One of the most challenging aspects of climate change is that global industries thrive on overconsumption. Whether it's food, fashion, energy, electronics, you name it — the global economy is built on people consuming more things.

WattIQ CEO Priya Vijayakumar hopes her company can shift industry tradition toward making better use of what it already has with its portfolio of smart plugs that monitor and control equipment energy use.

“In order to get to a more sustainable economy, we have to lower our consumption and waste,” Vijayakumar told SDxCentral in an interview. “25% of the world's population is using almost 75% of the world's resources. We'd literally need another planet if everyone started consuming in a similar manner.”

A lot of that inefficiency and overconsumption is thanks to a lack of accurate data on how much energy equipment actually uses.

In the case of many energy-intensive devices like refrigeration equipment, HVAC units, etc., “you can't really shut them off,” Vijayakumar said. “What we started seeing was that people were trying to save energy on a Xerox copier by turning it off from 6 pm to 6 am. But it was interesting that they barely use that Xerox copier.”

WattIQ helps organizations approach this problem by thinking about carbon footprint from a total asset lifecycle perspective. She noted this marks a shift from the initial application of WattIQ's smart plug technology, energy management, toward providing deeper insight into equipment utilization and condition.

This “impacts not only the longevity of that piece of equipment, but also how much energy it consumes,” she explained.

One of the early industries WattIQ focused on was research labs. These facilities are usually resource-intensive because they contain lots of equipment that takes up physical space, even if it might not consume a lot of energy. “You were looking at the low teens in terms of utilization on equipment,” Vijayakumar said.

“We run across a lot of so-called energy efficient equipment. And we're finding that things that are even energy efficient, actually, you're consuming almost two times what the data sheets claim. But people have never had the data.”

She also cited -80 degree freezers commonly used to store COVID-19 vaccines and typically found in research labs — they consume almost double the amount of energy that facilities expect them to.

“But the data has been missing, right? And this is what we think is going to change how we approach consumption,” Vijayakumar explained. By providing customers with accurate data, WattIQ says it can help companies make better decisions to fully utilize existing assets.

“Customers are seeing that maybe they don't need to put up another building because they can use their existing space [more] efficiently,” she said.

But this footprint and impact awareness doesn't just promise a positive effect on the environment and climate change, it also offers business value. “It's sort of a win-win. You save the planet, but you also gain incredible operational efficiencies as a result of having this data,” Vijayakumar said.

Full asset utilization is a small piece of what needs to be a much broader industry shift away from overconsumption for profit's sake. Although corporations make promises and environmental commitments, meaningful climate action necessitates “drastically changing business models everywhere,” she noted.

“You do need regulations to drive some of that, but it is such a massive industry shift. That's why it's hard — because it's not that there is no value to be gained. It's almost like you're challenging massive giants who've made revenue off of selling more stuff,” she explained.