Our future depends on clean, safe and sustainable energy. In our quest for sustainability, Artificial intelligence (AI) is expected to play a significant role in the energy sector, which currently faces the growing demand for renewable energy. Research and experimentation with artificial intelligence models have the potential to lead to better and more accurate load forecasts, efficient demand and supply predictions, increased grid flexibility as well as optimised maintenance and operation of assets. As such, AI technologies have a direct impact on the environment regarding energy efficiency, increased integration of Renewable Energy Sources (RES) and reduction of waste.

At the same time, special consideration need to be taken on the carbon footprint of the technologies involved in an AI pipeline, especially the training cycle of the AI models which demands a significant power draw in terms of CPU, memory and GPU/TPU. The excessive enthusiasm, hype and competitive struggle for novel business AI ideas can result to dystopian manifestation of inefficient power-greedy AI solutions that, in total, do more harm than good for the environment. The industry needs to embrace a mentality of responsible decision making, within which the sustainability of the proposed AI solution remains the top priority. Simpler math or data-driven solutions need to be evaluated before resulting to more complicated power-intensive models. In alignment with this mentality, domain-experts need to assess the usability and effectiveness of the AI technologies and drive the feature engineering process from the conceptual phase.

In this context, the European approach and guidance to sustainable and trustworthy AI is essential for the energy industry. The EU vision on sustainable and trustworthy AI in the world was discussed in the second workshop on AI for sustainability organised at Expo Dubai, as part of the event “European AI Excellence and Trust around the world”. In this workshop, I-NERGY had the opportunity to showcase a number of use cases from the energy sector on how AI can have a positive impact on the environment, while also underlying and discussing together with the group of experts the risks and environmental costs of the involved technologies. Trasmitting the EU vision for sustainable AI at a global level is fundamental for our fight against the climate crisis. I-NERGY aims to become a paradigm of sustainable AI in the energy sector and set a point of reference for the relevant discussions and debates within the European AI Alliance.

The I-NERGY project will demonstrate sustainable and trustworthy AI building blocks, services, and applications in 15 pilot use cases that span over the full energy value chain, ranging from optimised management of grid and non-grid renewable energy systems assets to improved efficiency and reliability of electricity networks’ operation. The results of our project will be published on Europe’s AI-on-Demand Platform, the one-stop-shop for AI knowledge, tools and experts.