IoT in Sustainability and IoT in the AI and Metaverse Age

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a modern technology that has gained large popularity and is still developing. Connecting heterogeneous devices, such as phones, vehicles, and household appli-ances, IoT has brought convenience to our lives. Further, IoT plays a significant role in enhancing environmental sustainability. It provides timely data about different devices and enables users and managers to directly control the objects. IoT can optimize the existing energy systems and pro-mote the usage of renewable technologies. In this article, we discuss how IoT supports green initiatives (i.e., how it is applied in different sec-tors), how it can be “green” itself (i.e., from both the technical and managerial perspectives), and future directions of the advancement of IoT (e.g., IoT in the AI and Metaverse age). Specifically, we explain how IoT enhances environmental sustain-ability in different sectors, including energy, agri-culture, smart cities, and transportation. We also show how IoT can be green itself through technical and managerial approaches. Further, we dis-cuss how IoT can be integrated with AI, such as Generative AI, Agentic AI, and the Metaverse, to enhance impacts. Clearly, IoT has the potential to be further developed and make an even greater contribution to environmental sustainability.