ESG Needs More than Sensors

  • March 13, 2024
  • Joyce Deuley

Environmental Sustainability Governance (ESG) initiatives need more than just devices deployed in field to be fully actualized. Yes, there’s immense value in the connecting and collecting of pipelines and the benefits of predictive maintenance on both fixed and mobile assets—but it isn’t nearly enough to achieve many ESG targets.

IoT companies, like Abundant IoT, are seeing a lot of activity in the energy Internet of Things (eIoT) space over the last couple of years and expect to see more growth as federal funding opens new opportunities to stabilize the market. However, one trend that Abundant IoT has seen is an uptick in its consulting practice around ESG.

Channel Futures asked Abundant IoT CEO, Vince Bradley about these ESG prospects, and he said that “70-80%” of its customers need a top-down ESG strategy, an executive-driven roadmap to help clients ramp up to meet ESG targets over time. And it’s not just all about Electric Vehicles.

There’s a wide portfolio of products and services that organizations can take advantage of in the eIoT space to help manage efficiencies, integrate renewables onto the grid, have visibility of grid balancing and monitoring, etc.

Abundant IoT says it has more than $800 million in its [sales] funnel and chalks it up to the company’s unique approach to the market. Bradley states, “Anyone can help [customers] with telecom; they get pitched all day and night. Everyone’s knocking on the front door saying, ‘Savings, efficiency!’ and we walk around to the metaphoric back door and have a different conversation about eIoT and ESG, and they welcome us in.”

Devices aren’t enough. The hardware and software components are immensely beneficial and critical to accurately measure and track efficiencies and bring costs down, however, contextualizing opportunities and helping to not only get the devices, but strategically map out their lifecycles in relation to broader initiatives will be critical for overall ESG success across industries.