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At the UN climate talks in Brazil, artificial intelligence is being presented as both a hero worthy of praise and a villain who needs policing.
At the conference, known as COP30, tech companies and a handful of countries are promoting the ways AI can help solve global warming, which is largely driven by the burning of fossil fuels like oil, gas and coal. He says the technology has the potential to do many things, from increasing the efficiency of electrical grids and helping farmers predict weather patterns to tracking migratory species in the deep sea and designing infrastructure that can withstand extreme weather.
However, climate groups are warning about the growing environmental impact of AI, because of its increased needs for electricity and water to power searches and data centers. He says that without guardrails, the AI boom will push the world away from the goals set by the 2015 Paris Agreement to slow global warming.
“AI is a completely unregulated beast around the world right now,” said Energy Justice director Gene Su. Center for Biological Diversity,
On the other hand, Adam Elman, Director of Sustainability GoogleSees AI as “a real enabler” and one that is already making an impact.
If both sides agree on one thing, it’s that AI is here to stay.
Mishal Nachmani, founder of Climate Policy Radar, which runs AI tools that track issues such as national climate plans and funds to help developing countries transition to green energy like solar and wind, said there has been “incredible interest” in AI at COP30.
“Everyone is a little scared, too,” Nachmani said. “The possibilities are huge and the risks are huge.”
Multiple sessions on AI
According to Nitin Arora, who leads the Global Innovation Hub for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the framework for international climate negotiations, the rise of AI is becoming a more common topic at the United Nations than it was a few years ago.
He said this hub was launched at COP26 in Glasgow to promote ideas and solutions that can be deployed at scale. So far, those ideas have been dominated by AI, Arora said.
The Associated Press counted at least 24 AI-related sessions during the first week of the Brazil conference. They include AI helping neighboring cities share energy, AI-supported forest crime location prediction and a ceremony for the first AI for Climate Action award – given to an AI project on water scarcity and climate variability in the Southeast Asian nation of Laos.
Johannes Jakob, a data scientist with the German delegation, said he is designing a prototype app, called NegotiateCOP, that could help countries with smaller delegations – such as El Salvador, South Africa, Ivory Coast and some other countries. Association of Southeast Asian Nations – Process hundreds of official COP documents.
The result, he said, is “being on a level playing field in negotiations.”
In a panel discussion, representatives from AI giants like Google and Nvidia explained how AI can solve the problems facing the power sector. Elman with Google emphasized “the need to do this responsibly,” but declined to comment further.
Nvidia’s sustainability chief, Josh Parker, called AI “the best resource any of us can have.”
“AI is very democratic,” Parker said. “If you think about climate technology, climate change and all the sustainability challenges that we are trying to solve here at the COP, which of those challenges would not be solved better and faster with more intelligence.”
Princess Abbe Zigma of Burkina Faso has called AI “a breakthrough in digitalization” and believes it will be even more important in the future.
Björn-Sören Gigler, a senior digital and green transformation expert at the European Commission, agreed, but said AI is “often seen as a double-edged sword” with both huge opportunities and ethical and environmental concerns.
Increasing use of AI raises concerns
The training and deployment of AI models depends on power-hungry data centers that contribute to emissions due to the electricity required. international energy agency The surge in energy consumption and demand from data centers has been tracked, particularly in the US
Data centers are expected to account for about 1.5% of the world’s electricity consumption in 2024, according to the IEA, which found that their electricity consumption has grown by about 12% per year since 2017, four times faster than the rate of total electricity consumption.
Environmental impacts from AI, particularly in the operation of data centers, also include the consumption of large amounts of water in water-stressed states, according to Su of the Center for Biological Diversity, who has studied how the data center boom threatens US climate goals.
He said these campaigns would increase national emissions from the US, which has historically been the world’s largest polluter.
Environmental groups at COP30 are pushing for rules to soften the environmental footprint of AI, such as public interest tests for proposed data centers and mandating 100% on-site renewable energy at them.
“The COP cannot only view AI as some kind of technological solution, but it also needs to understand the deeper climate consequences,” Su said.
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Associated Press writer Seth Borenstein in Belém, Brazil contributed to this report.
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The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from several private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find the AP’s standards for working with philanthropy, a list of supporters, and funded coverage areas on AP.org
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This story was produced as part of the 2025 Climate Change Media Partnership, a journalism fellowship hosted by Internews’ Earth Journalism Network and the Stanley Center for Peace and Security.