Former UN Climate Chief and UK Net Zero Minister call for new global ‘net benefit AI’ commitment

Former UNFCCC Executive Secretary, Ambassador Patricia Espinosa and UK Energy Minister responsible for signing the UK's net zero commitment into law, becoming the first G7 country to do so, have teamed up to launch a new report calling for a net benefit AI commitment to highlight how AI can reduce emissions more than it is currently producing.

The report, Net Benefit AI: Opening Opportunities, Scaling Solutions, has been published today at London Climate Week by the Climate Action Coalition, that was launched by John Kerry in 2024. 

The AI Solutions Taskforce of the Coalition has been chaired by Ambassador Espinosa and Mr Skidmore, and includes members such as Google, NVIDIA, Aveva and other industry bodies and hyperscalers. 

The report sets out case studies of how AI is reducing emissions and can deliver emissions reductions across sectors such as industry, manufacturing, buildings and transport. The report is being launched on the main stage at the Guildhall at the Climate Innovation Forum. 

In his speech launching the new report, Chris Skidmore said: 

Two years ago at London Climate Week, I stood the stage at the Guildhall with Secretary John Kerry to launch the Climate Action Coalition. Our stated aim then was to focus on real world, real time, solutions to tackling the climate crisis and progressing the energy transition. Two years on, the case for doing so is stronger than ever before, as we remain stuck in our second global fossil fuel crisis, with volatile oil and gas prices driving up the cost of living ever further. Dependency on fossil fuels is now not only a climate issue, but an issue of national and international security. Energy sovereignty, risk and resilience are now the words that matter in a language that reflects our shifting global priorities. But the facts remain the same: the more fuel we burn, the more we risk not only destroying our climate, but also damaging our own economies, failing to recognise the shift that is taking place at an exponential rate.

In our first Climate Action Coalition report, Pathways To Progress, launched at COP30, we highlighted the need for a global goal on electrification, focusing on electricity as a proportion of final energy use, if we are truly to ensure that we can reduce emissions and wean ourselves off fossil fuels. I was delighted that just a few weeks ago, the COP31 Presidency announced just this, with a target of 35% by 2035.

Yet we all know that the future of our electricity use is transforming rapidly. The exponential advent of AI is already placing unprecedented strain on grids, with data centres expected to use the equivalent energy use to the entirety of Japan by 2030.

Artificial Intelligence is the defining technology of the 21st century. It is reshaping productivity, accelerating scientific discovery, and transforming the global economy. Yet as AI systems scale, so too does the energy required to power them. This tension sits at the heart of today’s climate and energy debate: can AI reduce more emissions than it generates? The answers depend on how quickly the world can steer AI development toward low carbon infrastructure, efficient model design, and applications that accelerate decarbonisation across every sector.

That the AI transformation is happening is undeniable. There is no turning back on the road ahead. Yet the present choices we take now will define not only our present generation, but the welfare of future generations ahead. Will we ensure that AI transforms our world for the better, or will we allow our world to be transformed by AI for the worse?

The real challenge we should be asking and setting ourselves is how AI and its technologies can have a net benefit impact upon society and the world, so that the application of AI and its benefits outweigh any additional emissions that AI infrastructure and data centres may generate in the future. This is why today the Climate Action Coalition is launching its latest report, Net Benefit AI: Opening Opportunities, Scaling Solutions, that is the product of the AI Solutions Taskforce, that myself and Ambassador Patricia Espinosa have convened.

The report focuses on what we believe is an opportunity; an opportunity to demonstrate what solutions are already being developed, or are in place, that highlight how AI is already delivering emissions reductions across different industries.

The solutions presented in this report are not merely early stage and innovative solutions that need significant additional capital or trialling to be scaled up: rather, they are ready to be adopted in real time, before 2030.

This is key: we cannot wait for AI to prove its value; its value is in delivering the solutions needed for today, as well as tomorrow. The solutions that we present cover key sectors that have been the focus of our roundtable evidence sessions, including Industry and Manufacturing, Buildings and Transport, AI Infrastructure and data centres. These solutions are also not technocratic in nature, but rather demonstrate how a problem is being solved, and the potential for the future is being unlocked.

AI can be the key to opening a door of unimagined possibilities, yet already we know what is possible, we have the AI solutions at hand to deploy now. We just need a focus to ensure that the positive application of AI solutions is welcomed and recognised, or risk being drowned out by a negative and unconstructive narrative that AI is instead destabilising our progress on climate.

Of course, at present, too many data centres are, or are planning to run off fossil fuel generation. We cannot afford for the technologies of the future to be powered by the fuels of the past. Coal powered data centres are not merely an anachronism, they are an affront to the progress that has been made to power past coal across the world.

There is already exciting work underway on the need to establish international frameworks, partnerships and agreements on the best design models and standards to deliver clean energy data centres and ensure that across the world, in every country, the most efficient and productive means of generating AI with sustainable forms of power is adopted. We have been delighted to work with the UNFCCC, the European Commission, the Green Digital Alliance and the International Telecommunications Union, along with a number of green data centre and AI coalitions to highlight not only the work that is ongoing to deliver this mission, but to set out what will be needed for the future if this mission is truly to succeed.

The need for a renewed focus on international partnerships and agreements, so that we have in place frameworks that ensure AI progress can sit alongside the Paris Agreement, is both urgent and a necessity for forthcoming climate conferences to solve, which is why we have called in the report for new global goals on AI to be included in the forthcoming process for the next Global Stocktake and next round of NDCs, the process for which will begin later this year.

Yet the opportunity is equally significant: AI can act as a force multiplier for the energy transition, improving forecasting, reducing waste, accelerating planning, and enabling system wide optimisation. This duality—AI as both a source of new demand and a tool for accelerating decarbonisation— defines the central question of this report. The world is entering a period in which digital and energy systems are becoming deeply intertwined. AI workloads increasingly resemble a new category of baseload electricity demand, while the energy transition increasingly depends on digital intelligence to manage complexity, variability and scale.

Understanding this relationship is essential for designing policies that harness AI’s benefits while mitigating its risks. To achieve this, we need a renewed focus on how to deliver ‘net benefit AI’, and for countries and companies to forge international agreement on the standards and frameworks that can deliver this, just as we did for the Paris Agreement and the net zero delivery frameworks that have witnessed many economies now decouple carbon emissions from economic growth.

Our progress on climate now depends on our effective and correct use of AI for the better. AI is here to stay: the choice must be to choose how it can be shaped and directed towards a pathway of possibilities and positivity, that makes our planet a better, not worse, place to live.

Read more here: https://coalition.climateaction.org/taskforces/ai-solutions/