Former MIT Joint Program Co-Director John Reilly is quoted on page 23 of "Climate AI: How artificial intelligence can power your climate action strategy," a new report from the Capgemini Research Institute:
“By this time industries are aware that greenhouse gas emissions that they release are affecting the climate. There is also the concern about how companies might be affected by climate change and how their facilities might be/are being disrupted from major storms or how the supply chains are being disrupted. They are taking various measures to reduce their emissions, although they are obviously concerned about underlying profitability. It will be critical for organizations to think innovatively including with the use of emerging technologies such as AI, to harness their climate actions.”
The Capgemini Research Institute's introduction to the report appears below:
The heat is on to turn down climate change – AI can help.
In the past twenty years, there were 7,348 major recorded disaster events claiming 1.23 million lives, affecting 4.2 billion people and resulting in approximately USD 2.97 trillion in global economic losses. The cost to human life and health, to governments and economies, and to industry has been staggering, and things are not getting any better – 2019 saw the highest CO2 emissions in human history. Large manufacturing organizations, which contribute to roughly 50% of the world’s total GHG emissions, have a responsibility to act. We wanted to understand whether AI could help.
In the latest report from the Capgemini Research Institute – Climate AI: How artificial intelligence can power your climate action strategy – we surveyed 800 industry executives and 300 AI and climate change experts, and we interviewed over 40 industry executives and experts. We found that, in the past two years, AI-enabled use cases have already helped organizations reduce GHG emissions by 13% and improve power efficiency by 11%. Using the expertise of our startup partner right. based on science, we estimate that, by 2030, AI-enabled use cases have the potential to help organizations fulfill 11–45% of the “Economic Emission Intensity” targets of the Paris Agreement, depending on the scale of AI adoption across sectors. For instance, for the automotive sector, AI-enabled use cases have the potential to deliver 8 percentage points of the 37% reduction (more than one-fifth) required by 2030, as per the Paris Agreement goals. However, despite the many use cases for climate action offers, scaling deployment is proving difficult – only 3% have been fully scaled. Moreover, although 67% of organizations have made climate action a strategic priority, only 13% are successfully combining their climate vision with AI capabilities and have driven solutions to scale. We call this group ‘Climate AI Champions”
We believe that in order to leverage AI’s full climate action potential, organizations must:
- Combat the negative impact of AI on the climate.
- Educate their employees on the criticality of climate change and explain how AI can make a real difference.
- Establish technological foundations for AI-powered climate change action.
- Scale specific use cases.
- Collaborate with the climate change ecosystem.
- Harness AI to bring greater focus in reducing scope 3 emissions.
Photo: Former Joint Program Co-Director John Reilly (Photo by Dimonika Bray)