As COP29 attendees gather in Baku, Azerbaijan, to tackle climate change, the role AI plays in environmental sustainability is front and center.
A panel hosted by Deloitte brought together industry leaders to explore ways to reduce AI's environmental footprint and align its growth with climate goals.
Experts from Crusoe Energy Systems, EON, the International Energy Agency (IEA) and NVIDIA sat down for a conversation about the energy efficiency of AI.
The Environmental Impact of AI Deloitte's recent report, Powering Artificial Intelligence: A study of AI's environmental footprint, shows AI's potential to drive a climate-neutral economy. The study looks at how organizations can achieve Green AI in the coming decades and addresses AI's energy use.
Deloitte analysis predicts that AI adoption will fuel data center power demand, likely reaching 1,000 terawatt-hours (TWh) by 2030, and potentially climbing to 2,000 TWh by 2050. This will account for 3% of global electricity consumption, indicating faster growth than in other uses like electric cars and green hydrogen production.
While data centers currently consume around 2% of total electricity, and AI is a small fraction of that, the discussion at COP29 emphasized the need to meet rising energy demands with clean energy sources to support global climate goals.
Energy Efficiency From the Ground Up NVIDIA is prioritizing energy-efficient data center operations with innovations like liquid-cooled GPUs. Direct-to-chip liquid cooling allows data centers to cool systems more effectively than traditional air conditioning, consuming less power and water.
We see a very rapid trend toward direct-to-chip liquid cooling, which means water demands in data centers are dropping dramatically right now, said Josh Parker, senior director of legal corporate sustainability at NVIDIA.
As AI continues to scale, the future of data centers will hinge on designing for energy efficiency from the outset. By prioritizing energy efficiency from the ground up, data centers can meet the growing demands of AI while contributing to a more sustainable future.
Parker emphasized that existing data center infrastructure is becoming dated and less efficient. The data shows that it's 10x more efficient to run workloads on accelerated computing platforms than on traditional data center platforms, he said. There's a huge opportunity for us to reduce the energy consumed in existing infrastructures.
The Path to Green Computing AI has the potential to play a large role in moving toward climate-neutral economies, according to Deloitte's study. This approach, often called Green AI, involves reducing the environmental impact of AI throughout the value chain with practices like purchasing renewable energy and improving hardware design.
Until now, Green AI has mostly been led by industry leaders. Take accelerated computing, for instance, which is all about doing more with less. It uses special hardware - like GPUs - to perform tasks faster and with less energy than general-purpose servers that use CPUs, which handle a task at a time.
That's why accelerated computing is sustainable computing.
Accelerated computing is actually the most energy-efficient platform that we've seen for AI but also for a lot of other computing applications, said Parker.
The trend in energy efficiency for accelerated computing over the last several years shows a 100,000x reduction in energy consumption. And just in the past 2 years, we've become 25x more efficient for AI inference. That's a 96% reduction in energy for the same computational workload, he said.
Reducing Energy Consumption Across Sectors Innovations like the NVIDIA Blackwell and Hopper architectures significantly improve energy efficiency with each new generation. NVIDIA Blackwell is 25x more energy-efficient for large language models, and the NVIDIA H100 Tensor Core GPU is 20x more efficient than CPUs for complex workloads.
AI has the potential to make other sectors much more energy efficient, said Parker. Murex, a financial services firm, achieved a 4x reduction in energy use and 7x faster performance with the NVIDIA Grace Hopper Superchip.
In manufacturing, we're seeing around 30% reductions in energy requirements if you use AI to help optimize the manufacturing process through digital twins, he said.
For example, manufacturing company Wistron improved energy efficiency using digital twins and NVIDIA Omniverse, a platform for developing OpenUSD applications for industrial digitalization and physical AI simulation. The company reduced its electricity consumption by 120,000 kWh and carbon emissions by 60,000 kg annually.
A Tool for Energy Management Deloitte reports that AI can help optimize resource use and reduce emissions, playing a crucial role in energy management. This means it has the potential to lower the impact of industries beyond its own carbon footprint.
Combined with digital twins, AI is transforming energy management systems by improving the reliability of renewable sources like solar and wind farms. It's also being used to optimize facility layouts, monitor equipment, stabilize power grids and predict climate patterns, aiding in global efforts to reduce carbon emissions.
COP29 discussions emphasized the importance of powering AI infrastructure with renewables and setting ethical guidelines. By innovating with the environment in mind, industries can use AI to build a more sustainable world.
Watch a replay of the on-demand COP29 panel discussion.
Most recent headlines
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
04/08/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...
04/07/2026
April 7 2026, 19:00 (PDT) Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway Opens in...
01/06/2026
In its sixth year, the broadcaster's coverage has become a global brand and ...
01/06/2026
Designed to solve a common problem in broadcasting, the automated workflow detects, identifies, removes, and documents copyrighted music
AudioShake has introdu...
01/06/2026
The sports-analytics company combines its data with proprietary AI to help leagu...
01/06/2026
Category line-up & sponsors announced
Photo: Paul Clarke
The Production Music Awards (PMA) have announced that submissions are now officially open ahead of...
01/06/2026
New hybrid sample/synthesis instrument revealed
Excite Audio have just released the latest instalment in their Evolve series, which has been developed in co...
01/06/2026
Latest TONEX expansion captures three rare vintage amps
The newest addition to IK Multimedia's ever-growing TONEX line-up introduces a set of three incr...
01/06/2026
Musically intelligent soft synth gets upgraded
Scaler Music will be probably be best known to many for their music theory tools, but their product range al...
01/06/2026
SBS confirms its broadcast sponsors for FIFA World Cup 2026
1 June, 2026
Media releases
SBS has secured Hyundai, Hisense, Macca's, Rexona, bet365, Com...
01/06/2026
Rohde & Schwarz Satellite Industry Days 2026 guided by the motto From Earth to ...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Marshall Electronics is showcasing a comprehensive lineup of next-generation POV cameras, purpose-built to power today's connected AV environments, at InfoC...
01/06/2026
Adobe Announces Concept to Vector
Deepa Subramaniam June 1, 2026
0 Comments
One of the biggest frustrations we hear from designers is how difficult it...
01/06/2026
Vampire Feature Night Patrol Graded with DaVinci Resolve Studio
Brie Clayton June 1, 2026
0 Comments
Colorist shapes dark, gritty tone for horror thri...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Mardi 2 juin 14h00
FilmLight (ARRI), 10 rue Ren Boulanger, 75010 Paris
Rejoignez-nous pour d couvrir comment FLAPI (l'API FilmLight) peut transformer e...
01/06/2026
January 6 2026, 05:30 (PST) Dolby Sets the New Standard for Premium Entertainment at CES 2026
Throughout the week, Dolby brings to life the latest innovatio...
31/05/2026
Olivia P rez-Collellmir to Premiere Original Work at Gaud Centennial in Barcelona The Berklee graduate and faculty member will debut her choral symphony with...
31/05/2026
Back to All News
Netflix Wins 15 Awards at the Canadian Screen Awards - See Pho...
31/05/2026
Taiwan is home to more than 500 NVIDIA ecosystem partners. More than 1 million N...
31/05/2026
As factories move from isolated automation to plant-wide intelligence, manufacturers need AI systems that can connect live machine signals, quality systems, wor...
31/05/2026
The NVIDIA AI Cloud ecosystem is accelerating the global buildout of AI factory infrastructure. Partners are expanding capacity to meet growing demand from ente...
30/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
30/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
30/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
30/05/2026
Zero in on one that says yes (and no)
Andy Marken May 29, 2026
0 Comments
Hero image courtesy of Deposit Photos
For content creators the most difficu...
29/05/2026
With InfoComm 2026 just weeks away, NDI is giving attendees plenty of reasons to...
29/05/2026
Reaffirming a partnership that has defined Canadian sports broadcasting since 19...
29/05/2026
Mobile/tablet is No. 2 device for watching TV, suggesting that the sports-production industry needs to take another look at the format
Ring Digital's Sprin...
29/05/2026
Berliner Ensemble, one of Berlin's five major theater companies, has expande...
29/05/2026
Solid State Logic will showcase its new compact, fly-away TCA Tour audio product...
29/05/2026
Gerald (Jerry) Pierce, a pioneering technologist who helped shape the digital transformation of the motion picture industry, passed away last month on April 12 ...
29/05/2026
Paramount+ will be the English-language U.S. home for Barclays Women's Super...
29/05/2026
Further strengthening its virtualisation strategy to fully support broadcasters ...
29/05/2026
Swiss broadcaster Canal Alpha has deployed Harmonic's award-winning, software-based XOS Advanced Media Processor to modernize playout operations across cant...
29/05/2026
PTZOptics will showcase a new generation of intelligent video workflows at InfoComm 2026, June 17-19, Las Vegas. Visitors to booth N8227 will see how PTZOptics ...
29/05/2026
Arizona's Family has launched the Arizona's Family Sports (AZFS) streaming app, a new direct-to-consumer destination for live, local sports. The app is ...
29/05/2026
Starting in 2027, DAZN will be the exclusive home of The Canadian Football Leagu...
29/05/2026
Comcast Business has detailed the advanced network infrastructure it has deploye...
29/05/2026
In two-day event, leaders from academia and industry explored solutions to chall...
29/05/2026
The Basketball Tournament (TBT), now entering their 13th year of competition, ha...
29/05/2026
Roku has launched FOX One as a Premium Subscription on The Roku Channel in the U.S. Roku customers can now subscribe to FOX One using their Roku account for liv...
As COP29 attendees gather in Baku, Azerbaijan, to tackle climate change, the role AI plays in environmental sustainability is front and center.
