Sustainable Intelligence:
What the AI Boom Means for Climate and Carbon Markets
The age of Artificial intelligence (AI) is upon us, and seems poised to upend almost every sector of human activity. The world is grappling with its implications — opinions ranging from “AI will doom us all” to “AI will save us all.” But as with every historic technological leap, the reality that emerges will depend a lot on how we use it.
With respect to climate change, AI poses significant risks, most notably in relation to the massive carbon-intensive amounts of computing power data centers require to run it. But it also holds great promise in terms of its transformative potential for climate action. Our challenge will be to harness the power of AI for good, while mitigating as best we can its negative effects.
What will that mean for the fight against climate change? For global carbon markets? And more specifically for our stock-in-trade, large-scale carbon removal?
AI’s Climate-positive Potential
While media tend to focus on potential negative climate impacts of AI, there’s another, brighter side to the story. By many accounts, AI could become a major force in service of a sustainable future. One report from BCG and Google estimates that scaling AI technologies could help mitigate 5-10% of global GHG emissions by 2030, representing up to one fifth IPCC’s 2030 interim reduction target for the world to achieve net zero by 2050. Another report from PwC and Microsoft also details how using AI for environmental applications has significant potential to reduce global emissions.
Source: BCG Climate AI survey 2022. All respondents have decision-making authority over climate or AI topics at their organizations. Respondents were permitted to give more than one answer.
Emerging AI technologies can help us better understand our environmental impact in order to devise more efficient strategies and solutions: assessing carbon footprints, tracking emissions with unprecedented detail, or more broadly assessing transitional and physical climate risks. Similarly, AI can help us better adapt to the effects of climate change by taking proactive measures and building climate resilience, for instance enabling early detection and warning systems for natural disasters — storms, floods, fires, tornados … even locusts.
As for climate change mitigation, AI offers a host of exciting possibilities across multiple sectors: more efficient electricity systems and energy use in buildings (or data centers), optimization of transport, cleaner manufacturing, more precision agriculture and responsible forest management, to name just a few.
Source: Climate Change and AI: Recommendations for Government Action
Enhancing Catona's Carbon Program with Responsible AI
For Catona, AI represents a tectonic shift in our ability to monitor and understand the impact of carbon projects on local ecosystems and on climate more broadly — and directly address concerns around the real climate impact projects are making. These rapid developments are providing answers to a question now at the core of our work at Catona Climate: How can we leverage AI to improve the quality of nature-based carbon assets?
We’re already using AI to process massive datasets of bioacoustic information — the vocalizations of birds, amphibians, and insects — to help us track the effects of an agroforestry project on local biodiversity. We’re also exploring how our current tech-intensive efforts to measure above-ground biomass and vegetation vigor with satellite imagery could both be bolstered by AI and machine learning. We believe these and other AI-driven capabilities will help enhance the integrity of carbon credits across our portfolio, building confidence among investors and unlocking more capital for high-quality nature-based solutions.
We’re constantly leveraging cutting-edge technology — including the latest in artificial intelligence — to track the impact of our projects. Watch as our partner Chrissy Durkin from WildMon explains how major advances in AI and large-scale data processing allow us to interpret massive amounts of bioacoustic information.
Notably, among the most ambitious, forward thinking companies taking action to mitigate their climate footprint are the very tech companies driving the AI boom, some of whom we’ve already partnered with to help achieve their decarbonization goals — and they’re at the forefront of many of the most innovative uses of AI in the fight against climate change. Meta and World Resources Institute have teamed up on an AI-driven project that aims to create a global map of tree canopy height — an innovation that could directly affect the quality of nature-based carbon credits by enhancing the ability to monitor, verify, and report on carbon sequestration. Some broader AI-for-climate initiatives include Microsoft’s Accelerating Sustainability with AI Playbook, and the work of Google’s Climate and sustainability team.
AI-Driven Demand for High-Quality Carbon Credits
As strong as the case may be that AI can be a force for climate good, it comes with a climate cost as well. Assessing AI’s projected carbon footprint can be elusive due to opacity around current energy consumption, as well as uncertainty about growth, adoption rates, and the effectiveness of future efficiencies. But the inescapable fact is that the data centers powering AI require massive amounts of energy and that need is very likely to grow, at least in the short term.
The speed at which AI adoption is suddenly growing means the tech companies at the heart of the boom will need to revise some of the fundamental forecasts informing their net-zero pathways. Ultimately, timelines for emissions reduction will likely stretch out — and carbon removal solutions will play a greater role in the short and medium term. We’re beginning to see, and will likely continue to see, a rise in demand for the highest-quality nature-based carbon removals.
Catona Climate is uniquely positioned to meet that demand and help mitigate the effects of the inevitable energy surge. Through forward offtake agreements, companies can lock in the high-quality credits they’ll need in the coming years. These agreements have the added bonus of creating a strong demand signal, which raises investor confidence and means more capital will flow toward the chronically underfunded nature-based carbon projects we’ll need to provide the required increase in supply.
We’ve already partnered with some of the biggest tech companies to help them secure the high-quality carbon removal credits central to their climate goals. We’re primed and ready to deepen these partnerships and forge new ones, helping AI net out to be a positive force for good in the battle against climate change.
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