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Artificial & going green: 4 tips for using AI for environmental goals

Sept. 7, 2021

Organizations are adopting technologies to help them realize initiatives that increase revenue and decrease their operations’ carbon impacts.

Beyond Limits' AJ Abdallat

Market appetite for environmental, social and governance (ESG) asset investments, alongside overall greener product initiatives and undertakings, is on the rise. Energy is a great example of a major industry setting significant sustainability targets, with a growing number of companies addressing questions around their roles within today’s climate narrative. As a result, organizations are investing large when it comes to the development and adoption of technologies designed to help them realize initiatives that simultaneously increase revenue and decrease their operations’ carbon impacts.

Top 4 tips for companies kicking off AI initiatives for green goals

Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies are expected to make significant impressions on a large portion of companies with targets for net-zero emissions by 2050. In order to accomplish this objective, energy organizations must take a holistic look at their business goals and develop AI strategies based on data-driven decision-making, as opposed to primarily legacy-based approaches.

The impact AI solutions can have, in terms of optimizing an organization’s operations, improves significantly when deployed at scale across a business, instead of in silos with individual innovation projects. In this instance, the goal would be to tailor bespoke systems for particular use cases. Additional considerations energy companies should take into account when it comes to AI adoption and implementation include:

+ Understanding available digital tools and AI partners. Currently, the pool of companies providing AI is vast. Unlocking ROI from digitalization tools is partially dependent upon discovering an optimal combination of ingredients, such as consulting with AI companies that understand all the complexities of the industry’s day-to-day challenges.

Selecting enterprise-grade AI companies building proven hybrid software that facilitate access to domain experts, alongside digital-transformation roadmaps, ensures the implementations of today are meaningful and informative, thus enabling the technological advantages contributing to the decarbonization strategies of tomorrow.

+ Investing in hybrid AI, as opposed to purely conventional approaches. The energy industry is complex with rich historical knowledge; approaches that only use machine-learning techniques are constrained by data-centric problems and cannot support all the challenges faced in this current era of digital transformation.

Investing in hybrid AI can bring together all necessary resources to provide modern solutions. AI that’s explainable with the ability to codify expert domain knowledge is essential for encouraging adoption among small and medium enterprises (SME) looking for transparent recommendations on how to optimize operations in ways that will foster a competitive edge while reducing emissions and waste.

+ Providing digital infrastructure for testing, validating and deploying models to serve as a playing field that harnesses internal innovations while adopting industry-wide data standards/definitions, enabling AI to be scaled across the industry with better quality and control of both data and knowledge management. 

Moreover, it is vital to promote a digital stance by diving into innovative technology while including personnel at every level. Building on human abilities while defining an AI outlook at inception are imperative factors. Including every stakeholder with a well-defined outlook on success will stimulate implementation.

+ Creating intentional data security and policy constructed around enabling digital transformation built on the richness of data. Companies built to leverage their valuable data, with the intent to make it as secure as possible, will be more apt to implement and adopt new technological advancements at a faster pace and iterate more frequently. This results in the ability to reap benefits when it comes to reducing waste and delivering on net-zero benchmarks while clinching profit margins in competitive markets.

A fresh vision for energy

When it comes to energy innovation, artificial-intelligence solutions are leading the pack as organizations chart out their digital-transformation blueprints. Acceptance and execution shouldn’t scare away any company; there are those that will dive in headfirst and reap the rewards.

Energy companies are eager and expected to evolve in this ever-changing world filled with an unyielding supply of competition and climate challenges. Partnering with an enterprise-grade AI company that can help organizations check off all the aforementioned boxes—setting them up with the steps for successful adoption and implementation—will put them on the path to progress.

AJ Abdallat is CEO with Beyond Limits