Microsoft & Google: What is AI in Climate Action?

Artificial Intelligence (AI) could play a pivotal role in helping the world adapt to and mitigate the impacts of climate change.

AI is uniquely poised to deliver climate solutions owing to its capacity to deal with large, complex data models and improve decision-making. 

It can simulate climate scenarios, measure the effectiveness of existing environmental policies and help design better policies to propel climate action.

AI systems for climate action

According to a United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) report, AI can be used to significantly reduce GHG emissions.

This is achieved by using AI to reduce energy wastage by optimisation of the energy grid, industrial processes and transportation systems. 

AI as a climate ally has stepped from theory into the real world with systems like Google’s NeuralGCM, which is already helping farmers in India predict monsoons early to devise crop-planting strategies.

AI-powered accurate weather prediction is essential to help farms counteract the erratic changes in weather caused by climate change.  

Accurate weather prediction, by providing early warnings, can protect against extreme weather events and natural disasters. 

By applying AI to optimise data centre cooling, Google’s DeepMind cut cooling energy use by 40%, significantly lowering its carbon footprint.

Kate Brandt, Chief Sustainability Officer at Google, said on LinkedIn that doubling the global recycling rate could save more than 10 gigatons of carbon over the next 30 years.

CircularNet, Google’s new open-source AI model, can be used to detect materials and improve recyclability, thereby helping to reach this goal. 

Kate said that a start-up in India used CircularNet to achieve more than 90% accuracy in material detection.

“This has improved the purity of their recyclables by ~60%, leading to a 6x increase in material value and diverting over 50,000 metric tonnes of waste from landfills every month," she explains.

“This is the opportunity of AI in action: using technology to create efficiency, reduce waste and unlock economic growth."

Microsoft says that AI can accelerate the transition to net zero and is working with various companies to tackle climate goals. 

Melanie Nakagawa, Chief Sustainability Officer at Microsoft, said that through its Climate Innovation Fund, Microsoft is investing in AI solutions like Vibrant Planet to analyse vast amounts of data to better predict and manage wildfire threats. 

“Vibrant Planet's models integrate observational data, global and regional climate models and ecosystem models, to provide more accurate predictions and effective interventions for wildfires,” she explains. 

AI and ML models have already been used to develop disaster warning systems such as flood warning systems, food security warning systems and hurricane prediction models. 

What are the drawbacks of using AI for climate action?

AI itself is very energy-intensive and the cost to power and maintain the systems could possibly offset the climate gains if not monitored properly. 

Security concerns of AI deployment require addressing, as blind integration of these models could be a giant security loophole that will make these systems vulnerable to cyber attacks. 

AI could deepen inequality, as unequal application of AI may widen the economic gap between richer and poorer countries. 

Improving AI's energy efficiency is key to solving some of the world's biggest challenges. 

Emerging coalitions such as the Coalition for sustainable AI with the twofold mission to mitigate environmental impact of AI and to leverage AI to address environmental issues are the way forward for an intelligent and green future.