Green APIs: How Cloud Can Help Embed Sustainability Into Your Enterprise Apps

The world has awoken; global business and government leaders have recognized that the global climate is changing. The United States Senate voted 98–1 in early 2015 that "climate change is real and not a hoax." With a papal encyclical on climate change, Pope Francis has taken unprecedented steps to influence climate action. Academics are continuing their research into energy forecasts — a recent Stanford study demonstrated that it is possible to convert the United States to 100 percent renewable energy by 2050 — which is influencing the Solution Project, a social awareness campaign to transition the world to 100 percent clean, renewable energy.

 The benefits of driving value creation for all stakeholders and assisting in the achievement of the UN's 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) extend beyond good corporate citizenship. According to a recent Accenture study, the "Twin Transformers" — companies that find new value at the intersection of digital technologies and sustainability — will be the most successful businesses of the future. They are 2.5x more likely to outperform their peers when powered by these twin engines of growth.  

Companies C suite recognizes that sustainability is not the job of the central team. To make progress and achieve sustainability goals, they need to embed it into every decision, solution, and in their company DNA. Sustainability discussions need to move from a boardroom topic to an on-ground implementation reality. Business and tech leaders are investing in big ideas and building sustainability solutions. They also need to focus on embedding micro-sustainability solutions into their core enterprise applications, apps, and devices. Businesses should have a way to measure their action based on the Organization's sustainability goal at every step. Taking small steps can help to achieve the bigger goals. 

APIs or application programming interfaces are a vital cog in this revolution, fueling the software behind many new green measures. Cloud APIs help monitor air and water quality, expose carbon emissions data, and enable smart connections that spread important knowledge on the environment worldwide. Today we explore efforts encouraging a green Internet and discover green APIs that developers can incorporate into cloud apps to promote sustainability to help curb negative environmental effects, from a global perspective to an individual consumer level. 

What Is Green API? 

 A Green Cloud API is an API built with the intent of advancing sustainability, environmental awareness, or specific climate action initiatives or helping in measuring environmental impact. 

Why Organizations Need Green APIs

Embedding sustainability is not only limited to business strategy, but also slowly becoming a technology problem as well. Tech leaders are focusing on building technology solutions to promote and measure sustainable practices in their organizations. Building sustainability APIs as a product can help in providing the foundational services which can be incorporated by various cloud applications in the enterprise and also help in curating and managing all your green APIs centrally.

Embedded Green APIs provide real-time feedback and support an informed, sustainable decision-making process which in turn helps all the Application users play their part and understand the impact they are making.  

Benefits of Embedding Sustainability in Tech Solutions Through API

Embedding sustainability into your enterprise can have many benefits. For example, it encourages your employees to engage in sustainable practices. You can measure and reward sustainable practices and make sustainability a holistic goal for the enterprise. Also, you would be able to create a sustainability data pipeline for your ESG analytics solution. 

What Green APIs Cover

Green API covers the whole spectrum of APIs dealing with enterprise sustainability data and can range across the value streams. Here are some standard green APIs. 

• Emission Calculation API: Enables developers to integrate carbon emissions data into applications.
• Carbon Analytics and Offset API: Enables business organizations to measure their carbon footprint.
• Environmental API (Air, water, and energy quality): Enable organizations to understand the environmental state.
• Transportation (EV, Bikeshare, Charging) API: Promoting green transportation
• Energy Efficiency (home energy management, informed decisions)
• Operational Efficiency (paper consumption, paperless process, recycling) 

How To Start Your Green API Journey

• Green API Strategy 
• Establish the right sponsorship and your green API needs 
• Identify, curate, and develop your green API product 
• Evangelize your green API adoption within the organization to promote sustainability goals
• Measure your goals and adoption through analytics

Takeaways

• Changing behavior is fundamental in achieving climate and environmental goals
• Building green API can be a combination of curation and development to achieve organizational needs
• Building the green API as a product is a foundational service
• Embedded intelligent green APIs can assist in promoting sustainable informed decisions 
• Cloud API will play an important role in the Organization's sustainability journey