AVPN Academy, in collaboration with Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability, brings a session that explores the emerging nexus between AI, climate and energy.
AI may be one of the most powerful tools available to address the climate crisis. From improving renewable energy forecasting to strengthening climate resilience and accelerating clean technology innovation, AI has the potential to help businesses and societies transition towards a more sustainable future.
However, increased AI adoption carries a real and growing environmental cost, most visibly through the data centres that train and run it. The International Energy Agency estimates that data centres already account for roughly 1.5% of global electricity use, with AI-driven demand significantly increasing that share by the end of the decade — a pace of growth outstripping most other sectors. Beyond electricity, the servers powering AI models require significant amounts of water for cooling, with some estimates putting global data centre water withdrawals in the billions of gallons annually. As AI adoption accelerates, its environmental footprint remains one of the more pressing side effects of the technology’s expansion.
