Apple's AI Ambitions Leave Big Questions Over Its Climate Goals Halfway to its 2030 net-zero goal, Apple faces slow and hold-out suppliers, a tariffs scramble, and an AI race that could profoundly impact eco-friendly ambitions. Here's a simple question: Is the current top iPhone better for the environment than the top iPhone was five years ago? Let's take the iPhone Pro series. If we're looking at recycled and renewable materials, it's an easy yes. Compare the iPhone 11 Pro, released in September 2019, with the iPhone 16 Pro, released in September 2024, and there has been good progress--from a few smaller components and packaging to now at more than 25 percent of the whole phone.

This story is a part of MIT Technology Review's series "Power Hungry: AI and our energy future," on the energy demands and carbon costs of the artificial-intelligence revolution. These somewhat unlikely partnerships could be a win for both the nuclear power industry and large tech companies. Tech giants need guaranteed sources of energy, and many are looking for low-emissions ones to hit their climate goals. For nuclear plant operators and nuclear technology developers, the financial support of massive established customers could help keep old nuclear power plants open and push new technologies forward. "There [are] a lot of advantages to nuclear," says Michael Terrell, senior director of clean energy and carbon reduction at Google.

Technology giant Microsoft recently released its sustainability report for the 2023 financial year, and it didn't exactly have positive numbers. Microsoft set a climate goal in 2020 to become carbon negative by 2030, sequestering more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere than it emits, but the company seems to be on the wrong track to achieve this goal. Microsoft's greenhouse gas emissions increased by 30 percent in the 2023 financial year -- and it's all Copilot's fault. The big culprit is the company's huge AI investments. It takes huge amounts of energy to train and use AI models.

Electric vehicles are expected to significantly contribute to CO2-eq. emissions reduction, but the increasing number of EVs also introduces chal-lenges to the energy system, and to what extent it contributes to achieving cli-mate goals remains unknown. Static modeling and assumption-based simula-tions have been used for such investigation, but they cannot capture the realistic ecosystem dynamics. To fill the gap, this paper investigates the impacts of two adoption curves of private EVs on the electricity distribution grids and national climate goals. This paper develops a multi-agent based simulation with two adoption curves, the Traditional EV charging strategy, various EV models, driv-ing patterns, and CO2-eq. emission data to capture the full ecosystem dynamics during a long-term period from 2020 to 2032. The Danish 2030 climate goal and a Danish distribution network with 126 residential consumers are chosen as the case study. The results show that both EV adoption curves of 1 million and 775k EVs by 2030 will not satisfy the Danish climate goal of reducing transport sector emissions by 30% by 2030. The results also show that the current resi-dential electricity distribution grids cannot handle the load from increasing EVs. The first grid overload will occur in 2031 (around 16 and 24 months later for the 1 million and 775k EVs adopted by 2030) with a 67% share of EVs in the grid.

This week, Microsoft President and vice chair Brad Smith is heading to Egypt for the United Nation's annual climate conference with a mission: show the world that the tech giant is "consistent and committed" in its climate goals, as well as communicate the "vital role" that the tech industry as a whole has to play in battling the climate crisis. The Microsoft leader has been busy in recent months since the departure of chief environmental officer Lucas Joppa, stepping in to lead the company's climate initiatives (something Smith has always been intimately involved with, as Joppa's boss prior to his departure). Last week at the Web Summit tech conference, he spoke about the urgency of the workforce transformation the world needs to reach net zero, as well as the current skills gap. "The key to the future is going to be a new generation of people with a new generation of technology coming from a new generation of companies," he said, highlighting the work of startups like the India-based SEEDS, which is using satellite data and AI to identify homes that would be most susceptible to extreme heat, then helping them adapt. Using AI and data to help the Global South adapt to climate change is one of Microsoft's main focuses going into the COP27 climate talks.

A sustainable future: How AI and digital twins are helping ESG and sustainability efforts in construction, industry and city planning.