The Future of AI and Sustainability
2024 was a big year for AI with venture capital in the space exceeding $100 billion, an 80% increase from 2023, making up nearly a third of all funding dollars. While the ultimate winners and losers are not yet clear, with many major companies making moves in this space, it appears that AI is here to stay. We believe the question now then is: How do we make it work for sustainability, not against it?
Engaging with clients and colleagues, we’ve heard a wide range of concerns—energy consumption, ethical usage, and even fears of AI displacing human labor. But beyond the headlines, we’re at a crossroads where sustainability & AI intersect—bringing both challenges and transformative opportunities. Like past general-purpose technologies—from the steam engine to the internet—the potential is enormous, but its impact is still unfolding. So what should our goal be?
→ Minimize the harm. Maximize the benefit.
We’ve been working with our partners at several key academic institutions on a graduate-level curriculum & workshop exploring the intersection of sustainability & AI, and have assembled a view of key issues in the space. While there are obvious challenges, there are many layers of understanding and nuance that need to be grappled with to ensure that the sustainability field can benefit effectively from this next area of innovation.
Key Challenges:
High Energy & Resource Use – AI infrastructure (data centers) requires massive electricity & water, raising sustainability concerns.
Data Gaps – Many sustainability applications rely on high-quality data, but AI models often face bias, inaccessibility, or limitations in key areas like biodiversity & climate science.
Policy & Governance – The lack of clear regulations can lead to inefficiencies, ethical risks, and unintended consequences.
Unequal Access – AI-driven solutions are concentrated in high-income countries, leaving underserved regions without access and availability of this critical technology.
Community Impacts – AI data centers are often looked at in aggregate as causing big impacts. The reality is that data center issues are usually specific to individual locales and the challenges related to land use, energy consumption, and social acceptance as high in some places and non-existent in others.
Key Opportunities:
Optimizing Complex Systems – AI helps us measure, predict & optimize sustainability efforts by leveraging massive datasets.
Accelerating Innovation – AI fast-tracks discoveries in materials science, e-waste recycling, precision agriculture & more.
Workforce Empowerment – AI closes knowledge gaps, automates routine tasks & improves decision-making across industries.
Enhancing Risk & Resilience – AI-powered models predict extreme weather, optimize disaster preparedness & manage resources.
Driving the Energy Transition – AI improves grid management, boosts energy efficiency & accelerates renewables adoption.
It’s important to understand that the challenge of AI is also about contextualizing what the numbers mean. While the potential changes both positive and negative are staggering in isolation, depending on how the issues are framed in aggregate, different perspectives may emerge.
💧 Google used 5.2B gallons of water globally for data centers in 2022—a staggering number, but also less than 0.5% of the water used for California’s almond farming.
🔋 AI's energy demands have caused Google & Microsoft emissions to rise—but tech is one of the largest drivers of renewable energy demand. Can we ultimately decarbonize the electrons that are in demand?
🛠️ McKinsey predicted that 30% of work hours across the economy could be automated by 2030. The number is debatable but the question is whether this will create job losses or more productivity—or something else entirely.
The future of AI & sustainability is finding how best to keep them from being at odds, and in the sustainability space, we need to be intentional and strategic in our approach to ensure we best benefit from its transformative potential.
Ready for the AI-driven Future?
Tackling the challenges of today and creating the opportunities for tomorrow requires an end-to-end approach that turns challenge into opportunity. Partner with us to see how sustainability can be powered by AI to make meaningful business impact.
