all right, that's all for now after the break dw business reports on why i staggering energy consumption could spell serious trouble. don't forget, you can get most stories on our website at www dot. com and now youtube channel as well. i'm actually out in berlin say so the prices got issues with a lot say what? the, not just another day. so much is happening all at once. we take time to understand this is the day i'm in, that's look at current use events,

analyzed by experts and critical thinking is weekdays on d w the how can i help save the environment? it's a question. someone might ask an artificial intelligence tool like chat g, d p, which has made serious gains in terms of what it's capable of. and know there's, talk that a, i might hold the answers to the climate crisis. it's also part of the problem. one that's only going to get bigger as a technology advances and it's use grows. if you train on twice as much data, it takes twice as much energy, running a consumer real resources, water and electricity. and so do we, when we extract solutions from it? that's why plans for a google data center were recently put on hold look is realize it couldn't be the end of drinking water for their neighborhood. and so we're asking is a,

are going to help solve the climate crisis or make it worse. in this episode of transforming business there's one thing a, i can do that people can't reading and then analyzing huge amounts of data quickly . there's literally hundreds of thousands of data points coming in from a large building like this one into our system. data that can help us make decisions like how to optimize the use of energy in a building so that none of it goes to waste. hendricks eco door is a chief technology officer of a. d. p. m. a small startup base in cologne, germany, a defense product helps facility managers, one large commercial buildings like this one as efficiently as possible. imagine you have a facility manager in the technical building room and there's an energy system, maybe the heating and cooling and displaying an error code error code 15 or that person would have for us to find the menu for the heating or the cooling and look

at what his error code 15 or that person could just ask of a system, hey, this young and the technical building room standing in front of a, whatever physical and heating. i'm getting displayed, error code 15. how do i resolve it? and then all of the system knows the entire history of the building data was that combined with each other, which is a i can actually see that like search towards the history and then just tell that person, okay, for error code 15 in summer, you have to do this and that, and by the way, he is also the manual. it says it can help a building save up to 40 percent of energy and c o. 2 emissions in building this large, making a small tweak and have a big impact in that uses a i to do a lot of different things to help its structure and analyze a hundreds of thousands of data points. it gets from our buildings technical system to factoring in variables like outside climate and building materials. each

building is individual, meaning it has different tendons to test different user behaviors. this has also from how it to us, both different the behavior. so if you have avoiding building, as composed as opposed to a concrete building that's there, that's very different. just seeing this capitalizing on a, i the ability to read and analyze data in a sliver of the amount of time it would take the world's best researchers to do the same. this feed is what makes a guy so valuable to researchers and scientists looking for solutions to the climate crisis. scientists are now using ai to map and artic icebergs 10000 times faster than humans, and to attract deforestation and real time to better predict weather patterns. and to suggest more efficient waste management systems. there's no doubt a guy has the potential to do good things for the climate, but not everything about it is a gifted environment. take this home for example,

which residents in chandler arizona here 247. it's the sound of a data center processing, the billions of requested gets throughout the day. think of a i as the brain and data centers as the body that supports the brain to work. there are more than 8000 data centers in the world, according to the international energy agency data center energy consumption is expected to double in 2026 to what it was in 2022. when i started doing a research a decade ago, i could run most of the systems i was using on my laptop. this is jessie dodge. she's in a research scientist, a split. today we're using super computer s, right? some of the large systems that people are familiar with, like the chat box or the image generation systems. those run on really large super computers and consume of potentially very large amount of electricity. and these

very large amounts of electricity produced very large amounts of heat. and also that hum you just heard, to keep the data centers from overheating, they must be cooled down. and this is usually done in one of 2 ways, using air conditioning or water and lots of it. let's say i engage in a 15 question conversation with chat g b over how i could be more environmentally conscious. experts calculate i would be consuming about a half leader of fresh water. and this is where a i can be a little problem matic to access to clean water is competing with, let's say local uses for us. this is what the google and to a bit of hot water soon after to now it's plans to build a 200000000 dollar data center in a working class neighborhood of city else. and she left. we all use a google search, another google tools. so each of the, the neighbors were quite happy that google had chosen these area for building their,

their data centers. this is sebastian where they're an ethics and society lecture at kings college london to say, sorry, it says, you know, it's, you know, most with broad grass development. a new poll innovation in the area. but once i took a look at google's environmental impact report for the data center, they were startled by what they learned. a problem that i found out at some point that these google data center was going to use $168.00 date as of water per 2nd in an area facing drives, a truck that is now and it's 15 here and cause the elected officials to ration water in the capitol of santiago, but after fierce protest from the community, the permit was put on hold. a local environmental court told google it needs to modify how it plans to put servers and google's plans for data center and ordered. why also face pushback when locals learned how much water it would consume and water isn't the only natural resource that a guy requires. it needs

a lot of electricity to and most of that electricity still comes from burning fossil fuels, which released the greenhouse gas emissions causing climate change. training a single ai model produces more than 5 times the amount of carbon dioxide emissions generated from a car. and it's lifetime, that's including the emissions to manufacturer of the car, and it's fuel consumption once it leaves the factory. it's an astounding amount training in a model and then ensuring its continued existence through large data centers is a massive brain on natural resources. and also drives up what researchers call embodied carbon. so that's going to be the amount of carbon it took to, let's say, build the hardware just starting by mining the rare minerals that goes into the g p . use shipping that across the world to then be manufactured into a g, p. u, and then tripping that gpu to its final destination at

a data center that doesn't incur a really large environmental impact. it's this impact that companies like microsoft are trying to take into account as they set climate goals. microsoft says it's aiming to be carbon negative by 2030, not just neutral, but negative. and one way it's hoping to get there is through bolivia. more than 9000 kilometers from microsoft headquarters in redmond, washington is a bio chart facility, operated by x, so mad green it turns forestry waste interest, something that's called bio char, which is essentially charcoal x. so mad green will produce the bio char containing carbon dioxide and buried under ground where it can enrich the soil and keep c o 2 from getting into the atmosphere. microsoft has box $32000.00 tons of carbon dioxide removal credits, but that's a tiny fraction of its overall annual emissions. we don't know how much of that

will grow with a guy. that's one way that microsoft can continue to expand its ai operation and data centers will saying it's still on path to being carbon negative. but is that effective enough, or is it just a form of corporate greenwashing? so if we do something like by carbon offsets, that doesn't negate the action that we talk, meaning that doesn't undo the carbon emissions that we've produced. these 2 things don't cancel each other out. as a advances, governments and regulatory bodies are trying your best to keep up this year. new a rules passed by the european parliament will go into effect impacting businesses like a defend the e u. a i act does reference the impact of a i on the environment. it asset ai systems are developed in using a sustainable and environmentally friendly manner. so it doesn't really fill out what that means. she lives a laws which were drafted before the rules, but aren't nearly as comprehensive,

don't address environmental impact either. so i think what's concerning is not only that this is not being addressed enough. i said to should, i think, but also the voice of the people affected by it is not considered. right. so even if you look at research the press, quite often they report on the environmental impact, but they don't report on how the situation can affect to their livelihood or their well being of the communities participating somehow within the body change. or if activation intelligence, it's operating a data center for your a i model is a reason why a community doesn't have access to drinking water. is that still sustainable? we need those voices to participate as well in the governor's office. yeah. so you, that you, when for example, is coming up with, you know, new regulation, it will be great to be able to hear those communities as well because those communities, they are nothing against technology or a guy. but that what they will say is that if we want a yeah, it has to be built in dialogue with local communities. singapore is government was

aware of the strained data centers, what have on its power grid. so it enacted a 4 year moratorium on the construction of new ones that ended in 2022 and they've now accepted billed proposals from these companies, australia's air trunk, chinese data center operator. gd, yes. and tick tock owner by dance, an equinox, and microsoft based in the us. dublin's power operator placed a moratorium on data centers in 2022. they say the irish capital could face blackouts as new ones are built in europe around a 100 data set or operators signed the climate neutral data center packed, promising to be what the title implies. a climate neutral data center by 2030. but it's not even feasible. tech companies are experimenting with green alternatives, like this google facility in belgium, which partly use of solar energy. and in 2021,

microsoft said it had opened 3 data centers in sweden to that run entirely on wind power. but most data centers still run on fossil fuels and rely on local power grants. this 1st draft of the use a i act does more for the digital environment than the natural one. but as a continues to advance, its climate impact is becoming harder and harder to ignore if you train on twice as much data, it takes twice as much energy. and so that pattern has really spelled over the last 10 years. this dramatic increase in computational cost. hey, i is the new kid on the block and it's hard to predict what the future will look like. there's no doubt it can help us make massive gains when it comes to slowing down climate change. but in its current state and a i model requires an enormous amount of natural resources for us to train and then to run. and not all data centers are dedicated to our use, but we will need to build more of them as

a i advances and become standard use and business research and public administration. should regulations do more to address the environmental consequences of a i absolutely. well, that's what strategy be. thanks anyway. what about you? let us know in the comments the the conflicts with sarah kelly 5 months into the war and gaza and deadly chaos around and aid. con boy has glaringly highlighted the desperation and climbed the depths full amongst civilians . my guest to speak on complex on is not responding form, egyptian foreign minister and long time diplomat. at what point is egypt have no choice but to consider opening its border to thousands onto monetary and ground

context. next on dw, thank you so much. these are the news on a full day from the note follow the 5 months into the war and gaza and deadly chaos around and aid. con boy has glaringly highlighted the desperation and climbing death toll among civilians. the cottage of humanity is something they haven't seen protected by guess this week on complex own is not to find me. former egyptian foreign minister and long time diplomat of what points as egypt have no choice. but to consider opening its border, 2 thousands on to monetary and ground. have the shocking scenes of suffering process conflict to an inflection point. now the saw.