Gartner Says CIOs Must Balance the Environmental Promises and Risks of AI

The benefits of artificial intelligence (AI) need to be balanced against the environmental implications and unintended consequences arising from hardware, model training and energy consumption, according to Gartner, Inc. CIOs can use their digital knowledge and foundation to support the sustainability efforts of their organisations when implementing AI initiatives.

“Gartner’s 2023 CEO survey showed that environmental issues entered the top 10 priority ranking for the first time in the history of the survey,” said Bettina Tratz-Ryan, VP Analyst at Gartner. “At the same time, CIOs are under increasing pressure from their executives, customers, employees, investors, and regulators to initiate or reinvigorate their IT for sustainability programmes.

“Sixty-four per cent of CEOs surveyed said combining digitalisation, such as AI adoption, and environmental sustainability is a growth opportunity. CIOs should take that as a call to be more proactive in establishing their leadership through the execution of sustainability transformation strategies and use sustainability as a platform for growth.”

For most CIOs, delivering on mandates and requirements means tracking and tracing on business KPIs, such as product carbon footprint or energy intensity. “It is a matter of how the CIO applies their digital foundation, or their digital dividend, to accommodate their organisation’s digitalisation metrics, while delivering on the sustainability requirements – two for one,” said Tratz-Ryan. “Above all, even if the business is not prioritising sustainability yet, the CIO should make their digital foundation sustainability- ready.”

Being sustainability-ready applies to cloud and storage, infrastructure and operations, digital threads, and the rapidly growing adoption of AI.

Weigh AI Benefits Against Environmental Risks and Challenges

Although 78% of surveyed CEOs said the benefits of AI outweigh the risks, the increasing number of organizations using AI, including generative AI (GenAI) is leading to a growing environmental footprint of AI.

Gartner predicts that by 2030, AI could consume up to 3.5% of the world’s electricity. “AI consumes a lot of electricity and water. This negative impact should be mitigated,” said Pieter den Hamer, VP Analyst at Gartner. “Executives should be cognizant of AI’s own growing environmental footprint and take active mitigation measures. For example, they could prioritise (cloud) data centres powered by renewable energy.”

Gartner said public cloud providers can produce 70% to 90% fewer GHG emissions than traditional server rooms, owned data centres and midsize data centre facilities.

However, AI is not only bad news for environmental sustainability. In fact, AI’s own footprint is more than eclipsed by the potential use of AI to boost many sustainability initiatives.

“This can only be achieved if business and IT leaders proactively initiate and foster a portfolio of AI initiatives that help achieve the sustainability and environment, social and governance (ESG) goals of their organisations,” said den Hamer. “For instance, AI can be used to predict demand more accurately and reduce the usage of raw materials and energy in manufacturing.

“Overall, if used in the right way and focused on the right use cases, AI can help companies mitigate sustainability risk, optimise costs and drive growth.”