JOSEPH ALENCHERY
AI IN SUSTAINABILITY
JOSEPH ALENCHERY
TITLE: SVP AND BUSINESS HEAD, ENERGY NEXT
COMPANY: INFOSYS
INDUSTRY: IT SERVICES AND CONSULTING
At Infosys, Joseph leads a team of business managers with a focus on building new business relationships and on developing strategic partnerships in the energy sector.
balancing with demand. AI can help to forecast electricity supply from renewables and match it to demand alongside managing distributed energy resources like EVs and batteries.
The study cites that Google DeepMind’ s AI increased wind energy’ s ergonomic value by 20 % through reducing the need for standby backup power. Optimising operations can also help to increase the load factor of wind and solar power plants, the study says. This means more clean energy is generated from the same assets with lower emissions per unit of energy generated.
How much energy do data centres really consume? Despite this decarbonisation potential, AI has an environmental impact of its own. Data centres are the backbone of AI, where models are trained and run. These tasks can require significant amounts of energy both to power the data centres and cool them. The International Energy Agency estimates data centres currently account for about 1.5 % of global energy usage. As AI adoption expands, so does the demand for data centre capacity and, consequently, electricity.
Joseph explains:“ While this might sound modest, it’ s important to recognise that this figure is growing rapidly, with the exponential growth of data and increasing reliance on digital services, the demand on data centres, from hyperscalers to edge computing nodes, is scaling up at an unprecedented rate. Much of this energy is consumed not just in computing, but in cooling.”
sustainabilitymag. com 111