2010 gets a Star or Two

GURGAON, INDIA: In parts of the world, Earth Day, founded forty years ago on April 22 and celebrated in 175 countries marks the beginning of Earth Week.

This is going to be a busy week on our small planet. It took one volcano to disrupt global flight operations for months, threatening to wipe out several airlines, and nearly crippling major European economies (I won't count in that category the volcano's home nation of Iceland, which went bankrupt in 2008). With all our modern tech, we're still pretty subservient to nature.

Amidst all the global warming and the rising heat where North India is seeing night-time minimum temperatures 10 degrees higher than normal, Earth Day is always a good time to wonder on the tech that will save our small planet this year.

I've said this before: sustainable green initiatives are driven either by clear business benefit, or by law. CSR plays a small role. It works only when the green program is integrated into business objectives–such as 'corporate image building.' Companies in the hospitality sector, such as ITC (with their LEEDS platinum “Green Center” next to my office in Gurgaon), have understood this well.

The top barrier in the greening of activities still mired in twentieth-century processes is usually the lack of clarity of business benefit–or some other single obstacle that may not be immediately obvious.

Take cheques for example. They are a major consumer of paper and trees. How long has electronic payment been around? I have been making payments online for well over a decade, including mobile payments and automatic online bill payments. But while my salary is also electronically credited, like most other companies, my company, still uses cheques for external payments. What is missing is a way to manage the payment authorization and control within the business, in a safe, secure and transparent way. There is technology, but it's not simple and affordable enough. Imagine if authorization is integrated into the workflow and cash flow on one end, and the bank's payment gateway on the other.

Among major potential influencers will be the government, though both policy and mandated online system usage. My top vote is for the income tax department. If it mandates e-filing, it would make a serious dent in the use–and wastage–of paper in India.

Among the top greentech influencers this year will be India's BEE organization: the Bureau of Energy Efficiency, whose two-year-old star rating system is finally making its mark, with consumers demanding to know the star rating of airconditioners and refrigerators . Even though compliance remains voluntary, the driver is economics and cost consciousness. Indian consumers will spend a bit more on to save on running costs, whether they are buying a car or electrical equipment.

The product I have used this year with the biggest global “green impact” potential is Amazon's Kindle. I say “potential” because it's still in the ramp-up mode where the sheer carbon footprint of a million of these devices could outweigh the paper savings. This should quickly change as users begin to buy millions of e-books.

And then there's the iPad.

Let's face it, history will remember this month less for Earth Day than as the month when iPad came. It came at the appointed hour, to save the world from all its problems and those yet to be discovered. It didn't come into India in the same month, because all available pieces were lapped up by Americans and those global early birds who got friends and relatives to bring in a unit for  them. But the world and its Internet went iPad crazy.

The iPad, too, has high green impact potential, though not in 2010 India, once content publishing picks up on the platform.

All in all, I'm expecting to see much excitement about — and some major incidental adoption, if you'll pardon the apparent oxymoron, of — green tech in 2010.