How artificial intelligence can help reduce carbon footprint

Carbon emission is one of the biggest causes of environment pollution today. Globally, governments are making efforts on a war footing to reduce carbon emissions. Leveraging artificial intelligence can boost these efforts as it can analyze data, uncover patterns that humans might miss out, and recommend appropriate actions.

It is believed that artificial intelligence can help reduce the emission of greenhouse gases by nearly 16%. According to Capgemini Research Institute, by 2030 artificial intelligence can help organizations across sectors such as retail, automotive, and consumer goods to meet upto 45% of the targets as set out by the Paris Agreement.

Forecast and reduce carbon emissions

Artificial intelligence can enable organizations to monitor their carbon footprint by analyzing data from across the organization. This can include data from operations, corporate travel, IT equipment, suppliers, transporters and even end users who use their company's products. Further, predictive artificial intelligence can be used to forecast the future emissions which can help companies set targets for reducing their carbon footprints. These detailed insights will allow companies to optimize their efforts towards reducing their carbon footprint.

Artificial intelligence can help improve energy efficiency by optimizing generation of electricity to its distribution, maintenance, preventing leakage, and fleet management. Not only at the industrial level, artificial intelligence can empower even individuals to optimize the use of electricity at their homes. The entire process of electricity generation to distribution and consumption results in the creation of large volumes of data, which when analyzed can help understand and forecast the demand. This in turn, can inform the suppliers and consumers to optimize the use of resources and reduce wastage. Artificial intelligence is also useful in optimizing clean energy development. For instance, it can help locate construction sites for dams that will emit the minimum amounts of greenhouse gases.

One of the biggest contributors to carbon emissions and hence environment pollution is the transport sector. It is estimated that nearly 25% of the global energy-related carbon emissions come from the transportation sector. Of these, nearly 66% is contributed by road users. Artificial intelligence and machine learning can contribute to improving the efficiency of this sector by helping reduce traffic congestion, identifying polluting vehicles, and developing autonomous and electric-vehicles.

Individuals must reduce their carbon footprints

Environment protection is a collective responsibility of the governments, industry, and individuals. Individuals too can help reduce their carbon footprint. Again, artificial intelligence and machine learning can help calculate the carbon footprint of an individual and suggest methods to reduce it. For instance, instead of using individual vehicles, people can use public transport or opt for car pooling. Similarly, they can reduce consumption of meat products and plastics. They can also reduce wastage of electricity in their homes. Every small contribution can add up to make a significant impact and help make a healthier environment.

The article has been written by Neetu Katyal, Content and Marketing Consultant

She can be reached on LinkedIn.