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AI and Sustainability Enter the Exponential Phase
- Jeremy Wickremer
- Jun 30
- 4 min read
Updated: Jul 1
Two massive industry trends are currently converging; AI and sustainability. This makes sense when we consider that data and forecasting are key to both. The more data a company can glean and analyse, the better it should be able to understand its supply chain and environmental impact, spot patterns and make informed decisions.
The potential of AI is not lost on UK Prime Minster Keir Starmer, who at this month’s London Tech Week announced £1bn of extra funding for AI infrastructure. Some of this investment will go to AI growth zones that will expedite planning approvals and guarantee access to clean energy for data centres, thus addressing both infrastructure bottleneck and sustainability concerns.
An immense opportunity
As innovation in AI and sustainability picks up pace, there are a multitude of opportunities to scale up solutions that address urgent environmental challenges. Examples include AI robots mapping the ocean floor, AI-acoustic monitoring to protect rainforests, or using AI and satellite data to optimise irrigation. Most estimates expect the AI for sustainability market to swell by 5–10x in the next decade.
An International Monetary Fund (IMF) study published this April projects that AI will add approximately 0.5% to global GDP from 2025-2030. If we consider that during its peak growth years the internet added approximately 0.3% to global GDP, this is a significant boost to the global economy. After a gradual start it now looks like we are approaching the exponential phase and this represents a huge opportunity for investors, particularly among AI-savvy and sustainability-aware startups and scaleups.
Collision course?
Nevertheless, concerns about resource-intensive AI’s impact on the environment seem well founded. In the rush that is seen as the biggest tech development since the internet, much of the focus on AI so far has been about scale – bigger datasets and more computing power. AI computing has gotten so big that energy consumption is a real concern. China’s huge data centres are already facing water usage issues, in some cases leading to decisions having to be made between supplying water to cool AI computers or watering crops.
Research by Dr Sasha Luccioni, AI & Climate Lead at Hugging Face, a global AI community, has found that generative AI uses more than 30 times more energy than search engines, and that general purpose AI uses 20 to 30 times more energy than task-specific AI. This tech race for scale mirrors the internet revolution when monolithic giants like Amazon, Google and Microsoft grew to dominate. The danger is that rather than converging, AI and sustainability collide.
Investing in local solutions
However, with AI, increasing scale is not the only path being forged. French venture capital company 2050 has a different approach. Starting with a vision for how they’d like the world to look in 2050, their approach is to invest in AI startups with solutions to problems that are specific, targeted and local. Managing Director Guillaume Bregeras observes that governments increasingly see the food supply chain as a national security issue. “In a crisis could we feed our citizens, can we maintain social peace thanks to AI?” he posits. The natural solution is to bring production within country, thus combining the twin aims of increasing food security while also decreasing waste and carbon footprint. According to Bregeras, there are increasing opportunities to invest in solutions to specific local needs, following in the footsteps of UrbanChain, which is seeking to break the energy monopoly in the UK by enabling local renewable generators to trade power directly with consumers.
One of the companies 2050 has invested in, Coral Vita, was highlighted by Prince William during this month’s Blue Economy and Finance Forum in Monaco, which showcased many technology-led innovations aimed at growing the sustainable ocean economy. Coral Vita uses AI to track genetics of coral to select varieties that will survive in tougher, hotter conditions, helping maintain biodiversity and enabling the local population to continue to fish for food.
A UK startup, Carbon Instincts, is developing AI tools to collate supply chain data to enable companies to measure product footprints, spot trends, predict and make recommendations. According to Co-founder Tony Scotte, demand for greater transparency is driven not only by the regulatory pull, but also the market push. Suppliers that can demonstrate their reduced carbon footprint will make themselves more attractive to purchasing departments.
As these examples show, the economic incentives and innovation in AI combined with the ever-increasing business and investment focus on sustainability has the potential to be an ideal match. If we look beyond scale and invest in companies delivering targeted solutions, and supported by the £1bn pledged by the UK government we can create a sweet spot of AI innovation powering a new wave of successful sustainable ventures.
About Jeremy Wickremer
Jeremy has been writing about and organising events related to sustainability for 15 years. This includes running events and courses on leadership and innovation for sustainable business with the UN Foundation and UPeace Centre for Executive Education. He is passionate about a sustainable future and has written for various publications including The Guardian and The Ecologist.
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