Brief Author Note

Feels strange to be back in DC after a 3 month sabbatical in Cambodia! 🧑‍✈️ 

It was a two day journey with 3 flights, 20+ hours of flying, and seeing the rest of the world. 😅 

The jet lag is going to get me as I adjust to the EDT time zone, but hey at least you’re going to get these newsletter issues at a normal hour now.

Chau,

Nate

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The Insiders: Rizwan et Al. (AI & Environmental Impact): In this special edition of The Impact Equation, we hear from three insiders turned truth-tellers: Rizwan Naveed, former McKinsey energy strategist, who helped advise the world's biggest companies, and challenged McKinsey’s climate position. Holly Alpine, former sustainability lead at Microsoft, who built global green programmes while grappling with how tech services were being used in the fossil fuel sector. Jo Alexander, former BP executive, who believed in the energy transition, but witnessed the company adjust its boldest climate commitments. These three leaders have left the corporate world behind but not quietly. Now they’re shaping a different kind of change, from the outside in.

Climate TBD: Earth, Extraction, and the Cost of Innovation with AI (AI & Social/Economic Impacts): This episode centers on environmental justice and community-led storytelling, exploring how AI influences climate resilience planning in frontline communities.

Water Quality Modeling with The Ripple Effect (AI & Water Resources): Water modeling expert John Kemper explains how AI improves watershed management and future planning by simulating real-world conditions with greater precision.

A Call for Transdisciplinary Trust in the AI Era (AI & Environment): Trust is a cornerstone and enabler of human civilization, determining the very nature of how people interact with each other. The swift integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into daily life poses grand societal challenges and necessitates a reevaluation of trust. Our bibliometric literature review calls for scientists and stakeholders to cross traditional academic boundaries to address emerging and evolving societal challenges arising from AI.

Using AI for Optimizing Packing Design and Reducing Cost in E-Commerce (AI & Manufacturing): This research explores how artificial intelligence (AI) can be leveraged to optimize packaging design, reduce operational costs, and enhance sustainability in e-commerce. As packaging waste and shipping inefficiencies grow alongside global online retail demand, traditional methods for determining box size, material use, and logistics planning have become economically and environmentally inadequate.

Using AI in Sustainability Teaching and Learning (AI & Workforce Development): The integration of artificial intelligence (AI) in sustainability education (SE) represents a forward-thinking approach to teaching and learning, addressing complex global challenges through innovative technology.The deployment of AI offers promising prospects in SE as a means to enhance learning experiences, foster innova-tive problem-solving skills, and contribute to the development of sustainable solutions.

America’s AI Action Plan (AI Policy & Governance): Explore America’s AI Action Plan with a focus on geopolitical AI dominance, energy infrastructure, and leading the world in AI technology.

The Interline AI Report 2025 (AI & Sustainability): Read this interesting report about how AI, sustainability, and the future of fashion can come together.

The Myths of AI: Data Centers Aren’t the Future of American Prosperity (AI & Infrastructure): Read this policy brief from Data & Society about why data centers are not the future of American prosperity.

The Energy and Environmental Impacts of AI Growth (AI & Environmental Impact): This is the second event in CURA, Sustainability Institute, and the Translational Analytics Data Institute's 2025 spring webinar series, "Is AI Sustainable?"

Urban AI and the Environment (AI & Environmental Impact): As data centers expand across urban areas and public agencies increasingly adopt AI-driven tools, local governments face a pressing dilemma: how to harness AI’s transformative power without deepening its environmental and climate-related impacts. In this Urban AI Conversation, we discussed insights from the GovAI Coalition’s blog series on AI and The Environment, exploring how public sector actors can respond to these growing challenges.

LSE Public Lecture Programme - Harnessing AI: Safeguarding High-Integrity Data for Climate Action (AI & Climate Science & Research): Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are versatile technologies that have drastically lowered the cost of data production and analysis, potentially supporting the acceleration of global decarbonisation efforts. However, concerns remain about their environmental and social impact, particularly the potential spread of low-quality information.

NetworkOcean (AI & Infrastructure): A new frontier of data center ‍performance and sustainability, underwater.

Deep Meta (AI & Circular Economy): Deep.Meta is tackling carbon emissions in the steel industry with an AI-powered Digital Twin, a smart digital replica of the production process that combines physics and machine learning to optimise furnace operations.

Kale AI (AI & Transportation): At Kale AI, we build technology to accelerate the shift to the urban logistics systems of tomorrow.

Gen AI Sustainability Estimator (AI & Sustainability): This is a branch by Karol See to extend JV and Debbie's initial cost estimator by including sustainability metrics in Gen AI use cases and is inspired by Mistral AI's LCA analysis concerning the environmental impacts of AI.

Kube-Green (AI & Sustainability): Kube-green is a Kubernetes operator that allows to shut down environments or specific resources in order to optimize resource utilization, limiting energy waste. kube-green comes preinstalled in the Mia-Platform PaaS, and it is immediately available for configuration.

Carbon Runner (AI & Sustainability): A multi-cloud CI/CD runner that shifts your workflows to the lowest CO2 regions.

AlgorithmWatch’s Reporting Fellowship on AI and Power (Open to EU countries or EFTA countries only): For a fifth time, AlgorithmWatch is looking for new Algorithmic Accountability Reporting fellows. Apply now if you have research ideas concerning the relation between Artificial Intelligence and power and its consequences. 🗓️ Deadline: September 20, 2025.

V20 Climate Prosperity Fellowship Program (Open to V20 member countries only): The Climate Prosperity Fellowship Program was launched by the V20 Finance Ministers, in partnership with Boston University Global Development Policy Center, at the sidelines of the 2023 Annual Meetings of the World Bank Group and the International Monetary Fund in Marrakech, Morocco. 🗓️ Deadline: August 15, 2025.

The MIDEVA Impact Innovation Fellowship (Open to global applications):  A 6-month hybrid fellowship that equips early to mid-career African innovators to lead transformation in organisations or launch their own ventures. Fellows work on real-world challenges across impact sectors. 🗓️ Deadline: August 31, 2025.

If you have resources that you wish to submit to the AI & Environment Resource Hub, fill out the Google Form! Thank you for suggesting resources to add to the Resource Hub. 🙃 

That’s it for this week.

Thanks for reading the 11th issue of The Climate Code! It means a lot to me and we have more coming in the future, so definitely stick around! 🏃‍♂️💛

Nate

P.S.

New here? Check out the AI & Environment Resource Hub if you have no idea what it is. 😆