Abstract:
With the rapid development of artificial intelligence, more and more environmental protection organizations around the world have begun to incorporate AI into their daily workflow for analyzing climate data, monitoring forest fires, and counting the number of endangered wildlife. However, these organizations are also among the staunchest critics of the expansion of artificial intelligence infrastructure, as the data centers that support AI operations are causing growing energy consumption, water requirements and greenhouse gas emissions.
This seemingly contradictory phenomenon is sparking discussion in the global environmental field. Many organizations whose core missions are combating climate change and protecting natural resources now find themselves using artificial intelligence to make their work more efficient while having to explain why they are using a technology that is believed to exacerbate environmental pressures.
Ali Swanson, head of artificial intelligence at the US non-profit organization Conservation International, said that AI does bring environmental costs, so it must be used with caution. But in the face of the growing climate crisis and biodiversity crisis, artificial intelligence can help researchers act faster and make more effective use of the vast amounts of information already collected.
The organization has recently begun using AI to analyze abnormal hot spots discovered by satellites and send real-time warnings to community forest patrol teams in remote and ecologically sensitive areas of Cambodia, so that potential wildfires can be detected more quickly and response measures can be taken.
Reuters interviewed 15 large environmental protection, nature conservation and development organizations, and the results showed that all interviewed organizations have used artificial intelligence technology to varying degrees. At the same time, these 15 institutions all expressed concerns about the data centers that support AI operations.
There are a large number of servers deployed in these data centers, which not only consume huge amounts of electricity, but also require large amounts of water for cooling. As generative artificial intelligence models continue to expand, the construction of data centers around the world continues to accelerate, and the environmental pressure caused by this has also become the focus of attention of the international community.
This issue is evolving from a corporate-level debate to a global issue. Individuals, businesses and governments are all trying to balance the enormous potential offered by artificial intelligence against its environmental costs. This contradiction is expected to become an important topic of discussion at the United Nations COP31 climate conference to be held this month.
As the host of this conference, Turkey plans to push governments, enterprises and relevant institutions to sign an initiative to propose a principled framework for the responsible and sustainable development of artificial intelligence, hoping to ensure that future AI technology deployment can take into account environmental impact.
United Nations Secretary-General Guterres also called on large artificial intelligence companies to publicly disclose the environmental impacts of their system operations, including energy consumption, carbon emissions and resource usage, to improve industry transparency.
Relevant research data shows that as the AI industry continues to expand, the scale of data centers will continue to grow significantly. The United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health estimates that by 2030, the global data center area may more than double the current area, and the total size will be approximately twice the area of the Jakarta metropolitan area, the capital of Indonesia.
The International Energy Agency predicts that by 2030, global data center annual electricity consumption will reach approximately 945 terawatt hours, which is approximately twice the current level. These facilities are expected to produce more than 300 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually, equivalent to the annual emissions of a moderately industrialized country. At the same time, this amount of electricity consumption is close to Japan’s total annual electricity consumption.
Despite the controversy, most environmental groups have not chosen to move away from artificial intelligence, preferring to continue using it while pushing for greater transparency and sustainability in the industry. They believe that artificial intelligence has become an increasingly important tool in areas such as combating climate change, monitoring ecosystems, and protecting endangered species. The real problem that needs to be solved in the future is not whether to use AI, but how to develop and deploy this technology in a more environmentally friendly and responsible way.
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