THE TRIPLE bottom line of people, planet and profits should be more than enough motivation for private companies and government agencies to improve their goods and services, and the latter should include public services.
It’s only proper that profits should be the last bottom line, but in reality, many good things that are done for the people and the planet would also result in profits.
Having said that, I could further say that automation could really be good for the people and the planet, but in addition to that, it is also good for the third bottom line of profits. It could just be a chicken and the egg situation, because it does not really matter if automation would result in digital transformation, or if the movement towards digital transformation would result in automation.
Although it is clearly Information and Communications Technology (ICT) that is the engine of automation, it could not be denied that it is literally energy that is the real power of automation, because ICT could not run without energy. Although we could really look at it as a cause and effect relationship, what actually happens is that with more cost efficient energy, the operation of ICT infrastructure also becomes cost efficient. Conversely, the more cost efficient the ICT infrastructure becomes, the more demand there would be for energy, more so if the latter is cost efficient or affordable, as the case may be. Perhaps it is not yet happening as much as we want it to happen, but the planning of the ICT infrastructure should really be done in tandem with the power infrastructure.
In a manner of speaking, it could be said that the ultimate goal of automation in general is to be able to build and sustain smart cities now and in the future. No matter how we look at it, it is practically impossible for these smart cities to come about if there would be no clean energy that would power it.
At this point of time in human civilization, we could already conclude without any doubt that cities could not be smart if these are not also green, and vice versa, cities could not be totally green if these are not smart. Clear as these two distinctions would appear to be, there are actually hybrid situations in between, because some technologies are intrinsically green, even if these are not running on green energy. (To be continued)/PN
