Technology is constantly evolving, and this has brought about many beneficial advancements. However, modern technology needs huge amounts of energy to function, and energy production usually results in an output of greenhouse gases.
These gases are a big part of climate change, an issue that can no longer be ignored. Fortunately, many big companies, like Amazon, Microsoft, and FedEx, have already signed the Climate Pledge, which is an initiative made up of companies that promise to become carbon neutral by 2040.
However, to make a lasting impact, companies need to develop and implement regenerative business concepts. Here are five technology companies that have already started to embrace climate neutral regenerative economic concepts.
5 technology companies with a business model for a regenerative economy
Stripe Climate
Stripe Climate is a special service provided by Stripe, which is a giant of the payments and payouts market. This endeavor focuses on carbon removal as well as the education of the public about the dramatic consequences of carbon buildup, and ways to prevent or reverse it.
With Stripe Climate, businesses can finance projects dedicated to carbon removal. Companies are incentivized to join the program that uses a fraction of each contributor’s revenue to finance technologies that have positive effects on Earth’s climate.
Participating companies are awarded a green badge to highlight their planet-saving efforts and signal this to clients and business partners. This project creates an easy opportunity for companies to actively help the planet with minimal effort.
Ecosia
Another company that uses a lot of computing power is Ecosia, a search engine based in Berlin, Germany. This company donates 80 percent of its profits to nonprofit organizations focusing on reforestation, meaning that this search engine tries to make up for its environmental impact by planting trees.
Ecosia is CO2-negative and has planted more than 130 million trees since its inception. In October 2020, Ecosia bought a 20 percent stake in the debit card company TreeCard, which is a wooden Mastercard, made from sustainably sourced cherry wood and recycled plastic bottles, that invests 80 percent of its profits in projects related to reforestation and climate.
Trine
Seeing as energy is much needed all around the world, this next project focuses on meeting this demand in a sustainable way. Trine is a business that uses a peer-to-peer (P2P) business loan platform to facilitate solar power projects. Investors can find a loan they like to invest in solar energy and bring clean energy to emerging markets.
The company is partnered with local solar partners that will distribute and manage the products. There are already more than 11,000 private investors, and new investors can start by investing as little as $25.
This green finance company uses its marketing and to shine a light on the opportunities that the green energy sector offers. By enticing investors to invest in solar energy to provide sustainable energy, Trine is doing its part to facilitate a regenerative economy.
Treelion
Treelion offers a blockchain-based solution bringing a decentralized network that is designed to launch and manage all kinds of green digital products. This helps companies and project leaders involved with digital finance to minimize their environmental impact.
Additionally, it provides a green alternative to existing financial structures, especially within the Blockchain. In a nutshell, this means that Treelion enables green economy capital flows and the creation of large-scale, green digital ecosystems.
The company also plans to offer a one-stop-shop for all green financial needs in the digital environmental sector. With its commitment to its project, and the convenience of a decentralized one-stop-shop for environmentally friendly Blockchain technology, Treelion presents itself as an interesting FinTech company with a focus on sustainability.
Northern Data
With the ever-increasing demand for computing power, more and more data centers are needed. However, high-performance computing (HPC) data centers need a huge amount of energy to run, and this usually means that data centers are neither regenerative nor climate neutral.
That being said, Northern Data pursues an innovative concept at staying both energy-efficient and climate neutral with its projects. The Germany-based company is a provider of HPC infrastructure platforms with a focus on sustainability and climate neutrality. The company utilizes smart energy concepts to provide regenerative and sustainable HPC solutions through its data centers.
It develops extremely cost-efficient, easily scalable, modular high-tech data center solutions tailored to specific HPC applications. Additionally, it owns regenerative, highly energy-efficient, AI-controlled data centers in the U.S. and in European countries, such as the Netherlands, Germany, Norway, and Sweden. And its sites in Norway and Sweden are being fully powered by renewable energy like local hydropower plants.
Closing thoughts
These companies show that there are already many ways in which technology-related businesses can have a positive impact on the environment. In order for the global economy to become regenerative, others need to follow suit.