Pursue sustainable development

An energy-efficient meta-universe powered by renewable energy will have the potential to help accelerate the process of sustainable transformation by empowering companies to harness the power of data.

Digital twins can make construction projects significantly more resource efficient during construction and throughout the building life cycle. For example, by collecting data generated in the digital world and making structural modifications to a plant’s digital twin based on that information, organizations can save resources and materials and minimize the environmental impact of a project before construction even begins. In addition, manufacturers can integrate engineering, manufacturing, and service-related data in real time to improve operational efficiency and sustainability.

“Information will replace the waste of physical resources,” said Michael Grieves, executive director and chief scientist of the Digital Twin Institute. The digital world can lead people to optimize the use of physical resources, while driving the transformation of dematerialization, replacing physical products with digital objects or services.

Consumers can buy digital equivalents of their favorite products or services, or at least test and validate those products and services in the digital world, contributing to sustainable development.

The key impact of the meta-universe: Enabling sustainable development

The statistics are staggering: By 2050, the world’s population is expected to rise from 8 billion today to more than 9 billion. With that will come increasing demands for energy, clean water and other resources. In order to promote the future prosperity of mankind, we must change our way of life.

Current carbon emissions and waste production are mainly from industrial production. By increasing the efficiency of industrial processes, the metaverse will contribute to a more sustainable world. The industrial metaverse, which relies on infinitely available data rather than fossil fuels and natural resources, will also help accelerate the net-zero carbon transition and improve resource efficiency.

However, as the “fuel” of meta-cosmic technology, computing power itself requires a lot of energy to operate. Ensuring that we meet this demand in a sustainable way is a challenge that cannot be ignored or underestimated, and ecosystem players must ensure full transparency in energy accounting to substantiate their environmental impacts.

Here’s how the industrial metaverse is driving sustainable development:

The industrial metauniverse can help reduce the use of environmentally harmful and non-recyclable materials by reducing physical waste in construction and industrial production. It also has the potential to drive a substantial shift in business models, with digital services and assets replacing physical production and lifecycle management.
Digital twins can enable us to make smarter, faster decisions in real life, thereby optimizing processes to reduce costs. These streamlined processes and their ability to constantly adjust based on real-time feedback will significantly reduce the waste of energy and physical resources.
Experimentation is a precursor to innovation, but it is likely to be costly and a waste of resources. However, in the digital world, organizations can experiment with new materials and processes without using any physical resources. This advantage can be applied to sustainable projects themselves. For example, innovative ideas such as biomaterials, more efficient wind turbines and electric vehicles will be brought to market in a faster and easier way to further drive sustainable development. During the initial development phase, product development can be guided from the perspective of the product lifecycle, and reuse and retrofit are encouraged in the design.
It is necessary to promote a shift in the energy mix from fossil fuels to green electricity. The industrial metauniverse can support the need to reduce the most intensive greenhouse gas emissions in transportation, heating and cooling by improving transportation efficiency, improving the energy efficiency of buildings, and optimizing industrial processes.
The industrial metaverse has great potential to help humanity solve the problems of sustainable development. According to a study by Accenture, with current technological maturity, digital twins could reduce global carbon dioxide emissions by 750 million tons in about 10 years.

Enabling the construction of an emerging industrial metaverse

The value of digital twins as unquestioned building blocks of the metacomes has been proven, but the key capabilities needed to make the industrial metacomes truly immersive, durable, and capable of providing real-time feedback are still emerging.

Connectivity: To be a coherent entity that takes iot interaction and collaboration to a new level, the industrial metaverse requires not only the right hardware and software, but also the right connective tissue. Key components of the meta-universe include “digital twins, artificial intelligence, and real data transmitted to virtual applications,” and we also need connectivity solutions such as 5G or 6G. Edge computing and blockchain are also necessary to ensure the security of the environment. All of these technologies already exist, but the tricky part is bringing them together and connecting them.

Computing power: Another challenge is getting the computing infrastructure needed for a real-time, immersive experience. You need extremely powerful computing power to support the industrial metaverse, and fortunately, computing power is growing fast.

Digital Twin Fidelity: Industries must also find ways to create and validate models with ultra-high fidelity. To have reliable predictive power, a digital twin must behave exactly like its real-world counterpart.