COP31 wants tech giants to clean up AI's energy use

Artificial intelligence's energy appetite is officially on the agenda for this year's UN climate summit. According to COP31 host Turkey, the COP31 Summit, due to start in Antalya next month, will focus on urging technology firms to adopt climate-friendly AI and renewable energy-based data centres.

As stated by the President of COP31 and Turkish Minister of Climate Change Murat Kurum, the summit will take head-on the fears raised by the rise of AI.

"We must openly discuss AI's growing energy consumption, and it is time for governments to start setting the terms," Kurum said in a statement delivered in New York during Climate Week. "We expect companies to be transparent about their energy use and to power their operations with clean energy."

A voluntary political pledge on how AI can support climate goals is being developed alongside a UN agency, with a draft expected before the summit begins, and a second initiative will showcase pilot projects meant to demonstrate responsible AI use in practice.

Like other items on COP's parallel "action agenda", the AI pledge sits outside the formal negotiating track and won't require consensus approval from the roughly 200 nations that typically hammer out binding commitments at UN climate summits.

The current summit takes place under a governance structure that is not common in COP meetings, whereby Turkey hosts the summit in Antalya and plans the side events, while Australia chairs the official negotiations.

The real focus for Turkey is in their new “35x35” goal, where Turkey wants to increase the global proportion of energy needs met through electricity from the current 20% to 35% by 2035.

This would mean switching out gas and diesel energy sources with electric heat pumps and electric cars, although the proposal put forth by Turkey does not go into detail regarding the need for this electricity to be generated from renewable sources such as solar and wind.