How AI Affects the Environment and Sustainability

Artificial intelligence is often presented as a tool that could help address some of the world’s most pressing environmental challenges. It is already being used to track harmful activities such as sand dredging and to monitor methane emissions, a powerful greenhouse gas. By analyzing large volumes of data, AI can identify patterns and irregularities and use past information to make informed predictions. This has raised expectations that the technology could support better environmental monitoring and help governments, businesses, and individuals make more sustainable decisions.

Advances in computing power and the explosion of data have driven AI’s rapid development, fostering hope that it could help tackle climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution and waste. AI can also enhance efficiencies, including detecting methane emissions from oil and gas installations, which drive climate change.

However, when it comes to the environment, there is a negative side to the explosion of AI and its associated infrastructure. Most large-scale AI deployments are housed in data centres, which take a heavy toll on the planet. Making a 2 kg computer requires 800 kg of raw materials, and the microchips that power AI rely on rare earth elements that are often mined in environmentally destructive ways.

Data centres also produce electronic waste containing hazardous substances such as mercury and lead. In addition, they use large amounts of water during construction and to cool electrical components once operational. Globally, AI-related infrastructure may soon consume six times more water than Denmark, at a time when a quarter of humanity already lacks access to clean water and sanitation.

To power their complex electronics, data centres require massive amounts of electricity, which in many regions still comes from fossil fuels, producing planet-warming greenhouse gases. A request made through an AI-based virtual assistant consumes 10 times the electricity of a Google Search. In some regions, the rise of AI could see data centres account for a significant share of total energy use.

Driven in part by the rapid expansion of AI, the number of data centres has surged from 500,000 in 2012 to 8 million, and experts expect the technology’s demands on the planet to keep growing. While AI holds promise for environmental protection, its overall impact remains uncertain, with concerns about unintended consequences and higher-order effects such as increased emissions and climate misinformation.

Addressing these challenges will require better measurement of AI’s environmental footprint, greater transparency from companies, more efficient algorithms, greener data centres, and policies that integrate AI governance with environmental regulation to ensure the technology’s net effect on the planet is positive.