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Greening AI: A Policy Agenda for the Artificial Intelligence and Energy Revolutions

This paper sets out a policy agenda that aims to minimize AI’s energy and carbon costs while maximizing its benefits.

The rise in demand for artificial intelligence (AI) has pushed up energy demand. This has strained national energy networks in the short term. But in the longer term and with the right policies, the revolutions taking place in AI and energy can create a positive loop. AI can speed up the energy transition while subsequent clean-energy production can fuel further technological innovation, unleashing investments into compute infrastructure and clean technologies.

This paper examines how governments can unlock the positive loop between the AI and energy revolutions. It sets out a policy agenda that aims to minimize AI’s energy and carbon costs while maximizing its benefits.

Contents

  • Executive Summary
  • A New Policy Agenda
  • Laying the Foundations
  • Identifying the Scale of the Problem
  • Incentivizing Decarbonization and Energy
  • Efficiency
  • Creating Better Alternatives
  • Going International
  • Greening AI in Practice: Lessons From Singapore
  • Conclusion
  • Annex

Published May 2024.