This climate problem isn’t on the UN agenda: Data centers

Por Sara Schonhardt — Sustainability – POLITICO

The disruptive technology that’s plunging the world into an energy race won’t be part of the debate when nearly every country meets in November to discuss climate change.

The artificial intelligence building boom and its attendant forecasts of skyrocketing electricity demand, new natural gas plants and the potential for accelerating greenhouse gases are nowhere on the agenda for the United Nations climate talks in Turkey.

That’s raising questions about the U.N.’s slow motion bureaucracy and whether it’s nimble enough to confront the surging pace of data center construction in the U.S. and China, the world’s two largest sources of climate pollution.

“I do think we’re moving too slowly,” said Erwin Rose, a former U.S. climate diplomat who chaired a technology committee under the U.N. climate process. “All governments are moving too slowly on climate, and there’s nothing that moves more quickly than technology, especially AI.”

AI and the data centers underpinning it haven’t made the formal cut for the conference in Turkey because no country has proposed that the issue be included, according to a COP31 official.

The U.N. climate talks have formally addressed data centers’ impact just once. Tucked into the outcome agreement from the 2023 talks in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, was a paragraph focused on how AI could help find solutions for climate change. At the end, it noted that the technology could also pose “challenges and risks” to the environment.

Assessing AI’s environmental footprint is difficult, but analysts say the technology is propelling energy use at a time when the world is failing to meet its climate targets. The International Energy Agency estimates that data center climate pollution could double by 2035, to about 350 million metric tons of greenhouse gases — roughly the amount of emissions released by the U.K. last year.

In the U.S., the technology is sparking a natural gas boom. One study estimates that gas plants tied to proposed data centers could emit as much carbon pollution as Australia. In Europe, data centers often look to harness renewable energy, but some are installing backup diesel generators. Emissions from on-site gas generation planned for two data centers in the U.K. could exceed ExxonMobil’s operations in the country.

Keep up, U.N.

The U.N. has begun to address the challenge outside of the formal climate talks.

Negotiators have been evaluating AI’s role in advancing climate solutions as well as its risks under an initiative created in 2023, and U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres has urged companies developing AI infrastructure to disclose their environmental impacts and use clean energy by 2030.

Still, injecting thorny new issues into negotiations that hang on consensus can be a lengthy and contentious process. Some climate advocates question whether data centers should be prioritized in those formal talks when they could be addressed outside the negotiations.

Under the COP’s so-called action agenda — meant to boost voluntary climate efforts — this year’s hosts have made electrification a priority by proposing that 35 percent of global energy use come from electricity by 2035. Data centers are closely connected to that objective, which calls for meeting growing energy demand through “cleaner power, stronger grids and greater energy efficiency,” said Halil Hasar, chief climate diplomacy officer for the COP31 presidency.

“The key climate question is not simply how much electricity data centers consume, but how that additional electricity demand is met,” Hasar said in an email.

Big tech and climate diplomats have promoted AI’s ability to solve climate challenges by boosting grid efficiency, increasing the use of renewable energy and improving warning systems for natural disasters.

The IEA says AI applications could cut more emissions than data centers might emit.

But that also carries risks. It could widen disparities between countries that have access to the technology and those that don’t.

The data center debate comes as the talks increasingly focus on meeting past pledges, rather than adopting new ones. Addressing data centers could be done outside the negotiations, in panels that focus on grid management, electrification or energy efficiency, say some officials and advocates.

“There’s nothing on the face of it that’s contradictory about a country using more energy for data centers,” said Kaveh Guilanpour, vice president for international strategies at the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, a think tank. “But it then needs to find the emission savings elsewhere in the economy to achieve the target that it set.”

Countries are already off track for meeting their climate goals. Emissions need to fall 35 percent by 2035 from 2019 levels to align with the Paris Agreement target of preventing temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius since the beginning of the industrial age.

Calls for elevating data centers in the talks

The U.N. has moved slowly to recognize the technology. But it has started to elevate the issue.

Its academic arm warned in June that AI’s environmental impacts could be sweeping, adding that the rush to get data centers up and running quickly could compromise environmental governance.

“Data centers cannot mean wider development gaps, higher emissions and higher prices for households and businesses,” the U.N. climate change chief, Simon Stiell, said at climate meetings this summer, calling for more energy efficiency and clean power.

For now, AI has been the domain of a technology mechanism under the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, the globe’s underlying climate treaty. The initiative known as AI for Climate Action was launched in 2023 and is meant to examine how the technology could help developing countries solve climate challenges, and the risks it poses. Much of the focus has been on the former.

Pedro Ivo Ferraz da Silva, a Brazilian diplomat who chairs the policy arm of the technology mechanism, says AI is forcing itself into the climate discussion. He notes, however, that it’s difficult to assess whether AI will provide more benefits, or dangers, to the environment.

AI is also increasingly coming up at climate week gatherings in London and New York. The U.N.’s voluntary action agenda includes AI-focused initiatives, such as a pact among dozens of mayors to shape where urban data centers are built and how they’re powered.

“I would like to see the issue around data centers elevated in the international arena,” said Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego, the outgoing chair of Climate Mayors, an association of 350 climate-forward city leaders.

“The U.N. talks are also a really important way to bring together global countries, but in the short term, I suspect other venues will be more impactful,” Gallego said in an interview.

The surging power requirements from data centers are competing for space at COP31. Top issues on the agenda include taking steps to fulfill the 2023 pledge to transition away from fossil fuels, addressing adaptation goals and bolstering economic support for poor countries on the frontlines of global warming.

Anne Rasmussen, the lead negotiator for a group of small-island nations known as AOSIS, said her coalition doesn’t have a position on data centers, but the countries are concerned about any significant new demand for global energy.

“Technological progress must come hand in hand with the rapid decarbonisation of the global energy system,” she said in a statement. “We absolutely cannot afford to build the technologies of tomorrow on the destructive systems of the past.”

In the U.S., the priority for data center developers is speed, which means they’re taking whatever power they can get. It comes as President Donald Trump has rejected climate science and withdrawn from international efforts to address warming, including the UNFCCC and the Paris Agreement.

The split screen separating COP31 leaders and raging new energy demand could merge in the future if countries take their own steps to govern the technology’s thirst for electricity, said Bill Hare, head of Climate Analytics, a science and policy institute.

“I think national-level jurisdictions that decide to do something about it will be the trigger for more action,” he said. “I wouldn’t have the hope that the COP will suddenly solve this problem.”

Fonte: Sustainability – POLITICO