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Artificial Intelligence
Leveraging AI for smarter sustainability
AI can enhance sustainability reporting and uncover insights to deepen green efforts. However, it also has its own environmental impact. Here’s our advice for handling the double imperative of sustainability with and for AI.
Sustainability is increasingly at the forefront of global business priorities, and sustainability reporting is there, too. With the advent of new regulations like the European Union’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), businesses here are now required to provide more detailed and transparent environmental, social, and governance (ESG) disclosures.
Similar initiatives are emerging worldwide, with countries such as Australia, Brazil, China, Singapore, and the UK advancing their sustainability frameworks, while the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is poised to enforce comprehensive climate disclosure regulations for the world’s largest economy. This global shift towards greater transparency underscores the growing importance of accurate and effective sustainability measurement and reporting.
As sustainability reporting requirements become more extensive, many organizations are feeling the pressure. Sustainability teams are bogged down by the growing complexity of data collection and disclosure demands, while multinational companies face the added challenge of navigating a maze of diverse regulatory standards. This regulatory overload has, in some cases, dampened enthusiasm for sustainability initiatives.
Sustainability with AI
With these pressures come new questions: How can we streamline our reporting processes amidst such a complex regulatory environment? How do we ensure compliance while managing diverse requirements? And how can we turn these reporting demands into actionable insights that drive real sustainability progress?
To help answer these questions, here are three suggestions for harnessing AI for enhanced sustainability reporting and strategic advantage:
1 – Automate data collection and integration.
By automating data collection and processing, AI can simplify compliance with intricate regulatory demands. AI technologies like web scraping, natural language processing, and computer vision can streamline the extraction of data from diverse sources, such as websites, documents, and media. AI can automate the integration of this data, readying it for analysis.
For example, Scope 3 emissions data, which covers indirect impacts across your entire value chain, can present a particular challenge due to its complexity and breadth. AI can make it easier to manage and report on Scope 3 emissions accurately for more precise and comprehensive sustainability reporting.
2 – Address data quality and standardization issues.
AI can help address challenges related to data quality and standardization by automating the validation and harmonization of data across various sources. This ensures more accurate and consistent sustainability reporting, facilitating better comparability and transparency.
3 – Equip your teams with AI tools to enhance data analysis and visualization.
AI offers powerful analytics capabilities that transform data into meaningful insights via machine learning, statistical analysis, and optimization techniques. It can uncover patterns and provide actionable recommendations for deeper sustainability improvements and better resource allocation. AI-driven data visualization and natural language generation tools can present sustainability data in clear and engaging ways, enhancing reporting and communication with stakeholders. You can use generative AI to tailor content to resonate with different audiences, boosting the impact of sustainability messages.
For the above reasons, providing your teams with AI tools can help optimize resource allocation while also improving the quality of your sustainability reporting.
To mitigate these concerns, businesses must prioritize energy-efficient AI practices and make sure their infrastructures support green AI.
Sustainability for AI
On the flip side, we must remember that the use of AI in sustainability brings a double imperative. While AI can drive efficiencies and insights, it also poses sustainability challenges, such as increased energy consumption and CO2 emissions from data centers and computational processes.
To mitigate these concerns, businesses must prioritize energy-efficient AI practices and make sure their infrastructures support green AI. Here are a few ways to do that:
1. Optimize AI algorithms for performance.
2. Upgrade legacy systems for more efficient data processing.
3. Use renewable energy sources for data centers.
4. Assess the environmental impact of AI operations regularly.
These green improvements and assessments are essential to ensure that technological advancements align with overall sustainability goals.
“When using AI to enhance your sustainability efforts, also take steps to ensure that your practices are environmentally sound.”
Data as the cornerstone
Remember that in the quest for sustainability, understanding your organization’s current position is crucial. Data is the cornerstone of effective sustainability measurement. It provides insights into current performance, helps set meaningful goals, and tracks progress. However, the complexities of data collection, quality, and integration pose substantial hurdles. Many organizations struggle with issues such as inconsistent data quality, gaps in data availability, and difficulties in data standardization, particularly when addressing comprehensive metrics like Scope 3 emissions.
AI emerges as a transformative tool to overcome these data-related challenges and elevate sustainability reporting. AI-enabled tools also empower your team to turn complex data into actionable insights.
When using AI to enhance your sustainability efforts, also take steps to ensure that your practices are environmentally sound. These steps will help you set the stage for a more transparent and impactful approach to AI and sustainability.
AI x 9: This article appears in a nine-part summer series examining how AI impacts leadership and business, produced in collaboration with Expansión.
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