Fifty years ago, back when my father built our cabin off-grid by hand, sustainability was called environmentalism and considered hippy, not hip. In that time global energy consumption has increased 173%, in an ever-upward trend – until COVID-19. As of the 28th of April, 54% of the global population was in some form of lockdown. Global energy demand declined 3.8% in Q1 2020, with full-lockdown countries experiencing an average 25% decline in energy demand per week, and those in partial lockdown 18%.

Paul Massara, former CEO of npower and fellow Board Advisor to iSIZE, who deliver machine learning bitrate and energy reduction and perceptual quality enhancement for video, notes that, “At the same time, global carbon use has reduced around 5% as economies have slowed and airplanes have remained grounded. And yet if we are to hit our net zero targets and keep global temperature rises to less than 2%, we require a 7% year on year reduction in carbon, year in year out. The challenge is to achieve such carbon reductions without a crashing of the world economy.”