Artificial intelligence is being cast as both a hero and a villain at the U.N. climate talks in Brazil. Tech companies and some countries at the conference known as COP30 are promoting the ways AI can solve the world’s climate issues. But climate and environmental groups are stressing AI’s growing environmental impact.
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N. Climate Summit, Thursday, Nov. 13, 2025, in Belem, Brazil. Attendees walk past boxes made to look like the Eiffel Tower with a sign that reads “1.5 degrees Celsius under threat” talking about the Paris Agreement during the COP30 U.N. Climate Summit, Monday, Nov. 17, 2025, in Belem, Brazil. A Brazilian flag flies outside the venue for the COP30 U.N. Climate Summit, Thursday, Nov. 13, 2025, in Belem, Brazil. A Brazilian flag flies outside the venue for the COP30 U.N. Climate Summit, Thursday, Nov. 13, 2025, in Belem, Brazil. Attendees walk past boxes made to look like the Eiffel Tower with a sign that reads “1.5 degrees Celsius under threat” talking about the Paris Agreement during the COP30 U.N. Climate Summit, Monday, Nov. 17, 2025, in Belem, Brazil. Attendees walk past boxes made to look like the Eiffel Tower with a sign that reads “1.5 degrees Celsius under threat” talking about the Paris Agreement during the COP30 U.N. Climate Summit, Monday, Nov. 17, 2025, in Belem, Brazil. in Brazil, artificial intelligence is being cast as both a hero worthy of praise and a villain that needs policing. Tech companies and a handful of countries at the conference known as COP30 are promoting ways AI can help solve global warming, which is driven largely by thelike oil, gas and coal. They say the technology has the potential to do many things, from increasing the efficiency of electrical grids and helping farmers predict weather patterns to tracking deep-sea migratory species and designing infrastructure that can withstand extreme weather. Climate groups, however, are sounding the alarm about AI’s growing environmental impact, with its surging needs for electricity and water for powering searches and data centers. They say an AI boom without guardrails will only push the world farther off track from goals set by 2015 “AI right now is a completely unregulated beast around the world,” said Jean Su, energy justice director at the Center for Biological Diversity. On the other hand, Adam Elman, director of sustainability at Google, sees AI as “a real enabler” and one that’s already making an impact.Michal Nachmany, founder of Climate Policy Radar, which runs AI tools that track issues like national climate plans and funds to help developing countries transition to green energies like solar and wind, said there is “unbelievable interest” in AI at COP30. “Everyone is also a little bit scared,” Nachmany said. “The potential is huge and the risks are huge as well.”compared to a few years ago, 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.to promote ideas and solutions that can be deployed at scale, he said. So far, Arora said, those ideas have been dominated by AI. The Associated Press counted at least 24 sessions related to AI during the Brazil conference’s first week. They included AI helping neighboring cities share energy, AI-backed forest crime location predictions 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 Jacob, a data scientist with the German delegation, said a prototype app he is designing, called NegotiateCOP, can help countries with smaller delegations — like El Salvador, South Africa, Ivory Coast and a few in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations — process hundreds of official COP documents.spoke about how AI can solve issues facing the power sector. Elman with Google stressed the “need to do it responsibly” but declined to comment further.“AI is so democratizing,” Parker said. “If you think about climate tech, climate change and all the sustainability challenges we’re trying to solve here at COP, which one of those challenges would not be solved better and faster, with more intelligence.” Princess Abze Djigma from Burkina Faso called AI a “breakthrough in digitalization” that she believes will be even more critical in the future. Bjorn-Soren Gigler, a senior digital and green transformation specialist with the European Commission, agreed but noted AI is “often seen as a double-edge sword” with both huge opportunities and ethical and environmental concerns.The training and deploying of AI models rely on power-hungry data centers that contribute to emissions because of the electricity needed. The International Energy Agency has tracked a boom in energy consumption and demand from data centers,Data centers accounted for around 1.5% of the world’s electricity consumption in 2024, according to the IEA, which found that their electricity consumption has grown by around 12% per year since 2017, more than four times faster than the rate of total electricity consumption., specifically the operations of data centers, also includes the consumption of large amounts of water in water-stressed states, according to Su with the Center for Biological Diversity, who has studied how the data center boom threatens U.S. climate goals. Environmental groups at COP30 are pushing for regulations to soften AI’s environmental footprint, such as mandating public interest tests for proposed data centers and 100% on-site renewable energy at them. “COP can not only view AI as some type of techno solution, it has to understand the deep climate consequences,” Su said.The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’sThis story was produced as part of the 2025 Climate Change Media Partnership, a journalism fellowship organized by Internews’ Earth Journalism Network and the Stanley Center for Peace and Security.
Information Technology Josh Parker Alphabet Inc. NVIDIA Corp. Climate Change Brazil Data Management And Storage United Nations General News Latin America Central America South America Johannes Jacob Jean Su Michal Nachmany Climate And Environment Adam Elman Technology Burkina Faso Bjorn Soren Gigler Laos World News Nitin Arora Climate World News
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