According to PwC’s 2025 AI Business Predictions, AI is set to be a key enabler of sustainability, helping businesses address top investor priorities such as reducing carbon emissions, building resilient supply chains, and advancing renewable energy adoption.
With Environmental Management being a key EHS function, there is a lot of talk in the industry about how AI can help protect the environment by minimizing the negative effects of workplace operations and hazards. By predicting safety risks, automating data collection for compliance, and tracking environmental impacts, there is great potential for organizations to adopt greener practices.
However, a thought-provoking question was raised during a recent Verdantix webinar: Does the use of AI drive enough sustainability to balance out the server energy consumed by AI itself?
We took a closer look at that.
AI’s Contribution to Sustainability
AI has the potential to significantly accelerate the achievement of sustainability goals. It enables companies to drive measurable environmental progress by streamlining internal resources, tracking emissions, optimizing supply chains in real-time, enhancing transparency, and simplifying compliance efforts.
For instance, AI-powered tools like satellite imagery or drone monitoring can provide timely updates on carbon offset projects, building trust and reducing the risk of greenwashing. These capabilities make AI a powerful ally in the quest for sustainability.
The Energy Dilemma: AI vs. Server Energy Consumption
While AI offers numerous benefits for sustainability, it also comes with a significant environmental cost due to the high energy consumption of data centres. The International Energy Agency estimates that global electricity demand from data centres could double between 2022 and 2026, driven in part by AI adoption.
We therefore asked ourselves – how much energy does AI consume, and how can EHS professionals utilize it in an optimal manner?
Does AI still use 10 times more energy than Google?
To put things into perspective, we researched how much energy popular AI assistants use. The good news is that the common claim that an individual ChatGPT query requires 10 times more energy than a Google search is outdated.
New AI models, such as GPT-4o, only use about 0.3 watt-hours of electricity, which is roughly the same as a single Google query. For context, 0.3 watt-hours is less than the amount of electricity consumed by an LED lightbulb or a laptop in a few minutes. However, this can vary with the use case—AI queries with long input lengths or longer outputs may be more energy-intensive.
Reducing Energy Consumption with Better Models
To address the energy dilemma, AI companies are taking the first steps to develop strategies that reduce energy use and promote sustainability.
One key action is the development of hardware that consumes less power, such as advanced ‘in-memory’ computing chips. These chips reduce the energy required for data movement, which is a significant factor in AI’s energy consumption.
Additionally, deploying models on resource-constrained devices using methods like quantization, distillation, and client-side caching, along with investing in specialized hardware, enhances performance and sustainability. Shifting AI operations to energy-efficient data centers within cloud computing also helps reduce their overall carbon footprint, making it a more sustainable option for EHS professionals.
Pro-Sapien’s Approach to Help with Sustainability
At Pro-Sapien, we recognize the importance of sustainability and are committed to offering solutions that minimize environmental impact. Our sustainability modules help you optimize energy usage, reduce waste, and enhance environmental compliance.
Our modules track your data without relying solely on AI, leveraging the powerful capabilities of Power BI. However, we have integrated Copilot for quick data interpretation and analysis, providing you with quick, straightforward answers. This approach ensures that our modules consume less energy compared to software providers that depend entirely on AI.
In conclusion, while AI has the potential to drive significant sustainability gains for EHS professionals, it is crucial to consider the environmental cost of the server energy it consumes. By combining traditional software modules and enhancing them with AI, organizations can strike a balance between leveraging AI’s benefits and minimizing its environmental impact.
Discover how you can lower your organization’s carbon footprint now with Pro-Sapien’s environmental modules:
