AI is part of solution for climate change, COP31 pledge says

Turkey, hosts of this year’s United Nations COP31 climate summit, has launched a pledge that says artificial intelligence can help tackle global warming, even as data centers boost fossil-fuel pollution.

The voluntary commitment, which will be unveiled at the summit starting later this month in the coastal city of Antalya, highlights the tension that AI comes with environmental risks, but could also be used to fight climate change. It’s not clear which countries will sign up and the U.S., the biggest developer of data centers, is no longer part of the COP process.

“The Antalya AI Pledge elevates both sides of AI’s climate story,” said Evan Tachovsky, chief data and AI officer at the World Resources Institute, a climate nonprofit. It “sets the right direction of travel but lacks the accountability mechanisms to steer countries and tech companies on to a better path,” he added.

Data centers are emerging as a major new source of greenhouse gas emissions, particularly in the U.S., where big tech companies are racing to bring them online by developing new gas-fired power stations. Their share of global energy use is expected to more than double by 2030, according to BloombergNEF.

Turkey’s AI pledge comes amid several warnings from the U.N. that the world is on course to leap past the key temperature goal of the Paris Agreement, which commits countries to limiting heating to 1.5 Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Limiting that overshoot requires sharp emissions cuts this decade.

Simon Stiell, executive secretary of the U.N.’s Framework Convention on Climate Change, said last month that AI was “energy guzzling” and driving up fossil fuel pollution. “AI leaders are now on thin ice,” he said.

European Union Climate Commissioner Wopke Hoekstra said in an interview that the pledge had some “interesting characteristics” and the bloc was examining whether to sign up to it.

The Antalya AI pledge will involve countries, NGOs and financial institutions identifying voluntary commitments, such as requiring providers to disclose their energy and environmental impact data and requiring data centers to be powered by clean power sources. It also floats possible targets. Nations would then come back at next year’s summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia to take stock of progress.