Room V
Workshop

Navigating the intersect of AI, environment and energy for a sustainable future

In person
  • Date
    10 July 2025
    Timeframe
    09:00 - 17:30 CEST
    Duration
    8h 30 minutes
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    In an era where artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly reshaping industries, understanding its environmental impact and energy dynamics becomes paramount for steering towards a sustainable future. This multidisciplinary workshop aims to unravel the complex relationship between AI, environment and energy consumption, spotlight innovations driving AI environmental efficiency, explore AI’s environmental transformative potential in several sectors, and deliberate on the pivotal role of standards, policies and regulations. Through a blend of theoretical insights and practical applications, the sessions are meticulously designed to provide a holistic view of AI’s environmental and energy footprint, groundbreaking environmental and energy-efficient technologies, AI’s role in enhancing the environmentally sustainable transformation, and the necessary regulatory frameworks to ensure sustainable development. This session aligns with ITU’s Green Digital Action initiative, reinforcing ITU’s commitment to promoting digital innovation, standardization, and global collaboration to foster sustainable AI development while ensuring the ICT sector minimizes its environmental impact and maximizes its transformative potential.

  • Schedule

    This session will examine the current landscape and future scenarios of AI energy consumption and environmental impact, offering a comprehensive overview of how energy, water and material are utilized, greenhouse gas emissions are generated throughout the lifecycle of a typical AI system. Resource demands during various stages, including data collection, model training, inference, and deployment, will be analyzed. Predictions from multiple studies and reports will be explored to discuss the potential escalation of energy and water usage, greenhouse gas emissions driven by the exponential growth of AI applications and data centers. This session aims to provide a holistic understanding of AI's environmental footprint.

    This session will explore cutting-edge research focused on energy and environmental saving solutions for AI, highlighting advancements in new chips, innovative AI model architectures & algorithms, and development in frugal AI. The latest developments in environmental-efficient hardware, such as specialized processors and AI chips, as well as software optimizations that enhance computational efficiency, will be discussed. The session will also address green energy solutions designed to meet the growing demands of the AI sector, including the integration of renewable energy sources and other low carbon sources and sustainable data center practices. These technological and environmental innovations will be examined to provide a comprehensive understanding of how the AI industry can achieve greater energy efficiency and sustainability.

    This session will explore the transformative potential of AI to reduce environmental impact in various sectors, focusing on both theoretical insights and practical applications. The ways in which AI technologies can optimize their operations will be discussed. The latest research and real-world implementations will be presented to provide a comprehensive overview of how AI can drive innovation and environmental sustainability in various sectors. This session aims to provide valuable knowledge on the advancements and opportunities AI presents for improving environmental impact across systems and promoting a more sustainable future.

    This session will explore the critical policy and regulatory aspects of the interplay between AI and the energy sector. Policies that support both the optimization of energy systems through AI and the management of AI's own energy consumption will be addressed. Key topics include standardization priorities, innovative data center design strategies, and necessary regulatory frameworks. The roles of various stakeholders and a call for action to promote sustainable practices will also be discussed. This session aims to provide support for managing the relationship between AI and energy, ensuring efficiency and sustainability. This session will also highlight the importance of the ICT sector in managing its greenhouse gas emissions, aligning with global sustainability efforts. 

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    • 65
      Days
      17
      Hours
      25
      Min
      24
      Sec