources in 2003 and convert into the form of yuan/ton standard coal to get the energy price in 2003. Other variables are shown in Table 2 .

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TABLE 2 . Explanatory variables, control variables, threshold variables, and mediating variables used in empirical studies.

According to the data source, relevant data are collected and relevant variables are measured. The descriptive statistics of each variable are shown in Table 3 .

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TABLE 3 . Descriptive statistics of variables.

It can be seen from Table 3 that the variation degree of each variable is quite great, especially the variable of the level of economic development. Table 3 describes the basic characteristics of the data for 30 provinces in China from 2005 to 2018, including the average values, standard deviation, minimum, and maximum values. For the green technology innovation data, there is a large gap between the maximum value 5.603 and the minimum value 0.001, which indicates that there are significant gaps in the level of green technology innovation among different regions. In terms of standard deviation, the standard deviation of energy price is the largest, followed by that of the level of economic development. From the discrete degree of these indicators, it can be seen that there is a large standard deviation in the three variables of the economic development level, energy price, and green technology innovation level, which indicates that heterogeneity exists in the field of green technology innovation and energy technology. Heterogeneity research can be analyzed from different perspectives and methods to explore the development law of things and the internal relations of some influencing factors in a more comprehensive way ( Li et al., 2020a ; Li et al., 2020b ; Li and Zhong, 2020 ; Li et al., 2021a ; Li et al., 2021b ).

Empirical Results

On the basis of the constructed threshold model, it is necessary to determine the existence of threshold effect and the number and size of the threshold value. Using sample data, the existence of threshold effect is tested, and the test results are shown in Table 4 .

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TABLE 4 . Test results of threshold effect of the full sample.

Table 4 shows that with the level of economic development as the threshold variable, green technology innovation has a single threshold effect on energy TFP. The F statistics value of the single threshold effect test is 68.59, passing the significance test at 95% confidence level, while the F statistics value of the double threshold effect is 9.98, failing the significance test. Judging from the F statistics in Table 4 , the impact of green technology innovation on energy TFP does cause a single threshold effect based on the level of economic development. The threshold estimate of the variable of the economic development level is 7.248. The single threshold effect model is used to estimate the parameters of the model, and the results are shown in Table 5 .

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TABLE 5 . Parameter estimation results of a single threshold model with full sample.

Table 5 shows that with the economic development level as the threshold variable, green technology innovation has a threshold effect on energy TFP. From the regression results of the panel threshold effect, the promotion of green technology innovation to energy TFP is restricted by the threshold effect of the economic development level. When the level of economic development is below the threshold value of 7.248, the influence coefficient of green technology innovation on energy TFP is relatively low, which is 0.113. When the level of economic development crosses the threshold value of 7.248, the influence coefficient of green technology innovation on energy TFP is increased to 0.536. This indicates that the impact of green technology innovation on energy TFP is different at different levels of economic development. Under the low level of economic development, due to extensive economic management, it is difficult for the economic entities to achieve the balance between their own interests and the social benefits in production decision-making, and they pay more attention to their own short-term economic interests; correspondingly, the low level of economic development leads to low promotion of green technology innovation on energy TFP. With the improvement of the level of economic development, the decision-making behavior of economic entities is more focused on strategic development. Local governments gradually implement environmental regulations and other measures to promote the economic transformation of various regions. Therefore, the promotion of green technology innovation on energy TFP is significantly improved.

Mechanism Analysis of the Impact of Green Technology Innovation on Energy Total Factor Productivity

Mediating effect model setting.

Green technology innovation has positive promoting effect on economic growth, and this positive role has a threshold effect, so the impact of green technology innovation on energy TFP is not direct, but through other channels. Enterprises are the main body of technological innovation. When technology and capital are combined, they will have a very important impact on the industrial ecology. From the perspective of industrial evolution, technological innovation promotes the upgrading of the industrial structure. In terms of energy consumption, the period of industrialization has greatly increased energy consumption. With the evolution of industrial structure, the industry has gradually developed to the tertiary industry. On the one hand, through the improvement of industrial technology, the comprehensive utilization efficiency of energy has been greatly improved, and then promoting carbon emissions reach the peak faster, which has effectively improved the total factor productivity of energy. On the other hand, the industrial structure gradually shifts from a higher proportion of high-energy industries to a higher proportion of low-energy industries, thus reducing the amount of energy consumption. Green technology innovation needs strategic adjustment. For the micro entity, it is difficult to cover the short-term investment cost of green technology innovation before it reaches a certain level of economic development. Therefore, there is a threshold in the impact of green technology innovation on energy TFP. Based on the above analysis, the impact of green technology innovation on energy TFP is affected by the way of the industrial structure; that is, there is a mediating effect of the industrial structure, but there may be differences among different regions.

In order to study the influence mechanism of green technology innovation on energy TFP and explore the mediating effect, this part introduces industrial structure upgrading as the mediating variable on the basis of the theoretical analysis. The mediating effect models are as follows:

where E E i t represents the energy TFP; G T I i t represents the green technology innovation; I N S i t represents the industrial structure upgrading, that is, the mediating variable; C O N T R i k t represents the control variables, including industrial structure (IS), foreign direct investment (FDI), and energy prices (PRI); subscripts i , t , and k represent different provinces, time, and control variables, respectively, i = 1,2,…,31, t = 1,2,…,9, k = 1,2,3; and ε represents the random error term.

In the mediating effect analysis, Model (10) is first regressed to test whether the regression coefficients of energy TFP and green technological innovation are positive, and only when the coefficients are significantly positive the next test can be carried out; otherwise, the test is terminated. Second, Model (11) is regressed to test whether the regression coefficients of the mediating variable industrial structure upgrading and green technology innovation are significantly positive, and if they are significantly positive, green technology innovation supports the upgrading of the industrial structure. Then, Model (12) is regressed, and if the coefficients c ′ and b are significant and the value of c ′ decreases compared with that of c , there is a partial mediating effect, and if the coefficient c ′ is not significant while the coefficient b is significant, there is a complete mediating effect.

Mediating Effect Test and Result Analysis

The parameters in Models (10)–(12) are estimated by using the same sample data, and the results are shown in Table 6 .

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TABLE 6 . Mediating effect results (with the stepwise regression coefficient method).

Table 6 shows that green technology innovation influences energy TFP through the channel of industrial structure upgrading; that is, industrial structure upgrading has a mediating effect in the influence mechanism. The overall regression results show that the regression coefficients of both green technology innovation and industrial structure upgrading on energy TFP are significant, indicating that the total effect is significant. In Model (10), the impact of green technology innovation on energy TFP is verified. The coefficient of GTI is 0.192, which is significantly positive at the level of 1%, indicating that green technology innovation promotes energy TFP. In Model (11), there is a significant positive correlation between green technology innovation and industrial structure upgrading at the level of 1%, which indicates that green technology innovation accelerates industrial structure upgrading. In Model (12), after adding the industrial structure upgrading variable to Model (11), the coefficients of green technology innovation and industrial structure upgrading are significantly positive, and the coefficient of green technology innovation is reduced from 0.192, when there is no mediating variable, to 0.0758. It indicates that industrial structure upgrading plays a partial mediating effect in the impact of green technology innovation on energy TFP.

It can be concluded from Table 7 that the mediating effect of the industrial structure in the influence mechanism of green technology innovation on energy TFP is robust. Compared with the empirical results in Table 6 , the significance and direction of parameter estimation in Table 7 have not changed, and the mediating effect has not changed significantly. Through the Bootstrap test, the direct effect value of green technology innovation on energy TFP is 0.12, while the indirect effect value of green technology innovation on energy TFP through industrial structure upgrading is 0.09, and the mediating effect accounts for 42.86% of the total effect, and the effect is significant. According to Table 7 , the confidence intervals of direct and indirect effects are observed, excluding 0, indicating that the mediating effect of green technology innovation on energy TFP through industrial structure upgrading is tenable and robust.

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TABLE 7 . Robustness test results with the Bootstrap sampling method.

Heterogeneity Analysis on the Impact of Green Technology Innovation on Energy Total Factor Productivity

Sample partition based on regions.

According to the above test results, green technology innovation has a threshold effect on energy TFP, so to a large extent, the impact of green technology innovation on energy TFP is heterogeneous. It can also be known from the aforementioned descriptive statistics that there are differences in the level of economic development, green technology innovation, and energy TFP in different regions. As a country with extremely uneven economic development, China has significant differences in the level of economic development among different provinces. Therefore, this part analyzes the heterogeneity of the impact of green technology innovation on the energy TFP based on regional differences.

Provincial administrative regions are the main basis of regional division in China. Most of the research literature works on Chinese regions are based on Chinese mainland provincial administrative regions. This study also divides regions into 30 provincial administrative regions (excluding Tibet). According to the descriptive statistics of variables in Table 3 , combined with the level of economic development and the practice of most literature, 30 provinces are divided into three regions: the eastern, the central, and the western regions. There are 11 provinces and municipalities in the eastern region, including Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, Liaoning, Shanghai, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Fujian, Shandong, Guangdong, and Hainan. The central region includes eight provinces such as Shanxi, Jilin, Heilongjiang, Anhui, Jiangxi, Henan, Hubei, and Hunan. There are 11 provinces and municipalities in the western region, including Inner Mongolia, Guangxi, Chongqing, Sichuan, Guizhou, Yunnan, Shanxi, Gansu, Ningxia, Qinghai, and Xinjiang.

Empirical Result Analysis

According to the division of regions, three subsamples are obtained. The test of the threshold effect shows that there is heterogeneity in the threshold values of the three subsamples. Therefore, the threshold effect of the three subsamples should be tested separately. The specific test results are shown in Table 8 .

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TABLE 8 . The threshold effect test results of the three sub-samples.

From Table 8 , it can be concluded that with the level of economic development as the threshold variable, there is heterogeneity in the threshold of three subsamples. With the level of economic development as the threshold variable, the green technology innovation in the western region has a single threshold effect on the energy TFP, but there is no threshold effect in the eastern and central regions. The F statistic value of the single threshold effect test is 67.63, which is significant at the level of 1%, and the F statistic value of the double threshold effect test is 12.99, which has not passed the significance test. The F statistic values of the threshold effect test in both the eastern and the central regions do not pass the significance test. Therefore, it can be concluded that the threshold effect of green technology innovation on energy TFP has spatial regional differences with the level of economic development as the threshold variable. At the same time, the results of the threshold effect test show that the central and eastern regions have crossed a certain stage of economic development.

Based on the above analysis, the parameters of the threshold effect in the western region are estimated, and the results are shown in Table 9 .

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TABLE 9 . Parameter estimation results of the single threshold model in the western region.

Combining the results in Table 5 and Table 9 , it can be seen that the threshold effect range of green technology innovation on the energy TFP in the western region is lower than that of the full sample. In Table 5 , the threshold effect values of the full sample are 0.113 and 0.536, and in Table 9 , the threshold effect values of the western region are 0.239 and 4.062. The range of the threshold effect value in the western region becomes smaller, while the threshold effect in the eastern and central regions no longer exists, indicating that when economic growth goes beyond a certain limit, the positive effect of green technology innovation on energy TFP will play a promoting role, which can be gradually independent on the level of economic development. According to the estimated results of the parameters in Table 9 , when the level of economic development is below the threshold value of 4.062, the influence coefficient of green technology innovation on energy TFP is 0.239. When the level of economic development increases above the threshold value of 4.062, the influence coefficient of green technology innovation on energy TFP is 4.495. This indicates that with the development of the western region, the role of green technology innovation in promoting energy TFP is becoming more and more significant, so in the construction of the western economy, the investment of green technology innovation should be increased, and the improvement of energy TFP should be promoted, so as to achieve a win–win situation.

By constructing the panel threshold effect model and using Chinese mainland provincial data, this study examines the impact of green technology innovation on energy TFP and analyzes its mechanism and heterogeneity. The conclusions are as follows:

First, with the level of economic development as the threshold variable, green technology innovation has heterogeneous threshold effect on energy TFP. Based on the data of the full sample, it is estimated that the impact of green technology innovation on energy TFP is restricted by the level of economic development, and there is a single threshold effect. However, combining with the empirical analysis results, it can be found that this threshold effect does not exist in the central and eastern regions. Green technology innovation has positive effect on energy TFP, which indicates that green innovation must be promoted in order to achieve long-term sustainable development of economy. From the threshold effect, the promotion effect of green technology innovation on energy TFP increases with the improvement of the economic development level.

Second, green technology innovation has an impact on energy TFP through industrial structure upgrading; that is, industrial structure has mediating effect in the influence mechanism. Industrial structure upgrading realizes industrial structure optimization by increasing the proportion of the tertiary industry, improving energy utilization efficiency through technology innovation and product upgrading, and improving energy TFP.

Third, the impact of green technology innovation on energy TFP is heterogeneous in the western, central, and the eastern regions of China, and the threshold effect only exists in the western region, since the economic development of the central and eastern regions has crossed a certain stage. In the eastern and central regions, there is no threshold effect in the impact of green technology innovation on energy TFP, while in the western region, there is a single threshold effect, and the impact of green technology innovation on energy TFP increases significantly with the level of economic development. In the eastern and central regions of China, the effectiveness of green technology has exceeded a certain stage, and green technology innovation has gradually played a strategic role in promoting the total factor productivity of energy.

Data Availability Statement

The original contributions presented in the study are included in the article/ Supplementary Material , and further inquiries can be directed to the corresponding author.

Author Contributions

MW: grasp the theme and research direction, YL: empirical research and data, GL: data.

This research was funded by the Chinese National Funding of Social Sciences, grant number 18ATJ002, and the 13th Five-year Plan of Guangzhou Social Science, grant number 2018GZYB129.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Supplementary Material

The Supplementary Material for this article can be found online at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fenvs.2021.710931/full#supplementary-material

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Keywords: green technology innovation, energy TFP, threshold effect, mediating effect, heterogeneity

Citation: Wang M, Li Y and Liao G (2021) Research on the Impact of Green Technology Innovation on Energy Total Factor Productivity, Based on Provincial Data of China. Front. Environ. Sci. 9:710931. doi: 10.3389/fenvs.2021.710931

Received: 17 May 2021; Accepted: 03 June 2021; Published: 25 June 2021.

Reviewed by:

Copyright © 2021 Wang, Li and Liao. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Yanling Li, [email protected]

This article is part of the Research Topic

Green Finance, Renewable and Non-Renewable Energy, and COVID-19

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Title of BSc Thesis Topic Proposal Application of green technology in construction

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81 Green Building Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

🏆 best green building topic ideas & essay examples, ✅ simple & easy green building essay titles, 🔎 good research topics about green building, ❓ green architecture research questions.

  • Green Buildings and Environmental Sustainability This paper scrutinizes the characteristics that need to be possessed by a building for it to qualify as green coupled with questioning the capacity of the green movements across the globe to prescribe the construction […]
  • Green Building Design Management The concert of service and product design involves environmentally friendly technologies and effective use of natural resources and materials. It influences allocation of resources, design of the building an selection of materials and technologies. We will write a custom essay specifically for you by our professional experts 808 writers online Learn More
  • Operations Management vs. Green Building (GB) Introduction Green Building and Operations Management Importance and Role of Operations Management Conclusion Green building depends upon effective management process and resource allocation.
  • The Relationship Between Green Buildings and Operations Management Once a total budget for a green building project is set, project management should think in terms of the possible impact of different combinations: the extremes of spending the total budget, and the results expected […]
  • Lightening Solution for a Green Building Now better is the efficiency of electricity to light conversion, lesser is the electrical energy wasted and lesser is the amount of fossil fuel burnt and greenhouse gases produced to get the same amount of […]
  • Green Building Leeds Certification – Childcare Center These provide regulations for the design of the facility, the infrastructure required, the size required and the specific services to be provided by the child care facility.
  • Green Design Parameters in High-Rise Buildings in Hot-Humid Climate The core of the issue lies in the need to determine the pressure differences as applied to windward and leeward faces.
  • Green Building and Green Practices Promotions One of the aspects of LCA is life cycle costing, which evaluates the financial cost of the design and maintenance of the building and is important for estimating the expenses associated with green buildings’ characteristics.
  • Green Building: The Impact of Humanity on the Environment A growing awareness of humanity’s impact on the environment resulted in the emergence of regulations and evaluation systems across the world. Green Globes is online-based and requires a design team and a project manager for […]
  • Green Building Programs Assessment Each of the initiatives evaluates the impact that buildings have on the environment as well as the way these buildings were built and how they can be disposed of in the future. The main objective […]
  • Australian Green Building Innovation and Ethics The field has a direct impact on the quality of life and the environment. The concepts to be discussed include the origins of the project, its impacts, and how the innovation addresses sustainability concerns.
  • Green Building Codes and Standards The building industry in the United States is not spared when it comes to the question of embracing the green paradigm in building and construction.
  • Indoor Air Quality in Green Building Movement To check the hypothesis it is necessary to consider such issues as the history of green building, the impact of green building on environment and people’s health, the importance of the high indoor air quality […]
  • Green Industrial Cities’ Designing A green environment includes the geographical area and the natural state that has not yet been developed and development must not negatively impact the existing infrastructure and the environment.
  • Green Building in the Boston Area On the whole, this project illustrates how innovative technologies and creative decisions of the architects can improve the sustainability of buildings.
  • Green Buildings and Their Efficiency Water Consumption The resources are useful in terms of provide regulation of buildings, components of green buildings, selection of green materials and where to purchase such materials.
  • Green Design: Sustainable Landscaping and Garden Design The perfect designing of sustainable landscapes in the urban centers has led to efficient use of land in cities and the surrounding regions.
  • Green Building in the United Arab Emirates Consequently, the government in the United Arab Emirates resolved for the implementation of better and advanced construction strategies that would ensure energy was conserved therefore providing a solution to the increased rate of pollution that […]
  • Green Buildings Impact on the Environment The most outstanding benefit of green buildings is the reduction in wastes and this is something that other developments have not taken care of.
  • Green Buildings and Indoor Air Quality The idea of “green buildings” has in many ways helped enhance indoor air quality.”Green buildings” are made possible by designing and constructing buildings which have high quality of indoor air as one of their major […]
  • The Use of Green Materials for Sustainable Buildings Green materials used on the sustainable buildings reduce the environmental hazardous impacts such as the global warming effects, depletion of resources, and toxicities.
  • Business Opportunities and the Future of Green Building Constructions
  • Analysis of Business Plans About Green Building
  • Can Green Building Councils Serve as Third Party Governance Institutions?
  • Comparing Green Building Rating and Sustainable Building Rating Construction
  • Water Ecological Aspects in Developing a Quantitative Climatic Model of Green Building
  • Encouraging L.E.E.D. Green Building Technology
  • Ethical and Sustainability Issues in Green Building
  • Explicating Mechanical and Electrical Knowledge for Design Phase of Green Building Projects
  • Adoption and Impact of L.E.E.D.-Based Green Building Policies at the Municipal Level
  • Fire Risk Analysis and Fire Prevention Management Optimization for Green Building Design
  • Global Green Building Materials Market: Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Forecast
  • Linking Green Building, Advertising, and Price Premium
  • Green Buildings Affect the Environment Construction
  • The Relationships Between Green Building and Sustainability
  • Analysis of Green Building and Sustainable Construction
  • Linking Green Building and Zero Energy Trends
  • Overview and Analysis of Benefits of Green Building
  • Green Building Construction From an Accounting Perspective
  • Mapping the Green Building Industry: How Local Are Architects and General Contractors
  • Green Building Councils: Their Economic Role as Governance Institutions
  • Property Tax Assessment Incentive for Green Building: Energy Saving Based-Model
  • Green Building Evaluation From a Life-Cycle Perspective in Australia
  • The Potential for Transformative Change in the Green Building Sector
  • Green Building Laws and Incentives Provided by NY City and State
  • Overview of Singapore’s Green Building Program
  • Green Building Occupant Satisfaction: Evidence From the Australian Higher Education Sector
  • State Environmental Policies: Analyzing Green Building Mandates
  • Green Building: Passive House or Zero Energy Building
  • Strategies for Promoting Green Building Technologies Adoption in the Construction Industry
  • Green Building Pro-environment Behaviors: Are Green Users Also Green Buyers
  • Sustainable Construction: Green Building Design and Delivery
  • Green Building Project Management: Obstacles and Solutions for Sustainable Development
  • Benefits and Barriers to Promoting Bamboo as a Green Building Material in China
  • Green Building Research: Current Status and Future Agenda
  • The Market for Green Building In Developed Asian Cities
  • Green Building: Taking Advantage of All Natural Resources
  • The Pros and Cons of Green Building
  • Thermal Eco-Cities: Green Building and Urban Thermal Metabolism
  • Understanding Green Building Construction in Singapore
  • Using Green Building and Energy Efficient Resources
  • Can Green Building Councils Serve as Third-Party Governance Institutions?
  • What Is Green Building?
  • What Does Green Building Construction Look Like From an Accounting Point of View?
  • What Are the Business Opportunities and the Future of Green Architecture Structures?
  • What Are the Ethical and Sustainability Issues in Green Building?
  • How Are Mechanical and Electrical Knowledge Used in the Design Phase of Green Building Projects?
  • How Do Green Buildings Affect the Environment?
  • What Is the Relationship Between Green Architecture and Sustainability?
  • What Is the Connection Between Green Building Trends and Zero Energy Consumption?
  • What Is Green Building Industry Mapping?
  • What Are the Green Building Councils?
  • What Is the Green Building Practice Plan?
  • How Are Green Building and Energy Efficiency Resources Used Together?
  • What Is Green Building College?
  • What Is the Property Tax Incentives for Green Building?
  • What Does the NYC Green Building Initiative Look Like?
  • What Materials Are Used for Green Architecture?
  • What Resources Are Used for Green Building?
  • What Is Rethinking the Socio-Technical Transformations of Green Entrepreneurship?
  • What Is Green Building Aimed At?
  • Chicago (A-D)
  • Chicago (N-B)

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Sustainability Success

Sustainability Success

14 Green technology examples

14 EXCITING Green technology examples (and how they work)

Do you remember the carefree years in the past when people and businesses didn’t care much about the environment? Luckily those days are now over and I can see new exciting green technology examples popping up almost every day!

What is green technology?

Green technology is the use of technology for eco-friendly purposes, like for example reducing energy consumption, reducing waste, and protecting the environment. This means any product, design, formula, algorithm, procedure, method, discovery, process, technique, idea, know-how, or software that can help us reduce our environmental footprint and ultimately achieve sustainable development.

Green technology examples and their benefits

Here are 14 great sustainable technology examples. Those Examples of environmental technology can help us shape a green future.

1. Solar panels

Solar panels

What example of green technology absorbs light and converts it into energy?

Solar energy has many benefits for the environment and is a renewable source that can be harvested in many different ways. The most popular of those are solar panels.

Solar panels can be of 2 different categories: thermal to produce hot water or photovoltaic to produce electricity.

Thermal solar panels are very simple, they have a tube running inside the panel and covering the entire surface. The tube and the interior of the panel are painted a black color to absorb more of the solar radiation, while the cover is kept transparent to allow the sun to shine directly inside and create a greenhouse effect. When the sun shines, the water running inside the pipe gets hot and is stored in a thermal tank waiting to be used.

Thermal solar panels are very efficient in making hot water, and just 2 of them are enough to satisfy the needs of a single-family home!

solar panels - thermal

Photovoltaic (PV) solar panels are more complex and, thanks to the properties of the materials they are built with, they can convert solar radiation directly into electricity, without the need for any moving part.

The energy produced with PV solar panels has a carbon footprint 93% lower than gas and during their lifetime they produce 30 times the energy that was used to produce them.

Solar panels can be recycled (mandatory in the EU) recovering about 90% of the materials used for their construction. However, solar panel recycling is not so common around the world yet, so, unfortunately, some of those materials are still going to waste in unregulated markets.

The problem of PV panels recycling is a bit chicken and egg: there aren’t yet enough old solar panels disposed of to make recycling economically viable. However, this is going to change in the coming years while a growing number of older installations will have to be replaced.

Solar panels are an amazing green technology example that can increase home value and is helping the world to achieve important goals , reducing the need for fossil fuels and, as a consequence, reducing their environmental impact.

If you are considering solar, make sure to review the best questions to ask a solar company before signing a contract!

Finally, solar panels can also be used to make yachting more sustainable. In fact, in recent years a number of solar catamarans started to become available in the market. All thanks to solar panels, which give them an unlimited range without relying on fossil fuels.

2. Sustainable water purification

sustainable water purification

Water is abundant on our planet, however, only 3% of it is freshwater good for drinking. This makes drinking water a very scarce and precious resource that governments and international organizations, such as the United Nations, are striving to preserve. Water scarcity is a growing problem all over the world.

Using a home-based water purifier for an off-the-grid system or to filter tap water is the most sustainable drinking water solution for households. But on a larger scale and when starting the process from dirty water, the currently available technologies for water purification use quite a lot of energy and are not very sustainable.

For this reason, new water purification technologies are under development, and in several years we may be able to tackle the world drinking water issue more sustainably.

One of the most promising and cutting-edge green technologies for water purification was recently published by Nature and it is based on protein nanofibrils .

water purification - protein nanofibrils

The potential benefits of this technology are:

  • Reduced waste because it is possible to use diary and agricultural industry byproducts, or even food waste to create the protein nanofibrils (ie. the water filter)
  • Effective filtration system
  • Low carbon footprint, because the contaminants are naturally absorbed from the water rather than forcibly removed, so they require much less energy
  • Affordable and scalable
  • It can satisfy all the three pillars of sustainability and become a solution to achieve sustainable development in the water purification sector

This is indeed a very promising green technology for sustainable water purification.

More research is still ongoing to further develop this technology and also to manage the sustainable disposal of the used water filters.

3. LED lighting

LED lighting

LED lighting experienced rapid technological advancement and adoption during the last decade. This is because LED lights are extremely energy efficient and the perfect eco-friendly replacement for traditional bulbs.

LEDs lighting is an interesting example of sustainable development that brings a number of distinct advantages:

  • Exceptionally long life span (over 30 years if used 4h per day)
  • LEDs use 85% less energy
  • Reduced maintenance costs
  • Improved safety

Finally, when technology gets mass adoption, its costs tend to go down thanks to the economies of scale and increased competition in the market. For those reasons, the cost of LED lighting dropped significantly in the last decade.

Considering the pros and cons of LEDs , and the competitive prices, it is no surprise that LEDs are becoming the preferred lighting solution. The good news is that they are much more sustainable than traditional lighting too!

Lighting is responsible for about 15% of your home’s electricity consumption , and considering the current energy costs, LED lighting is an investment that is paying for itself quite quickly. Especially considering the recent skyrocketing energy price inflation.

LEDs are an amazing example of a mature and affordable green technology. They can be used both outdoors and indoors, where they can also be solar-powered. They are being used in a great variety of settings: automotive, traffic lights, indoor vertical farming, and much more.

4. Vertical farming and hydroponics

Vertical farming and hydroponics

Vertical farming and hydroponics are other examples of green technologies that are improving our agriculture in so many ways.

Thanks to this technology is now possible to consistently produce large quantities of quality food, also where the weather or space would not normally allow it. But how are those technologies working?

vertical farming

Vertical farming is exactly as the term suggests: the plants are grown vertically and stacked in special columns or shelves. The technique allows for growing large amounts of food in a limited space and controlled climate.

Hydroponics is a technique that consists in growing the plants in the water or on an inorganic substrate. The system will be placed in a closed environment that could be with or even without windows. If there is no natural light, LED lighting will be used instead. The plants are then fed mostly with artificial nutrients, but at the same time, they don’t need any pesticides because of the controlled environment.

Hydroponics and vertical farming can be combined to produce food even inside urban areas with no land and no natural light. This allows having a local source of food also in the cities, reducing the need for transport. For example, an increasingly successful application of those technologies is the farming of microgreens for local restaurants.

A big advantage of vertical farming and hydroponics is the limited need for water, those systems are in fact only using about 10% of the water normally necessary for traditional agriculture! This is a very important factor when evaluating the sustainability of vertical farming and hydroponics .

In recent years another variation of hydroponics has also been growing in popularity: aeroponics. There are a number of advantages and disadvantages when considering hydroponics vs aeroponics farming. However, aeroponics in general more efficient but more expensive to set up.

Finally, those farms require much less work compared to the traditional ones , because the plants are already in a comfortable place for the harvest and there is no need to plow the fields.

Biogas

Biogas is eco-friendly methane produced from natural and renewable sources. Biogas is produced by anaerobic digestion , a process during which organic waste is decomposed by microorganisms in the absence of oxygen.

Turning your household’s organic waste into clean biogas for your home is possible. However, at the moment this technology is mainly used on farms, where they have more organic waste to deal with.

The technology can be quite interesting also for off-grid homes.

This amazing green technology example is reducing the methane emissions normally generated from organic waste.

Turning waste into renewable energy for your home or business and producing a nutrient-rich fertilizer that can be used to grow food and other plants.

6. Plant-based protection for fresh produce

Plant-based protection for fruit and vegetables

Nearly half of the fresh fruit and vegetable produce is wasted every year, this is a huge problem for sustainability , but thanks to plant-based food protection technologies this reality may be about to change!

This protective material is made of a blend based on fruit and vegetables’ peel, and seeds to create a special protective layer that can be applied to fresh produce to increase its natural shelf life.

The benefits of this plant-based protection for fruit and vegetables are:

  • Increased shelf life by reducing oxidation and keeping moisture in
  • It’s made with materials that we usually eat in our diet
  • Less wasted food: with a longer shelf life, food is less likely to go bad along the supply chain
  • It’s invisible

This amazing green technology example allows us to reduce food waste : one of the things that make us feel somehow guilty as soon as we learn how much of it is wasted along the supply chain (that is up to 45% of it).

7. Wind Energy

Wind energy

The wind is a renewable energy source that doesn’t cause carbon emissions, is plentiful and readily available. Wind turbines are the green technology used to sustainably convert the wind’s power into electricity and they can also be installed offshore, without occupying any land and out of sight.

How are wind turbines working? Here are the main steps to converting wind into clean electricity:

  • When the wind is blowing, the wind turbine spins due to the aerodynamic forces generated by the airflow on its blades.
  • The turbine blades are connected to the main shaft that rotates with the blades.
  • The main shaft is also connected to a gearbox that is transferring the motion to an energy generator (alternator).
  • The produced electricity goes to a transformer to match the voltage of the power grid and is then made available to be used

Wind energy has many pros and cons . The main disadvantage of wind energy is its intermittency: if the wind is not blowing, you don’t get any power. For this reason, the power generated from wind farms, if not immediately used, may be stored in batteries .

Nowadays wind turbines of any size are available on the market, so, if you live in a windy place, you can even put a small one in your backyard or on the roof and cut down on your electricity bill!

The wind turbines installed in recent years are about 30% more efficient compared to the initial models installed in the 80s and 90s. While in the last 30 years the cost to produce wind energy dropped by as much as 94.5%, down from $0.55 to only $0.03 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)! A truly exciting development path for this green technology!

Those results were possible thanks to extensive research and the use of advanced digital technologies such as computational fluid dynamics (CFD). Going more technical here! CFD is a “digital twin”: a tool that allows to simulate and optimize the shape of the turbine’s blades as well as optimizing the placement of wind turbines on a specific site to better capture the power of the wind. The above video is an example of what such simulations look like.

8. Micro Hydro-power Plants

Micro hydropower plants

Hydropower was one of the first renewable energy sources to be used to produce electricity. There are many hydropower pros and cons , however, the most important disadvantage was that up to now, building a hydroelectric power plant was a big project, involving dams and expensive construction works.

Dams are very expensive to build and can pose important dangers to the local community.

Dams have also a large impact on the landscape and can change significantly the local ecosystems. So they are not a very desirable solution.

One of the most exciting developments in this green technology is the possibility to install micro hydro-power plants. Those don’t require a dam and can be installed with minimum construction works along or on the bottom of rivers and canals.

Those micro hydropower plants are amazing green technology examples:

  • They don’t require a dam and can work even on gentle slopes
  • They work 24/7 because the water doesn’t stop flowing at night! While the most common renewable energy systems such as solar panels and wind turbines are intermittent by their own nature
  • They require minimum space.
  • Decentralized
  • Can be used for on-grid and off-grid installations
  • Zero CO2 emissions when operating
  • Simple construction
  • Much lower costs compared to traditional hydropower solutions
  • They don’t harm fish

The micro hydropower plants are also using considerably less space per generated kW compared to solar panels. The equivalent solar installation would require more than 12 times the space to generate the same power.

9. Plastic waste catchment systems

Plastic waste catchment

Plastic waste ending up in our rivers and oceans is one of the greatest environmental problems of our time.

Many innovative solutions have been developed to catch and remove plastic waste from our rivers before reaching the ocean.

One of those systems involves the creation of a bubble barrier to guide the plastic waste toward a plastic catchment system.

The suspended plastic waste flowing inside the river is lifted to the surface by the bubble barrier, then the curtain is guiding the waste diagonally towards the shore, where it is captured by a special catchment system.

Other systems are instead using nets or other ways to avoid having waste flowing into our oceans.

By the way, recent research is also proposing biological solutions to the problem of plastic waste, like for example plastic eating mushrooms . The interesting part is that some of those mushrooms are also edible!

Those are important examples of green technology applied to keep our oceans clean.

10. Smart power management Systems

Smart power management

Did you know that up to 10% of the electricity you consume is wasted by plugged-in devices (even when you are not using them)? That’s a big problem for both the environment and our pockets!

To solve this issue, new smart power management systems are being developed and deployed in modern smart buildings. Those systems are leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) and data analytics to manage power distribution and automatically cut it completely off when not needed.

The AI (artificial intelligence) of the system will monitor your electricity consumption and usage of each of the plugged-in devices then it can formulate recommendations on how to save electricity.

Those systems are a perfect green technology example !

They also demonstrate how digital transformation technologies such as AI can be applied to save electricity and improve sustainability .

11. Sustainable smartphones

Sustainable smartphones

Mobile phones are also posing an important environmental problem, especially because most people are changing their smartphones every other year.

Smartphones can contain a number of hazardous materials like mercury, cadmium, lead, arsenic, and beryllium as well as rare or conflict minerals like coltan.

In recent years a number of companies developed more sustainable alternatives using recycled and fairly sourced materials as well as limiting the use of hazardous substances. Those smartphones have a sustainable product design: easy to disassemble, repair, and built to last.

12. Eco-friendly toothbrushes

Eco-friendly toothbrushes

Plastic pollution is one of the greatest environmental problems of the modern era and over 1 billion plastic toothbrushes are thrown away every year just in the United States.

About 99% of toothbrushes are made of plastic, a material that takes more than 400 years to decompose and is polluting our land and oceans!

In recent years, a number of eco-friendly toothbrushes have been developed: some made of wood, bamboo, and other materials.

This is an amazing and simple green technology example that allows reducing plastic waste.

Switching to a sustainable toothbrush is a simple step that everybody can do, especially now that alternatives of great quality and design are becoming available!

13. Plant-based packaging

Plant-based packaging

Plastic packaging is one of the greatest contributors to plastic waste and microplastics in our oceans. Wouldn’t be nice to have a sustainable alternative?

Plant-based packaging can be used as an alternative to plastic.

The main criticism towards plant-based plastics is revolving around the need of using land to grow the raw materials needed to create those plastic packaging alternatives. However, new materials are in development and those will use only waste, without requiring to grow specific plants to use for their production.

This is a promising green technology example: trying to turn waste into packaging.

14. Fresh food storage monitoring systems

Food storage monitoring

Do you know that up to 1.3 billion tons of fresh food produce, mostly fruit and vegetables, is wasted every year along the supply chain?

This is a huge problem that is especially upsetting when we consider that hunger is still raging in parts of the world. On the economic side, this is about 680 billion dollars of wasted food every year.

To tackle this problem, new food storage monitoring systems have been developed.

Those systems are monitoring the ripeness of fresh food kept in storage and during transport.

Allowing save up to 45% of food waste by making real-time checks and accurate forecasts about when food will go bad. This information can be used to improve the food supply chain by reducing waste and improving profitability for businesses.

How do those systems work? They detect ethylene and other chemicals released in the air by fruit and vegetables while they become ripe. This allows the system to evaluate the ripeness of the food kept in a warehouse or in a shipping container.

This is a great example of green technology that can improve the long-term sustainability of the food industry.

Conclusions

I hope that you enjoyed my list of 14 green technology examples:

  • Solar panels
  • Sustainable water purification
  • LED lighting
  • Vertical farming and hydroponics
  • Plant-based protection for fresh produce
  • Wind energy
  • Micro Hydro-power Plants
  • Plastic waste catching systems
  • Smart power management Systems
  • Sustainable smartphones
  • Eco-friendly toothbrushes
  • Plant-based packaging
  • Food storage monitoring systems

There are many green technology companies delivering those products today that will help us move forward toward sustainable development.

I also wrote about the entire range of green technologies and their benefits . From the more traditional ones, that you can already experience in your day-to-day life up to brand new, cutting-edge research that could solve some of the important sustainability problems of the world.

This is because, with the growing interest in environmental issues and the longer-term 2030 UN sustainable development goals in mind, we are finally seeing the problems of our planet getting the attention they deserve.

The green technology and sustainability sectors are also one of the fastest-growing employment and consulting areas. With increasing opportunities in the sustainable applications of industry 4.0 , green technology is much more than a passing trend!

Top 20 Green Tech Ideas

You may have to look hard, but some very smart companies are doing some very creative things when it comes to the environment

dek

Computers seem so clean, don't they, just sitting there and humming, without any noxious emissions? But of course computers need power, and right now most of our power comes from fossil fuels. Computers and IT are now a small but rapidly growing source of carbon — about 2% of global emissions, a figure that could easily double within a decade.

That's where green IT comes in. Whether it's more energy-efficient laptops and server farms, or software that automatically powers down our desktops when they're not being used, there are ways to curb the IT sector's energy hunger ways without losing performance. Software like Granola, for example, can run in the background of your operating system and tune up your computer's own energy-saving hardware, ensuring you're not wasting volts unnecessarily. There's no reason you can't get all the computing power you need without wasting power.

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