The year of climate governance, hope is on AI

Climate change has become the biggest challenge facing the world today. The United Nations has made it clear that 2021 will be the last year for us to make real changes in response to the problem of global warming. To this end, the United Nations is currently actively preparing for the COP26 climate summit, hoping to discuss feasible solutions to the problems of this century. Participants such as Hitachi and BCG joined the work as partners.

In addition, the Climate AI Leadership Program is also under planning. Innovators will continue to explore the correct path for human survival and prosperity. Climate change has become a real crisis, and the top priority is to find a solution that works quickly and is realistic and feasible. At present, the most promising answer may lie in artificial intelligence (AI).

According to EDF, the damage caused by climate change has reached US$1 billion, and this huge sum of money should have been used to promote a series of important public utilities and development plans. The good news is that the advanced capabilities of new solutions in the digital age are using AI as the carrier to bring us new hopes for building a better planet and welcoming a bright future. At present, innovators around the world are committed to responding to climate change through unique AI use cases, including helping prevent wildfires, mitigating environmental risks caused by high-temperature spots, monitoring and forecasting technologies carried by drones, etc., and work hand in hand with each other to let us The earth is more livable and the ecosystem is more resilient.

It needs to be emphasized that if action is not taken immediately, the economic losses caused by climate change in the next two decades may be equivalent to a large-scale COVID epidemic every ten years.

AI will become the core driving force in climate change response technology, and has shown multiple advantages in solving this challenge. First, AI can eliminate negative impacts, such as reducing human activities‘ damage to the environment (including carbon dioxide emissions), while making full use of large amounts of data, learning algorithms, and sensing equipment. Using AI technology to predict the power supply and demand situation of the national grid, we can improve the dispatching capacity of renewable energy, and reduce the waste discharge caused by fossil fuels in the life cycle through predictive maintenance, and even finally help the energy sector to completely say goodbye to the net waste discharge. In addition, in the transportation industry, AI solutions can bring more accurate traffic prediction results, realize commercial transportation optimization, demand modeling, and richer shared travel options.

AI is also expected to separate economic output from environmental resource consumption (including materials, water and land, etc.). Take the application of AI in the food industry as an example. This technology can help us better monitor crop yields, reduce excessive demand for chemicals and water resources with precision agriculture methods, and reduce food as much as possible in conjunction with demand forecasting and spoiled agricultural product identification. waste. In addition, AI systems can also play a role in towns and buildings, automatically controlling heating and cooling supplies, and accurately modeling energy consumption.

In addition, large technology companies are also taking action in combating global warming. Microsoft has pledged to achieve negative carbon emissions by 2030 and gradually offset all carbon emissions produced by the company since its establishment in 1975. Apple focuses on the use of low-carbon aluminum in the production process, Amazon promises to achieve zero carbon emissions by 2040, and Google has also invested $5.75 billion in sustainability bonds to fund projects related to environmental protection and social well-being.

In this context, it is naturally necessary for us to carefully analyze the actual AI use cases in the Climate AI Leaders Program and see the latest progress made by all parties in this field.