AI for Sustainability Newsletter #1
In a world grappling with environmental challenges, artificial intelligence (AI) emerges as a powerful ally in our pursuit of sustainability. As sustainability professionals, we play a pivotal role in harnessing AI’s potential effectively and responsibly.
Microsoft published a playbook last year on Accelerating Sustainability with AI: A Playbook, which highlights the opportunities that AI provides for accelerating sustainability and the actions required to unlock the full potential of AI for sustainability. Let’s take a look:
The playbook outlines three game-changing abilities of AI technologies that can be used to address key bottlenecks and accelerate the sustainability transition:
- Complex Systems Management: AI’s analytical prowess enables us to measure, predict, and optimise performance in complex systems. Consider wildfire management, where AI can analyse historical data, weather patterns, and vegetation conditions. This enables better prediction and early detection to reduce wildfire risk.
- Sustainability Solutions Acceleration: AI accelerates the creation of sustainable solutions such as low-carbon materials and climate-resilient crops. Just as AI played a crucial role in the rapid development of COVID-19 vaccines, it can help researchers and innovators to design novel materials, optimise energy grids, and enhance resource efficiency.
- Sustainability Workforce Empowerment: As sustainability professionals, we benefit from AI’s capabilities. AI provides targeted training, distills vast archives of sustainability science and policy documents, and makes complex information accessible.
While AI has the potential to accelerate global sustainability transformation, its success is not guaranteed and it is important to establish the right enabling conditions. The playbook shares 5 key actions:
- Invest in AI: Private and public sectors must recognise and harness AI’s full potential. They must provide financial support and create opportunities to focus R&D efforts on using AI to address sustainability’s biggest challenges, as well as foster partnerships between AI experts and sustainability professionals.
- Develop Digital and Data Infrastructure: Data is the lifeblood of AI. Sustainability professionals need to fill in the data gaps and address the unevenness in coverage and accessibility of the data. AI-ready data standards need to be established and adopted to increase the usability of sustainability data in AI models. For AI to be inclusive, efforts must also be spent to provide digital infrastructure such as internet connectivity and affordable devices to disadvantaged communities.
- Minimise Resource Use: The demand for resources such as energy and water will increase as the infrastructure needed to support AI models expands. Private and public sectors will have to continuously innovate and invest in data centers, AI chips, hardware and software that are more energy and water efficient.
- Advance AI Policy Principles and Governance: Policymakers and industry leaders must work together to shape AI’s impact. Governments can craft and support policies that align AI capabilities with sustainability outcomes and mitigate the resources used, as well as ensure that AI is safe, secure and trusted.
- Build Workforce Capacity: It is necessary to build a workforce that is prepared to use AI for sustainability and to maximise the potential of AI. This requires holistic learning pathways that cultivate AI fluency within the context of sustainability. For example, training employees on generative AI and tools, and advancing their skills in technical applications of AI to address specific sustainability challenges.
AI has the transformative potential to accelerate sustainability. However, we need to tap on AI as an indispensable ally for sustainability and use it ethically and responsibly. We must work together to innovate and invest in AI, foster collaboration among relevant stakeholders, and assess and track AI’s impact on the global path to net zero, so that we can unlock its full potential to create a more sustainable future.
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The AI for Sustainability newsletter is published bi-weekly and shares curated news, insights and resources to cover these learning objectives:
- Use AI to achieve environmental sustainability.
- Use AI to help sustainability professionals improve business strategy, marketing, communications, and sustainability reporting.
- Understand and reduce AI's environmental impact.
Innovation Grants Manager I Sustainability Professional I ESG I CSRD & ESRS
5moHi Eugene Tay! Thank you for your interesting and enlightening Newsletters. Can you recommend an online course (free or paid) on AI in sustainability ? Many thanks in advance for your time, Vassilis
Director, Integrated Building & Digital Solutions
7moAbsolutely, as example, the use of AI in designing high-performance GPU chipsets by NVIDIA is a striking reflection of how AI can help to drive technological advancements as well as for sustainability. Jensen Huang's vision of a Sustainability AI Factory could potentially revolutionize solutions for multiple industries by optimizing their resource use and enhancing efficiency. It's exciting to think about the broad implications for sustainability leveraging AI.
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7moPerhaps the first step is using AI to take on the time consuming task of the categorisation work for scope 3 categories! Imagine in the PO issued, there’s a mention of sustainability impact in terms of GHG!
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