Top 10: Companies Using AI for Sustainability
The days of spending hours pouring over hundreds of spreadsheets are over now artificial intelligence (AI) has arrived.
AI can process and analyse vast datasets in an instant, optimise processes to reduce consumption and waste, predict outcomes and even improve the precision of resource management.
Big companies wield enormous influence over sustainability practices across industries, and many are doing their part to apply AI in new ways for the benefit of people and the environment.
We’ve ranked 10 of the top companies using AI for sustainability.
10. Watershed
CEO: Christian Anderson
Founded: 2019
Revenue: ~US$42m (2023)
With huge supply chains and hundreds of regulations, tracking carbon emissions isn’t a small task for businesses.
Founded in 2019, Watershed provides AI solutions for companies to track and reduce their carbon footprint. Its platform uses machine learning to analyse huge amounts of business data including utility bills, transit logs and purchase orders in calculating a company’s carbon footprint.
This allows for ongoing refinement of its services as models continuously improve and are adaptable to changes in a company’s operations.
9. Siemens
CEO: Roland Busch
Founded: 1847
Revenue: US$83.1bn (2023)
Siemens implements AI across a range of areas for sustainability, including city planning, manufacturing and building management.
The company is using AI and digital twin technologies to build Siemensstadt Square in Berlin. This project will eventually house 35,000 people across around 188 acres.
"Siemensstadt Square will be the blueprint for the city of the future," says Roland Busch, President and CEO of Siemens.
"The project will combine artificial intelligence, digital twins and other technologies from the Siemens Xcelerator platform to transform an industrial brownfield area into an engine for solid, healthy growth.”
8. IKEA
CEO: Jesper Brodin
Founded: 1943
Revenue: US$47.3bn (2023)
Overproduction and excess inventory are major sources of waste in supply chains. Not only does this mean products could be wasted, but also packaging, energy to manufacture and emissions from transportation.
IKEA uses AI to improve its demand forecasting, making use of up to 200 data sources for each product. This tool builds up knowledge from a local perspective, opposed to starting with a global one, catering to local trends. It also allows the company to use this corporate memory to bring in automation.
7. IBM
CEO: Arvind Krishna
Founded: 1911
Revenue: US$61.8bn (2023)
Climate change needs to be addressed at its cause, but also for the impacts it may have on both lives and businesses. The World Economic Forum (WEF) predicts that climate change damage will cost between US$1.7tn and US$3.1tn per year by 2050.
IBM’s AI-driven environmental intelligence suite can monitor environmental disruptions, like severe weather, to adapt to the impacts of climate change.
It also helps companies to measure and report on environmental initiatives alongside carbon accounting and delivers environmental insights for planning.
6. Dell
CEO: Michael Dell
Founded: 1984
Revenue: US$102.3bn (2023)
Dell is not just using AI for sustainability, but also working to make AI more sustainable. Its AI PCs use low emissions aluminium and recycled cobalt and the company retires and reuses systems responsibly to avoid e-waste.
Jeff Clarke, Vice Chairman and Chief Operating Officer at Dell, says: “For decades, we have seen sustainability as a business imperative, so we treat it like one.
“It’s woven throughout our business operations, influences how we design products and innovate more energy-efficient data centre solutions and shapes how we help our customers meet their business and societal impact goals.
“We take an end-to-end approach to sustainability.”
5. Meta
CEO: Mark Zuckerberg
Founded: 2004
Revenue: US$134.9bn (2023)
Whilst social media may not be your first thought for environmental impact, the data centres powering platforms are energy-hungry and already have a carbon footprint the size of the entire country of Malaysia.
Meta, the owner of Instagram and Facebook, is using its AI for good. The company is a founding member of the AI Alliance alongside IBM.
Nick Clegg, President of Global Affairs of Meta: “The AI Alliance brings together researchers, developers and companies to share tools and knowledge that can help us all make progress whether models are shared openly or not.
“We’re looking forward to working with partners to advance the state-of-the-art in AI and help everyone build responsibly.”
4. Intel
CEO: Patrick Gelsinger
Founded: 1968
Revenue: US$54.2bn (2023)
Intel champions AI as a sustainability solution for its abilities to reduce energy and resource waste, gain insights to optimise operations and create a tech-positive transformation.
The company is making AI itself more sustainable through improving hardware to become more energy efficient in the building and running of AI models. Intel is 'weeding out' unnecessary data from datasets used to train models, providing a vast improvement in power efficiency.
“The solution to making more sustainable AI is both a software and a hardware solution”, says Merlin Kister, Senior Director at Intel.
“It’s also taking a look at the model that you have to start with and making sure that is the right size.”
3. Google
CEO: Sundar Pichai
Founded: 1998
Revenue: US$305.6bn (2023)
Google is working on solutions around the world to address climate change’s impacts alongside reducing the emissions that cause it.
Google Maps contains a variety of sustainable solutions built with AI, including suggesting walking or public transportation where possible over car journeys and displaying wildfire boundaries.
The company has created an AI solution to contrails, the cloud lines formed by aircraft, that can reduce their formation more than 50% and prevent their significant warming effects.
Google’s Project Green Light uses AI to reduce waiting times at traffic lights, which reduces start-stop emissions from vehicles in cities.
Kate Brandt, Chief Sustainability Officer at Google, says: “While we recognise that digital technology alone will not solve the climate crisis, we can already see the tremendous potential that it holds to help accelerate action on sustainability and climate while simultaneously empowering economic growth.”
2. Amazon
CEO: Andy Jassy
Founded: 1994
Revenue: US$575bn (2023)
As the world’s largest online retailer, Amazon has a huge impact on the environment and enormous influence to leverage in sustainability. It ships around 1.6 million packages per day.
The company is using AI for a variety of applications including reducing packaging waste, preventing food waste, improving energy efficiency and even monitoring deforestation.
Amazon’s Packaging Decision Engine helps to determine the most efficient packaging options to ship its millions of products per day which has helped to eliminate more than two million tonnes of packaging material since 2015.
Kara Hurst, Chief Sustainability Officer at Amazon, says: “Climate change is one of the world’s greatest challenges — and at Amazon, we know we have to move fast, constantly innovate, invest and stay nimble in order to continue to become a more sustainable company.
“AI and machine learning (ML) can help us meet our climate goals at the speed, scale, and urgency our planet requires.”
1. Microsoft
CEO: Satya Nadella
Founded: 1975
Revenue: US$211.9bn (2023)
Microsoft is harnessing AI for sustainability across a variety of challenges through its AI for Good Lab.
The company is protecting the Amazon rainforest by monitoring animal behaviour, satellite images and forest sounds to detect changes. This helps scientists to protect biodiversity more effectively.
The AI for Good Lab has partnered with the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) and Planet to produce high-resolution maps that help to identify communities at risk of climate events. This allows for preparations ahead of potential disasters.
Microsoft is also working with the University of Southern California and Amref to create a model that predicts health risks with AI.
This solution can provide governments with valuable information to support tackling issues like malnutrition.
Renewable energy is also getting an AI boost through the Global Renewables Watch, described as a 'living atlasl that can map utility-scale solar and wind installations around the world.
Melanie Nakagawa, Chief Sustainability Officer at Microsoft, says: “We are committed to harnessing the power of data and AI to advance global climate resilience.
“Through initiatives like Microsoft’s AI for Good Lab, we are supporting the local development of scalable solutions.”
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