Google’s chief sustainability officer, Kate Brandt, isn’t simply answerable for the corporate’s emissions discount and environmental conservation agenda — a mission difficult by a deliberate $85 billion funding in synthetic intelligence infrastructure in 2025 alone.
Her group is tasked with dreaming up methods to make use of AI in functions that assist different corporations, cities and people reduce emissions no less than 1 gigaton yearly by 2030.
Brandt not too long ago celebrated her tenth anniversary with Google, which she joined after leaving her place as chief sustainability officer for the federal authorities. She experiences to Ben Gomes, chief technologist for studying and sustainability, a direct reflection of the rising significance of Google’s sustainability group to innovation. Her group doesn’t have specific income targets, however money-making potential is taken into account within the design overview course of.
“We now have been an AI-first firm since 2017, and we’re actually in a second now the place we have to determine how you can develop AI in a daring and accountable method,” Brandt informed me within the newest episode of the Local weather Pioneers interview sequence. “I actually see the work we do on sustainability as being squarely inside that mission.”
One instance of that boldness: An organization coverage, since Might 2020, to not use AI for oil and fuel functions — in distinction to its main rivals in cloud computing providers, Amazon and Microsoft.
“However actually, quite a lot of the work is extra oriented round not the unfavourable display, however the optimistic utility,” Brandt mentioned. “Having issues like our gigaton aspiration permits us to align product areas throughout the corporate — from Google analysis to Google Deep Thoughts cloud and different groups — across the alternative area of utilizing this expertise as a local weather resolution.”
Forerunner: Google Earth
Many functions championed by Google’s sustainability group construct on many years of labor on such extensively used providers as Google Maps and Google Earth, the latter of which was overhauled on the finish of July with a serious AI functionality referred to as AlphaEarth Foundations. The brand new “digital satellite tv for pc” tracks crop well being, deforestation, water sources, new development and different environmental adjustments, by accessing dozens of public information sources together with optical satellite tv for pc photographs, radar and local weather simulations.
Different apps the sustainability group has had a hand in growing or revising are one which helps pilots decrease condensation trails; a fuel-efficient router in Google Maps; the Inexperienced Gentle metropolis visitors optimization useful resource; and a photo voltaic planning instrument that helps builders decide higher websites and contributed to lowering greenhouse fuel emissions by 6 million metric tons in 2024.
“We’re seeing enormous alternatives to drive that sort of optimistic change, and we have to preserve going,” Brandt mentioned. “Moreover, we see AI as a really highly effective instrument relating to local weather resilience and adaptation.” Two high-profile examples are FireSat for wildfire detection and the Google Flood Hub for native riverine flooding.
Dilemma: tame AI infrastructure
Brandt can also be frequently included in high-level discussions about lowering the vitality and water appetites of Google’s information heart infrastructure and investing in lower-carbon vitality sources reminiscent of geothermal and superior nuclear applied sciences.
“I actually orient the dialogue towards the concept that the work is squarely inside the firm’s mission, inside our goal to be daring and accountable in how we deploy AI,” she mentioned. “I believe that basically resonates.”
Her advocacy has paid off in new coaching strategies for AI fashions that velocity the method by 39 % and in huge enhancements in AI chip effectivity. Google’s newest custom-built AI processor, Ironwood, which launched in April, affords double the efficiency per watt of expertise introduced in 2024.
Regardless of these efforts and Google’s huge investments in photo voltaic, wind, geothermal and nuclear energy — 60 offers in 2024 alone — the firm’s greenhouse fuel emissions have elevated by 51 % since its 2019 baseline yr. Nonetheless Google stays dedicated to its “moonshoot” pledge to chop its carbon footprint 50 % by 2030.
“These actually huge challenges that we’ve taken on which have a societal profit to them — the purpose isn’t essentially a check-the-box or a 100% achievement,” Brandt mentioned. “It’s form of inherently meant to be laborious, to drive us to attempt new issues, to seek out uncommon partnerships, to innovate.”
Watch the Kate Brandt interview and take a look at previous Local weather Pioneers episodes.
