AI Impacts on Long-term Climate Targets
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Date
05 Nov 2026
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Organiser
Department of Land Surveying and Geospatial Science (LSGS) & Research Institute for Land and Space (RILS)
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Time
16:00 - 17:00
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Venue
Z209 Map
Speaker
Prof. Charlie WILSON
Enquiry
April SO 2766 4350 april.so@polyu.edu.hk
Remarks
Moderator: Prof. Tony Chengxiang ZHUGE, Assistant Professor of LSGS, Member of RILS
Summary
AI is a double-edged sword for climate change. AI impacts range across scales from data centres to the whole economy. In this talk, I survey the evidence on how AI is affecting energy transitions and carbon emissions. I disentangle the hype from the reality, and reveal the optimism bias in AI climate assessments once the spotlight moves beyond a narrow focus on data centres. I also present new research quantifying AI impacts on global emission pathways out to 2050. I show how alignment between AI and climate action is highly consequential for the feasibility and affordability of long-term climate targets.
Keynote Speaker
Prof. Charlie WILSON
Professor of Energy and Climate Change
Environmental Change Institute (ECI)
University of Oxford
Charlie is a Professor of Energy and Climate Change in the Environmental Change Institute (ECI) at the University of Oxford, and a Senior Research Scholar at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Austria. He is also currently a visiting professor at Tokyo College and the Institute for Future Initiatives (IFI) at the University of Tokyo. Charlie works on the drivers and dynamics of energy transitions, both historically and into the future using scenarios and modelling. He has a particular interest in digitalisation, AI, and its implications for climate.
