How artificial intelligence could pose a threat to Net Zero - Yorkshire Post Letters

There’s lots of good news regarding humanity’s ability to reach Net Zero from a technical and economic perspective.

Massive improvements continue to be made in the lean energy equipment we are using and the breadth materials that we can use for battery technologies. Also, multiple reports now show that transition will actually save us money.

It’s not all good news as I see two new threats to our necessary transition.

The first is Artificial Intelligence. This has the potential to provide benefits to medicine, material science and many more helpful things. But, sadly, I fear its dominant use will be for less beneficial and even down-right dangerous purposes. AI needs lots of energy, so it needs to be used wisely.

The second threat is the false promise of carbon capture and storage (CCS). This is being pushed by the fossil fuel majors, despite the fact that their investment in the technology is pitifully small. In the UK, the last government was spending taxpayer’s money, our money, on CCS.

A recent report in Scientific American explains a number of major challenges with the technology. For example, it will take about 15 years to validate storage sites that won’t leak. This is way too slow to deliver the necessary emissions reductions required in the next ten years.

CCS may prove essential, but we still need to urgently reduce our use of fossil fuels.