As banks adopt AI, here are 3 climate technologies that could reduce their energy consumption

As investors and activists gathered in New York to discuss climate change solutions, one of the biggest questions was how banks and other companies can use less, or at least cleaner, energy to power their expanding artificial intelligence operations.

Part of the conversation at Climate Week was about how the AI ​​boom is driving greater demand for energy, as data centers are built to serve it, and power plants are built to support those data centers. Climate tech startups and established companies say they have at least a partial answer to this accelerated demand for more energy, and in many cases, banks and investors agree.

“We’re going to see demand increase by 15 to 20 percent because of that, leading to 160 gigawatts of peak demand by 2033,” Vanessa Chan, the Energy Department’s chief commercialization officer, said at Nasdaq’s Building the Future Summit on Monday. “The good news is that by the end of this year, we’ll have 30 Hoover Dams’ worth of electricity on the grid.”