Brief Author Note

I think what we are going to start doing is giving y’all a couple of news articles a week on different topics at the intersection of AI and the environment! My notes can sometimes be boring lol, so instead we’re going to brief y’all on a couple of interesting things that are happening in the space:

• Microsoft, Google say their data centers create thousands of jobs. Their permit filings say otherwise (Rest of World)

• Ethics + Sustainability = Responsible AI Blog Post (Hugging Face)

• How AI can unlock an extra trillion barrels of oil (The Edge)

Watt you later! ⚡️ 

Nate

Quick Links!

• Podcast Episodes

• Scientific Papers

• Policy Documents

• Multimedia

• Organizations

• Tools

• Fellowships Corner

• Submit Resources

Navigating Today’s Climate Investing Landscape (AI & Policy/ESG): This episode explores how climate investing is evolving and where AI is shaping new sustainable finance strategies, highlighting the intersection of investment decisions, environmental responsibility, and technological innovation.

Scaling AI in the Energy Industry (AI & Energy): Leaders from APS and Bidgely discuss how electric utilities are deploying AI for grid management, customer engagement, and long-term planning emphasizing the cultural and organizational shifts required to scale AI successfully.

The Tech Helping Humans Understand Animal Communication (AI & Ecology/Biodiversity): Aza Raskin describes how the Earth Species Project uses AI to decode animal communication, examines where breakthroughs are emerging, and considers the ethical safeguards needed when translating non-human languages.

Towards a Future Space-Based, Highly Scalable AI Infrastructure System Design (AI & Energy): This paper explores building AI compute clusters in space using satellite constellations powered by solar energy, demonstrating the feasibility of coordinated satellites with optical interlinks and radiation-tested TPUs. It argues that declining launch costs could make large-scale orbital AI infrastructure economically viable by the mid-2030s.

Machine Learning Applications in Predicting Climate Change Patterns (AI & Climate Science): A review of ML methods used to forecast climate change impacts such as temperature trends, extreme weather, sea-level rise, and greenhouse gas emissions. The paper highlights ML’s potential to improve adaptation planning while noting ongoing challenges in data quality, model transparency, and computational demands.

Fairness-Regularized Online Optimization with Switching Costs (AI & Data Centers/Hardware/Models): The authors introduce FairOBD, an algorithm that balances fairness, action smoothness, and performance in online decision-making. By decomposing long-term fairness into online updates, FairOBD reduces total fairness-regularized cost and improves equitable resource allocation compared to existing methods.

AI for Nature: How AI Can Democratize and Scale Action on Nature (AI & Biodiversity): This report from Google and WRI outlines how AI can support ecosystem monitoring, species protection, and habitat restoration at scale. It highlights opportunities for open data access, community-led conservation, and responsible AI deployment to accelerate nature-positive outcomes globally.

AI & Energy in Europe (AI & Energy): Schneider Electric examines how AI is reshaping Europe’s energy sector, from grid optimization and demand forecasting to industrial efficiency. The report emphasizes that scaling AI-driven decarbonization will require digital infrastructure maturity, workforce readiness, and policy support.

Data Crunch: How the AI Boom Threatens to Entrench Fossil Fuels and Compromise Climate Goals (Climate & Energy Policy): The Center for Biological Diversity argues that rapid AI expansion could increase reliance on fossil fuels without strong regulatory intervention. The report calls for energy transparency standards, carbon limits on data center growth, and public accountability mechanisms to align AI with climate goals.

Ocean & Climate Modeling in the Era of AI (AI & Climate Science & Research): This talk explores how AI is beginning to reshape long-term climate simulations by improving representation of processes like cloud formation and ocean mixing. It highlights how AI could overcome computational constraints that currently limit model accuracy and ensemble forecasting.

How AI Can Solve Its Own Energy Crisis (AI & Energy): Varun Sivaram argues that AI and the power grid are headed for an energy bottleneck but AI could also help solve it. He outlines how AI-powered load flexibility and grid optimization could expand clean electricity capacity while reducing costs and sustaining AI growth.

Welcome to the Intelligence Era (AI & Environmental Impact): This session reflects on when AI meaningfully supports “AI for good” outcomes and when it risks causing harm. Drawing on lessons from the Frontier Development Lab, it emphasizes the importance of thoughtful application over blind technological optimism as intelligent systems become ubiquitous.

Dig Energy (AI & Energy): Dig Energy develops advanced drilling systems to make geothermal heating and cooling cost-competitive with fossil fuels. Their technology aims to remove the primary barriers to geothermal adoption, high drilling costs and bulky equipment, to decarbonize the 35% of energy use tied to building heating and cooling.

Ultrascale Digital Infrastructure (AI & Infrastructure): Ultrascale Digital Infrastructure designs high-density, waterless cooling solutions for next-generation data centers. Their systems target >150 kW/rack workloads with 1.03 PUE performance in any climate, supporting both legacy retrofits and new hyperscale deployments.

Coolant Climate (AI & Ecology/Forestry): Coolant Climate uses computer vision and drone imagery to measure forest carbon with LiDAR-level accuracy at dramatically lower cost. Their MRV platform enables precise carbon stock estimation for reforestation and conservation projects, reaching >95% accuracy in field trials.

Evaluate Your Geospatial Models Vibes (AI & Geospatial Analysis):
GeoVibes is an open-source tool for comparing geospatial embeddings models using nearest-neighbor search, supporting AlphaEarth, ViT, Clay, and others. It allows users to quickly assess qualitative “model vibes” and retrieval performance directly from their laptop (FREE!)

Public Participation in Environmental Rulemaking (PPER) (AI & Policy): PPER helps individuals engage in environmental policymaking by providing clear summaries of proposed rules and guiding users in drafting effective public comments. The platform aims to democratize regulatory participation and strengthen civic input in environmental decisions (FREE!)

Accelerating Speed to Power: Expanding Grid Capacity to Win the Artificial Intelligence Race (AI & Energy): Developed by NREL and DOE, the Speed to Power Data Viewer is a free interactive map that supports early-stage data center siting by integrating grid modeling and spatial analysis. It helps organizations identify viable grid locations for scaling AI infrastructure while balancing transmission constraints and energy planning needs (FREE!)

FAS Source Code Policy Sprint (USA / Policy Researchers & Practitioners): The Federation of American Scientists, in partnership with the Kapor Foundation, is seeking proposals that identify specific fairness and accountability harms associated with AI systems and recommend actionable policy solutions at the federal, state, or local level. Contributors develop memos aligned with key pillars such as algorithmic bias, transparency, data rights, and inclusive AI, and receive mentorship, publication support, and an honorarium upon acceptance. Applications are due November 20, 2025.

ClimateCAP MBA Fellowship (Global / MBA Students in Climate Business): This year-long fellowship supports full-time MBA students working at the intersection of climate and business, offering structured learning in the spring, a climate-action project in the summer, and final presentations in the fall. Fellows gain mentorship, community, and industry exposure across climate finance, clean tech commercialization, sustainability leadership, and transition strategy. Applications for the 2026 cohort open November 5, 2025 and close December 3, 2025 at 5:00 PM ET.

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 25th 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. 😆