Corporates/businesses are credited with transforming the world to a better place. But it is also infamous for being the reason of climate change & greenhouse gas emissions. The world is struggling with saving the centuries old glaciers that is melting, the land and water species that are going extinct, and the major health concerns that we are dealing with like the COVID-19 pandemic amongst others. In all such cases, we turn towards technology to find solutions. And AI is emerging as a game changer to help deal with greenhouse gas emissions.

If you have any concern, then Capgemini’s new research titled ‘Climate AI: How artificial intelligence can power your climate action strategy’ will wither it out. As per the research, while AI offers many climate action use cases, scaled deployment is proving elusive and just 13 percent of organizations are successfully combining climate vision with AI capabilities. AI powered use cases for climate action have the potential to help organizations fulfill up to 45 percent of their Economic Emission Intensity targets of the Paris Agreement.

Addressing climate change is everyone’s responsibility and AI has the potential to make a significant impact, yet only a fraction of organizations are actively using this technology to its full potential

Nearly 67 percent of organizations have set long-term business goals to tackle climate change. While many technologies address a specific outcome, such as carbon capture or renewable sources of energy, AI can accelerate organizations’ climate action across sectors and value chain, and adoption is on the rise as more than half of organizations are moving beyond pilots or proofs of concepts. What else can AI do? It can improve energy efficiency, reduce dependence on fossil fuels, and optimize processes to aid productivity. Not surprising that nearly 48 percent of tech executives interviews use AI for climate action and as a result have reduced greenhouse gas emissions by 12.9 percent, improved power efficiency by 10.9 percent and reduced waste by 11.7 percent since 2017.

The report also highlights that AI-based solutions represent the greatest opportunity for climate action. Overall 56 percent of experts surveyed believe AI to be the top technology for climate action compared to 93 percent of experts in India, 16 percent of experts in US, 33 percent in UK and 100 percent in China. 53 percent of experts globally believe in use of renewable energy in operations to represent the opportunity for climate action compared to 30 percent experts in India, 73 percent in US, 80 percent in UK and 17 percent in China. With so much stress on technology, no wonder around 50 percent of experts believe in Tech-enabled circular economy to represent the opportunity for climate action compared to 37 percent experts in India, 67 percent in US, 50 percent in UK and 40 percent in China.

Low Adoption of AI still a Concern

Despite the number of advantages that AI brings to the fore, its low adoption still remains a concern. More than eight in 10 organizations spend less than five percent of climate change investment on AI and data tracking, while 54 percent have fewer than five percent of employees with the skills to take up data and AI-driven roles. But the worry is that nearly one third of the surveyed executives have reduced their climate goals in light of COVID-19, the highest being from the energy and utilities industry. Even 38 percent of all organizations have put their capital expenditure on hold allocated for climate initiatives.

We are using AI for securing climate, but is AI that safe for the climate? Despite technology advances, AI systems and solutions can potentially consume a lot of power and can generate significant volumes of climate-changing carbon emissions. Hence before deploying AI use cases, organizations need to carefully assess the environment impact, build greater awareness and build AI solutions with sustainability core design principles, to ensure that the benefits of their AI deployments outweigh their emissions cost.

“Addressing climate change is everyone’s responsibility and AI has the potential to make a significant impact, yet only a fraction of organizations are actively using this technology to its full potential,” says Anne Laure Thieullent, Vice President, Artificial Intelligence and Analytics Group Offer Leader at Capgemini. “For climate action as well, execution starts from the top of the organization, by aligning the use of data & AI to its strategic corporate agenda, with sustainability at the heart of it. Without this clear direction, there is a missing link between intention and technology prioritization and execution. Organizations have the opportunity to prioritize the deployment of AI solutions to address their sustainable goals. Frameworks now exist to educate, build awareness, establish scalable operating models, and manage data to deliver tangible business outcomes with AI applied to climate action. And of course, this requires AI solutions to be designed, built, deployed and monitored with sustainable design principles to ensure overall positive environmental impact.”