The Unglamorous Ways Technology is Actually Saving the Planet
How pipeline sensor technology quietly transforms environmental impact; and why moving solar from covering fields to parking lots is good but we can do better.
By Simon Doble
I can’t help but geek out on technology and innovation.
There are times I need to get out there and see the real world, and then there are other times — equally important but in a different way — when I sit in front of a computer for 14 hours a day. I’m like a curious kid and can get lost following a thread, searching for new ways to do things and pushing the limits.
Sticking to the lesson I was lucky to learn at a very young age: “Visualise to materialise”, the sky is quite frankly the limit when it comes to implementing technology to help, I really believe that.
But there’s a difference between deploying technology for technology’s sake and using its capabilities to solve real problems efficiently and at scale.
Take solar panels, marvels of technology that came to dominate the clean power debate in recent years. It took from 1954 until 2022 for the world to install its first terawatt of solar power; the second terawatt came just two years later, and by mid-2026 there should be over three terawatts of installed capacity globally.
Solar is now a regular sight from rural-Pakistan to classrooms in Africa. But it’s also a painfully obvious sight throughout the countrysides of much of Europe and North America. Large solar fields cover fertile land and loom large right next to residential areas.
That’s not a clever use of technology or good design.
“To deploy technology to its full potential, it needs to be guided by something bigger, a clearly defined problem and purpose to solve it.”
“Instead of covering our fields, we should be covering our parking lots,” some are proposing. That would be better use of technology, generating power while protecting small children and pets from the sun and enhancing comfort.
But for me, that’s not enough. We can do better.
We can put the solar on the roof of a sports field in a community that experiences frequent blackouts. Or better yet, use the fact that due to incentives or technological advances, many residential users in Australia are upgrading their panels before needed. Refurbishing and retrofitting those panels onto classrooms in Africa, instead of them contributing to our mounting e-waste problem.
The potential of using technology in a clever way
Solar in this case does more than supplement the grid. It’s an added resilience and a huge quality of life improvement, unlocking extra hours of play or study time, enhancing safety and providing a community with a place to gather.
As extreme weather events intensify in many parts of the world, cutting off remote settlements, a single solarized sports field or a refurbished solar micro-grid means the world.
There are also exciting technological developments happening just under the surface.
While 5G was taking centre stage, promising a future where everyone and everything is connected, the benefits of deploying this technology grew increasingly questionable. The issue with 5G is that it’s power-hungry and best deployed in dense urban centres. This led to residents in large, well-served cities getting toasters and light-switches connected via lightning speed networks while billions of people remained cut off.
The key characteristics of 5G technology made it impossible to use in most environments, certainly not where we were working.
But an interesting development was happening just under the surface, driven by gas and utility companies, believe it or not. They faced a unique set of problems: (1) infrastructure that’s either very remote or inaccessible, buried deep under concrete, crossing large swaths of uninhabited land or wide sea channels, and (2) need to measure for leaks or usage and send this data using minimum power with no cell coverage.
It turns out that in terms of connection, remote African communities and deep buried infrastructure have a lot in common.
That’s what motivated the development of LPWAN and low-power radio links like LoRa in the first place. Since then, this technology spread beyond utilities into agriculture, healthcare or environmental monitoring; it’s used to track pets and send patients’ blood pressure data with minimum power.
For us, it helped solve several problems at once.
Pipeline sensor technology transforming green impact
These devices cannot link a remote village to the internet, but they can transmit data in a simple format over long distances using very little energy. That’s why we decided to use this technology in the FamilyBuddy, a comprehensive solar solution for clean cooking, charging, cooling and lighting for remote or off-grid communities.
This little-known technology is now quietly delivering on the promise of 5G, connecting truly everyone.
It opened a world of opportunities for us. We’re able to see the unit’s performance in a real-world deployment. Battery settings, fridge cooling profiles, cooker usage hours, all can be adjusted remotely to work best in the specific conditions on the ground. If something goes wrong, we can tweak the profiles or alert our local partners who are trained in solar technology.
More importantly, the data we collect are fed directly into our development process, addressing shortcomings or investigating potential issues much faster and with greater precision than previously, when we had to wait months or years for feedback to arrive.
Usage data also means the ability to calculate the environmental impact of each unit without guesswork.
"A wise man should have money in his head, but not in his heart”
– Jonathan Swift
As carbon credit verification and ESG-measurables become a requirement across much of the world, the ability to provide solid emission reduction data translates into opportunities and scale, through corporate partnerships, via carbon credit certification, or just as a clear window into the impact each contribution brings.
The verification aspect is particularly important, as in many instances in the past, emission reduction from clean cooking was overestimated or guessed based on ideal usage scenarios. Now we have proof.
To deploy technology to its full potential, it needs to be guided by something bigger
What these deployments have in common, and what guides us in designing all our solutions, are the principles of human-centred design, fascination with technology and innovation, but most importantly a clearly defined purpose which guides every solution.
With a ‘why’, it is much easier to define the right problems to solve, to identify the right technologies that can help with that, and to relate to those that are directly affected. Practical action guided by care and dignity. That’s the way to use technology for real impact instead of optics.
To deploy technology to its full potential, it needs to be guided by something bigger, a clearly defined problem and purpose to solve it.
In every step, we’re serving real people: communities living in energy poverty and cooking on indoor fire stoves, policymakers and rights groups implementing systems to curb greenhouse gas emissions, CEOs pushed by consumers to prove their true environmental impact — these are all real humans with real problems. They and everyone else in between, that’s who we’re designing our solutions for. And technology opens new opportunities to do that. ∎