Sustainability is often discussed in terms of how energy is generated. Solar, wind, electrification, and battery storage all play important roles in reducing emissions. But the next phase of sustainability also depends on something less visible: how intelligently energy is used once it reaches buildings, factories, warehouses, data centers, and infrastructure.
Connected devices play a critical role in this transition.
Sensors, monitors, tags, controllers, and other Internet of Things devices give organizations the real-world data they need to reduce waste, optimize operations, and make better decisions. They can help buildings respond to occupancy, factories monitor equipment health, warehouses track assets, and utilities better understand distributed infrastructure.
Every connected device, regardless of function, requires a reliable source of power.
As deployments expand from dozens to thousands or millions of devices, power shifts from a hardware consideration to a core sustainability factor.
The built environment is one of the clearest examples. Building operations account for roughly 30% of global final energy consumption and 26% of global energy-related emissions, according to the International Energy Agency. When construction-related energy use is included, the building sector’s share rises even higher. The IEA also notes that building energy intensity must improve far more quickly this decade to remain aligned with long-term climate goals.
This scale presents a significant opportunity. Incremental improvements in heating, cooling, lighting, ventilation, equipment operation, and demand response can deliver substantial impact across commercial facilities.
Achieving these improvements requires operational visibility. Buildings need occupancy data to optimize systems. Facilities require real-time air quality information to manage ventilation. Warehouses depend on comprehensive monitoring to improve energy use, which can be constrained by wiring costs or battery maintenance.
The most sustainable systems are not necessarily those with the fewest devices, but those with sufficient intelligence to prevent energy waste from occurring.
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory modeled the impact of commercial building control measures and found that packages of controls could yield an estimated 29% in site energy savings across 14 building types that represent 57% of U.S. commercial building energy consumption. The same analysis estimated a best-case national savings potential of 1.32 quadrillion Btu of site energy.
The message is simple: control systems can save energy, but control systems need data. Data comes from sensors. Sensors need reliable power.
The rapid growth of connected devices creates a new challenge. Many IoT devices are designed to be small, low-cost, and easy to deploy, which often means they rely on batteries. A single battery is easy to ignore. Millions of batteries are not.
CORDIS, the European Commission’s research results platform, warned that up to 78 million batteries powering IoT devices could be discarded globally every day by 2025 if device power lifetimes do not improve. The same article noted a common mismatch in IoT deployments: many devices may have an operational life of more than 10 years, while the batteries powering them may last two years or less.
That creates multiple sustainability problems at once.
First, batteries must be manufactured, shipped, stored, replaced, collected, and disposed of. Second, replacement cycles create labor and transportation impacts. Third, devices may go offline when batteries die, reducing the value of the data system they were installed to support. Fourth, battery maintenance can limit where sensors are deployed in the first place.
This is where sustainability and scalability meet. A sensor network that is theoretically useful but too difficult to power at scale may never deliver its full environmental benefit.
Battery waste is also connected to the broader electronic waste problem. The Global E-waste Monitor 2024 reported that the world generated a record 62 million tonnes of e-waste in 2022, up 82% from 2010. It projects that e-waste will reach 82 million tonnes by 2030. Less than one-quarter (22.3%) was documented as properly collected and recycled in 2022.
Not every IoT battery becomes e-waste on its own, but battery-powered devices contribute to the same pattern: more electronics, shorter service cycles, more maintenance, and more material flowing through systems that are not always designed for recovery.
A more sustainable approach is to design connected devices with longer operational lives and fewer replacement events. That can mean lower-power electronics, better sleep modes, energy harvesting, rechargeable storage, or wireless power. In many cases, the best solution is a combination of these technologies.
Wireless power can help reduce dependence on disposable batteries in applications where wiring is impractical, and battery replacement incurs unnecessary cost or waste. Powercast technologies, for example, fit into this broader category of approaches that can support sensor autonomy and reduce the need for repeated battery maintenance.
It is important to be precise: wireless power is not sustainable simply because it is wireless.
Some forms of wireless charging can be less efficient than wired charging. A report prepared for the IEA 4E Electronic Devices and Networks Annex states that wireless charging is inherently less efficient than wired charging and highlights the need for efficient design, standards, and careful use cases.
That matters. Replacing every cable with wireless charging would not automatically reduce energy consumption. In some consumer charging applications, it may increase it.
The sustainability benefits of wireless power are most significant when it addresses challenges that batteries and wires create, such as limiting efficient deployment, reliable maintenance, or economic scaling of sensing systems.
In those environments, the question is not just “How efficient is the power transfer?” The better question is: “What waste, downtime, maintenance, truck rolls, wiring materials, and missed energy savings can this system help eliminate?”
For low-power sensors and edge devices, the energy required to operate the device may be small, but the operational impact of keeping that device alive can be large. If wireless power allows a sensor network to run for years with less maintenance, fewer batteries, and better data coverage, it can support a more sustainable system overall.
The future of sustainable infrastructure will depend on more than efficient equipment. It will depend on persistent awareness.
A smart building needs to know when rooms are occupied, how air quality is changing, where energy is being wasted, and which systems are drifting out of performance. A factory needs to monitor motors, pumps, tools, and production environments. A warehouse needs asset visibility without adding a battery-replacement burden. A data center needs more edge intelligence as power density, cooling demands, and uptime requirements increase.
In each case, better sensing can support better decisions. But sensing only works when the power strategy is practical.
Wireless power gives engineers another option. It can help place sensors where data is needed rather than only where wires already exist or where batteries are easy to reach. That flexibility matters for retrofits, hard-to-access areas, sealed devices, moving assets, and dense sensor networks.
The result is not just fewer batteries. It is better infrastructure intelligence.
As organizations pursue sustainability goals, the power architecture behind connected devices deserves more attention. A device that saves energy in one part of the system but requires constant maintenance in another may not be as sustainable as it appears. A sensor network that creates visibility but generates thousands of battery replacements has not fully solved the problem. A smart infrastructure strategy that cannot scale beyond pilot projects will struggle to produce measurable impact.
Wireless power should be viewed as part of a larger shift toward sustainable, low-maintenance edge infrastructure.
It does not replace every wire. It does not eliminate the need for careful energy design. And it does not make every connected device automatically sustainable.
But in the right applications, wireless power can help reduce dependence on batteries, extend device usefulness, simplify deployment, and support the dense sensing needed for smarter energy use.
The future of sustainability will be powered not only by cleaner energy. It will be powered by better data, better control, and smarter edge infrastructure.