Digital technologies could play a significant role in Ireland meeting its climate obligations, according to a new study by Amárach Research commissioned by Huawei Ireland.
The research concludes that digital tech could deliver up to 40% of the reduction in carbon emissions needed to meet Ireland's 2030 targets.
It suggests that the implementation of digital solutions in energy, manufacturing, agriculture, buildings and transportation could help achieve this goal.
This, it concludes, has the potential to reduce emissions as part of meeting the targets set out by the Climate Action Plan 2021.
The new research has also found that over half of senior decision-makers across the energy, agri-food and public sectors now see climate change as the most important business consideration.
It comes ahead of what are seen as more pressing issues in the current environment, including labour and skills shortages.
The technologies that firms identified as playing a central role in helping them meet their sustainability goals were 5G, cloud and internet of things.
Big data, machine learning, artificial intelligence and virtual reality also included.
Nine in ten also saw sustainable business operations as an important means to achieving cost efficiencies in their organisations, driving down overheads and reducing costs.
"With Ireland already performing very well at integrating digital technology into the economy, and ranked 5th of the 27 EU countries in the 2021 edition of the Digital Economy and Society Index, we believe that Ireland has a great opportunity to accelerate the transition to clean energy and sustainable growth," Tony Yangxu, chief executive of Huawei Ireland said.
"It is clear innovative digital technologies will play a central role in tackling climate change, but it is only by working together that we can find and deploy the critical government, industry and society-wide digital solutions required for Ireland to meet its Climate Action Plan 2021 goals," he added.
