Threat to sustainability or ally against global warming? Artificial intelligence (AI) has strongly emerged in the first debates of the thirtieth world climate summit in Belém (COP30), in the Brazilian Amazon.
In the first two days of the conference there have been at least a dozen round tables on how to apply the full potential of AI in favor of the fight against the climate emergency, but also on its impacts on the environment, which are not few.
Interest in this new and revolutionary tool has grown since COP29 in Baku, where it was barely addressed. Investment has also skyrocketed.
In 2024, global spending on AI will reach $250 billion, according to data released this Tuesday by Vishal Jain, who leads a team called ‘GreenMind’, in charge of measuring the ecological footprint of artificial intelligence tools.
“AI is everywhere. Its growth is explosive, and behind all this there is always a climate aspect related to its footprint—whether carbon, energy or water—of which most people are not aware,” this Indian-born specialist explains to EFE.
And each “interaction” with Gemini, ChatGPT or DeepSeek, “whatever its purpose, generates a negative impact on the environment.”
Data centers need to be cooled and, to do so, they consume large amounts of water.
A large one can consume up to 5 million gallons of water a day, the equivalent of the water use of a city of between 10,000 and 50,000 inhabitants, according to calculations by the Environmental and Energy Studies Institute (EESI), founded by US congressmen in 1984.
Lack of transparency
And even worse, there is currently no standard yardstick to measure the impact of these installations. Each company has its own methodology and publishes the data that suits it.
“There is no standardization, there is a lack of transparency. This field is evolving very quickly, so quickly that, in fact, today there is no common standard,” says Jain.
The captain of ‘GreenMind’ has developed a tool (SumEarth.AI) to unify criteria and make “the invisible visible”, that is, knowing exactly how much each AI spends on electricity, water or carbon emissions.
“The hardest part is making people understand that this matters,” he added.
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This Tuesday, Jain shared a round table with representatives of large technology companies such as Huawei and Google.
Adam Elman, Google’s director of sustainability in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, said the company is investigating what changes its artificial intelligence tools need to make them more efficient, a move he described as “strategic.”
At his side, Paolo Gemma, senior expert at Huawei, defended a “solution for all companies” in order to reduce emissions and energy consumption from AI and this requires, in his opinion, a frank dialogue between the technology companies themselves.
Use AI to reduce your own footprint
However, Rob McGreevy, Product Director at Aveva, which promotes software solutions for the different chains of a company, opted to use AI itself to stop the waste of energy and water.
He commented that certain Artificial Intelligence models can help reduce consumption, which reduces costs and benefits nature, something that has already worked in the manufacturing industry.
Along the same lines, the Brazilian presidency of COP30 will present the Institute of Artificial Intelligence for Climate, a global initiative that will serve to train people and institutions in developing countries on how to apply it in climate actions.
Agriculture can also benefit. Brazil, the United Arab Emirates and the Gates Foundation announced on Monday a $2.8 billion investment and the launch of an open source AI model for the sector, with the goal of training 100 million farmers by 2028. AI is here to stay.
With information from EFE
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