Big City Impacts
The Dangers of Crowding
The are endless benefits to using a smart home system where electricity is the main driving function of every living aspect. For example, Hong Kong undeniably is run on massive amounts of electricity - most of which come from natural gas, nuclear and coal - and most people do not realise that they are using electricity from unsustainable sources.
What smart home systems do is to continuously monitor your home’s electricity flows and intelligently detect any unnecessary usage. In this way, a household can cut as much as 310 kg of carbon emissions per year just by auto controlling its temperature by a smart home system. Applying this on a large-scale basis in a densely-packed environment like Hong Kong could significantly contribute to global emissions reduction – as much as 700,000,000 kg of carbon emissions from effective climate control in Hong Kong’s residential homes alone! Not only will this help the environment, but there is also a tempting incentive of reduced electricity costs. So, there is a dollars-and-cents incentive in addition to the altruism of the citizenry.
The Statistics
A study was done in Poland in late 2021. It includes the application of smart appliances of heating in abundance to the scale of an estimated population of 2 million + in the metropolitan unit of Metropolis GZM. Within this ecosystem, simulations have projected that it has the potential to cut 275 kt of CO2 for the whole Metropolis. If this simulation were to be applied to all metropolitan units on a mass scale, the amount of CO2 that we can cut could make drastic impacts.
CO2 is a greenhouse gas, which reduces the Earth's ability to cool itself off by radiating energy into space. This consequently traps all the hot air in, leading to warming of the planet. Additionally, it has adverse effects on the climate such as more extreme weather.
Source: Kinelski, G.; Stęchły, J.; Sienicki, A.; Czornik, K.; Borkowski, P. Application of Smart Technologies in Metropolis GZM to Reduce Harmful Emissions in District Heating Systems. Energies 2021, 14, 7665. https://doi.org/10.3390/en14227665
For example, if we were to take into account Hong Kong, New York, London, and Dubai into the simulation, the gross total of carbon that we can cut is 3876.765 kt of CO2.
