Working on this newsletter issue ahead of time on the train back home from New York after experiencing my first Green IO! omg, it was an amazing time. Legit, I think this was one of the best conferences that I have ever been to (seriously!). The real superpower is in the community that the founder, Gael Duez, has built over the past 5 years. The best part? I had individuals like Nolween, Dave, and a few others recongize me from LinkedIn as well as The Climate Code! 💗

I also did yap with the greats for a minute or two: Dr. Sasha Luccioni and Boris Gamazaychikov. They ended up splitting off from Hugging Face and Salesforce respectively and starting their own company in the AI and environment space. It appears to be a blend of research, consulting services, and advisory stuff? They kept it vague enough for me to guess about what was what but only time will tell. I wish them luck! 🙂

At this point in time, I haven’t done the half-marathon yet BUT it is on Sunday! I’m writing on the Friday before newsletter release.

Anyway, here are some interesting news articles of the week:

Ciao, 👋

Nate

Data, Power, and Dollars: Financing from the AI Energy Boom (AI & Energy): A special ACORE Finance Forum episode in which host Ed Crooks speaks with bankers, a deal lawyer, a data centre operator, and a head of policy about the ~$800B of combined Big Tech capex driving a revolution in energy finance.

EP143: Demystifying Data Centers with Dan Crosby: Energy, AI, and the Future Workforce (AI & Workforce Development): Kirk Offel sits down with Dan Crosby, founder and CEO of Legend Energy Advisors, to tackle misconceptions around energy use in the data center and AI industries, drawing parallels with prior infrastructure revolutions (railways, electrification, automobiles).

Ep 8: Anne & Jon Berger - When Will AI Write All The (Mission Critical) Software (AI & Workforce Development): A grounded conversation on whether AI-driven software will eliminate traditional coding teams, whether mission-critical systems get rewritten in Rust, and what happens to maintenance and operations.

Mini-JEPA Foundation Model Fleet Enables Agentic Hydrologic Intelligence (AI & Water Resources): Introduces a fleet of five compact 22M-parameter foundation models, each trained on a different sensor modality (optical, SAR, thermal, phenology, topography-soil) and consulted by a routing agent to get different results.

Empowering Students to Engage with Climate Change Action: A Project-Based Module for Artificial Intelligence Literacy and Sustainability Thinking (AI & Climate Science): Adapts the Artificial Intelligence for Social Good (AI4SG) Ideation module, a pitch- and project-based teaching framework, to integrate AI literacy with sustainability education for students addressing complex environmental challenges.

AIMIP Phase 1: Systematic Evaluations of AI Weather and Climate Models (AI & Climate Science): A new intercomparison initiative specifying common experiments and constraints for AI weather and climate models simulating 1979-2024 atmospheric conditions; AI models match physics-based approaches on historical climate but underestimate warming trends and diverge under generalization tests.

Lessons on Energy Security after the Hormuz Crisis: How Accelerating the Clean Energy Transition Builds Resilience Against Future Price Shocks (AI & Energy): Examines the energy security vulnerabilities exposed by the Hormuz closure and argues that the resilience play is accelerating renewables, electrification, cleaner fuels, and efficiency, not expanding fossil fuel infrastructure. Authoring Body: Energy Transitions Commission.

No Bailouts for Big Tech Billionaires: Policies for When the AI Bubble Bursts (AI & Economic Transformation): Lays out the arguments AI companies will likely advance to seek a bailout when the AI bubble bursts and contends that the AI industry is neither strategically important nor systemically risky in the way banks are. Authoring Body: Open Markets Institute.

Economic Contributions of U.S. Data Centers 2023-2024 (AI & Economic Transformation): A 2026 impact study on the U.S. data center sector's economic contributions across 2023 and 2024. Authoring Body: About Data Centers.

Green AI: Making Machine Learning Environmentally Sustainable | Green Software (AI & Digital & Cloud Sustainability): Charles Humble explores the carbon footprint of AI and shares practical tips on how to minimize impact across the different phases of AI development.

Should I Feel Guilty Using AI? (AI & Multiple Applications): A short, accessible take on whether AI tools' large environmental impact is worth it and whether you should feel guilty about using them.

Strait of Hormuz Fallout: Energy Chaos Is Here to Stay (with Axios' Amy Harder) | Rapid Response (AI & Energy): Amy Harder maps the true scale of the Hormuz oil disruption and connects it to the AI data center boom that is rewriting electricity demand, with implications for nuclear and renewables.

GridAstra (AI & Energy): Pioneering a new category of grid software that accelerates the interconnection and sustained operation of new large loads like AI data centers, generation, and storage by intelligently de-congesting the power grid. Location: United States.

PADO AI (AI & Energy): An LG Electronics venture backed by LG NOVA that is redefining energy management for the AI era through orchestration of modern data center operations. Location: United States.

NOX Energy (AI & Energy): A platform connecting electricity markets with manufacturers of energy-efficient assets to balance the grid and unlock new revenue streams. Location: Europe.

DataCenter Footprint: A Digital Common (AI & Sustainability): An open-source tool aligned with ADEME's Datacenters and Cloud Services methodology that estimates the environmental footprint of data centers and hosting services across manufacturing, transport, use, and end-of-life, covering carbon, resource depletion, and particulate matter. Price: FREE.

What Uses More? (AI & Sustainability): A handy tool to compare the environmental footprint of digital tasks. Price: FREE.

AI Model Sustainability Directory (AI & Sustainability): Using the carbon.txt syntax and validator, this directory surfaces sustainability data extracted from over 2,500 Hugging Face AI model cards listed with co2_eq_emissions metadata. Price: FREE.

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. 🙃

Thanks for reading the 41st 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. 😆