Let’s talk about one way that AI can help in the struggle against climate change…
First of all, think about where people are mostly living across the world. They’re living in cities. Now, sometimes we get misconceptions about relative carbon footprints. For example, you might think that people in cities use more power than people who live in the country.
On the whole, that’s incorrect – city dwellers use far less energy on average. And it makes sense in a number of ways. You might have 100 units with one shared source of heat. And there’s a lot of room for rooftop gardens and solar.
A resource from the United Nations University reveals more about why this is true – and why, in general, the suburbs are actually the worst for energy consumption. Specifically, the authors write, of an Austrian study: “Even when controlling for other socio-economic factors including income, we found that people in semi-urban areas … emit around 8% more CO₂ than those in cities, and people in rural areas around 4% more.”
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