On June 25, BE OPEN attended the 18th session of the Committee on Innovation, Competitiveness and Public-Private Partnerships organised by the Economic Commission for Europe in the UN headquarters in Geneva.
The aspect of the session that presented particular interest for BE OPEN was “Unleashing the Power of Innovation for Climate Action: Policy Recommendations for ethical and sustainable Artificial Intelligence”. The session explored the potential of AI for climate change mitigation and adaptation. Experts highlighted opportunities, challenges, and risks, ultimately proposing policy recommendations for action.
The session explained how AI has enormous potential to drive climate action. In climate change mitigation, AI optimizes energy systems, forecasts energy demand, improves grid management, and facilitates the integration of renewable energy sources in the grid. Smart buildings leverage AI to minimize energy consumption by adapting to usage patterns. Digitalized energy systems enable demand flexibility, ensuring cleaner energy use. In the UNECE region, AI has applications in carbon footprint reporting, emissions monitoring, and urban heat prediction.
AI governance requires active participation from governments, private sector actors, civil society, academia, and the public to address ethical concerns, bias, and transparency. Public engagement and AI literacy initiatives are needed to enable informed discussions on AI policies and foster social acceptance.
Investing in education, training, up-skilling, and re-skilling is essential to ensure that AI development and deployment are equitable and inclusive. BE OPEN’s recently finalised sustainability-centred student competition has demonstrated how heavily the creative youth today intends to rely on AI to bring their sustainable ideas to reality.
Designing Futures 2050 was primarily focused on encouraging the creation of innovative solutions by younger people with the hope to contribute to the realistic implementation of sustainability values, their adjustment to the circumstances of today, and implantation of sustainable principles into the approaches, practices and ambitions of upcoming professionals and future leaders of the change.
Accurately estimating the environmental impact of AI is very difficult, and it has also become obvious that the young innovators tend to overlook the negative aspects of AI engagement in their projects. Data centers alone consume as much energy as entire countries, and the rapid expansion of generative AI is expected to further increase energy and water usage. To ensure that AI contributes to, rather than exacerbates climate change, all stakeholders must enable and promote extensive education and innovation around sustainable AI development.
On behalf of BE OPEN, Founder Elena Baturina pointed out: “BE OPEN continuously supports and awards younger people for developing solutions aimed at contributing to how we can transform inadequate systems and create better conditions for an equitable and environmentally prosperous world. We also provide opportunities for expanded education on the relevant subjects, and hope that our programme will make its contribution to ensuring that younger generations approach the 2050 and further agendas with knowledge, skill, and responsibility”.
In 2019, BE OPEN established the competition programme to raise awareness among young professionals in creative and engineering fields about the urgent need for action regarding the Sustainable Development Goals. Prior to Designing Futures 2050, BE OPEN has held five international student competitions and covered SDGs 2, 7, 11, 12, and 13.