Artificial Intelligence and Climate Change
A brief article by Marr (2021) lists a number of areas in which artificial intelligence (AI) is of actual or potential use in mitigating climate change. His topics include improving energy efficiency, optimizing clean energy development, avoiding waste, making transport more efficient, providing tools to help understand carbon footprints, monitoring the environment and creating new low-carbon materials. Marr draws on a report from Capgemini (2020) which claims that within their study the most effective “AI-enabled use cases have helped organizations reduce GHG emissions by 13% and improve power efficiency by 11% in the last two years” and “have also helped reduce waste and deadweight assets by improving their utilization by 12%.” Capgemini estimates that applications of AI “have the potential to help organizations fulfil 11–45% of the ‘Economic Emission Intensity’ targets of the Paris Agreement, depending on the scale of AI adoption across sectors” by 2030. However although many or