AI is having a huge impact on almost every sector of the economy and the environment. Researchers The AI industry is expected to consume at least 10 times the amount of electricity it did in 2023 by 2026, raising big questions about the technology, energy-related emissions and climate change.
In looking for ways to reduce this potentially massive carbon footprint, experts have championed solutions like optimizing workflow, relying on sustainable hygiene (like not running items the company isn’t actively using), and even using AI itself to monitor emissions.
Organizations like SustainableIT.orga non-profit organization led by technology executives, aims to set standards in the IT industry for best practices and provide training to reduce the environmental impact of AI.
Individual companies, like multicloud and AI solutions company Rackspace Technology, have set sustainability goals. Rackspace aims to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2045, with 50% net zero emissions by 2032.
Ben Blanquera, vice president of technology and sustainability at Rackspace, said that IT Brew’s sustainability actually focuses on optimizing teams’ workloads. He suggested that fundamental hygiene to ensure sustainability and reduce environmental impact involves asking whether current programs are actually necessary, as this results in less energy consumption.
“When you talk about the impact of AI, you can get caught up in that, but you actually have to start with the basics of architecting what you need from a workload, minimizing the starting point of the resources that you use, and that will get you 80 to 90 percent of the way there,” Blanquera said.
Brigit Hirsch, press secretary for the Environmental Protection Agency, provided IT Brew with a statement saying the agency recommends data center owners and operators consult state and local air permitting authorities for information on Clean Air Act requirements.
The EPA “regulates air emissions from various types of sources, which could include data centers” under the Clean Air Act.
Sustainability, sustainability, sustainability. Right now, too much of the IT market isn’t interested in long-term sustainability, according to Abhijit Sunil, principal analyst at Forrester. He said many organizations are looking at short-term gains from emerging technologies like AI, without always considering the “negative impacts that could overtake them.”
“There will be a rush toward green energy, power purchase agreements, all these different types of things,” Sunil said. “As a framework for IT leaders to look at these technologies, it will be really specialized in terms of what they’re looking at.”
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Forrester released a report in July, detailing how technology leaders can use AI to guide sustainable development, as well as AI’s needs for computing power, materials and scale that could offset the benefits of innovation.
The study showed that advanced data centers can use sustainable technologies such as advanced cooling and heat reuse to help save energy and improve efficiency. Although efficiency gains can offset savings from encouraging higher demand, Forrester recommends that data center operators choose modular, durable infrastructure equipment to encourage a sustainable IT lifecycle.
Sunil said, “Even as an IT leader, if they’re making a decision about expanding their data center or things like that, they can leverage some of these analytics solutions that will help them make better decisions, that will allow them to have better business resilience.
Use AI to manage your AI. One of the choices an IT manager must make is how to leverage an AI solution internally to help them make better decisions.
According to Sunil, IT professionals can use models like GenAI to help them measure and report emissions through their implementation in a climate risk analysis software solution.
“AI can help not only assess various risks and make them easily accessible to different leaders in a company, but also make data more accurate and analysis easier to read and use for multiple people within the organization,” Sunil said.
Rackspace implemented an AI process that takes invoices from facilities around the world and places the data into a usage metrics inventory. The technology extracts information from the invoice and categorizes it.
Blanquera explained that this solution was born from the need to have complete and accurate data.
“We know it’s not sexy or pretty, but it works,” he said. “We’ve put our foundations in place to make sure you can operate with AI across the board. Without the foundations, all these fancy algorithms, AI really doesn’t work.”
UPDATE 9/30: Rackspace has clarified its definition of net zero carbon emissions.