Mary Stevens12 Feb 2025
What is Greening AI?
At a time when the development of AI seems to be inexorably in the hands of the tech giants, you may think that too little attention is being paid to the environmental and social impacts of unfettered AI technology. Where are the voices in support of environmental justice and human rights in the global conversation about the future direction of AI?
Greening AI is a new initiative led by Friends of the Earth, supported by the Green Screen Coalition Catalyst Fund with the backing of the Mozilla Foundation. We are delivering the project with We Are Open to bridge the gap between AI technologies and their environmental impact, and to help navigate this complex space.
A guide to ethical AI
Following a collaborative exercise with environmental justice advocates and digital rights campaigners, we have launched a report Harnessing AI for Environmental Justice, sharing principles and practical guidelines on how AI can be used responsibly, alongside recommendations for policy. As a trusted name in the environmental justice movement, we’ve been able to bring people together – and the new report will help mainstream the conversation.
Our goal for the published report is to become the go-to reference for organisations coming to grips with this tricky topic.
The report outlining an alternative vision could not be more timely. Governments are waking up to the need for more varied sectors of society to be engaged in the future of AI and to ensure that both the risks, the harms and the benefits are recognised and managed for social good – not just for the ambitions and the coffers of the big players. On 10-11 February, the French government held the AI Action Summit in Paris - colleagues from the Green Screen Coalition were present at the Forum for Sustainable AI, hosted by the French Ministry for Ecological Transition, to spread the word and share our demands.
The benefits and challenges of AI
Like so many high emissions technologies, there are real benefits to the application of artificial intelligence for our movement. Alongside high-level capabilities for things like smart grids, precision weather forecasting, resource-efficient agriculture, and waste management, AI-backed tools also have the potential to support grassroots movements, supporting a range of activities from collective visioning (as in this inspiring project in informal settlements in New Delhi ) to digesting technical documents and support with ‘back-office’ jobs. But along with the benefits, digital technologies have a big carbon footprint and emissions are ballooning .
Our project Greening AI policy - an influencing agenda aimed to address questions like what do the responsible choices look like? How might we continue to influence policy-makers to make the ethical choice the default?
What we did
The project is built around three key components:
- Research and collaboration: We commissioned We Are Open to conduct desk research and host an online roundtable that brings together UK-based campaigners and international voices. This allowed us to develop a shared approach to the environmental impact of AI and ensure that the experience of communities impacted directly by the AI supply chain can be reflected.
- Shaping good practice: A core part of Greening AI is the creation of accessible, practical guidelines. These guidelines will be shared with environmental justice and digital rights organisations to help them make informed decisions about AI adoption. We want to ensure these technologies support the fight for a fair, fossil-free future, not undermine it.
- Communication and outreach: The final output of the project is a detailed article for the Friends of the Earth Policy website. The article explores the environmental impact of generative AI, and includes recommendations for mitigating its harms. We will also develop a dissemination plan, to ensure the work reaches its target audience.
Why does this matter?
Back in the summer of 2023, after a period of initial research into the risks and opportunities of generative AI, we asked the following question: what if the national conversation about AI was less focused on business productivity and future existential risk, and more concerned with the existential crises that are happening right here, right now - the crises in people’s everyday lives AND the damage that we are doing to the planet?
Fast forward a year and the conversation has started to shift. The risks of disinformation and the environmental impacts are much more widely understood – although the solutions are less clear . This shift in awareness is partly thanks to the brilliant work of the Climate Action against Disinformation coalition – including our colleagues at Friends of the Earth USA. But this leaves environmental justice organisations in a difficult position.
Through this project, we aimed to ensure that AI technologies are deployed in a way that promotes environmental justice. We want to see these concerns at the heart of conversations around AI regulation and development – and we want fellow campaigners to feel empowered to make these asks, on a topic that might not be in their normal comfort zone.
What’s next?
You can follow us on LinkedIn for updates, and we will be publishing more articles about the 7 principles on this site or contact us directly if you would like to know more.