AI - Climate Solution Or Energy Problem?
As AI adoption accelerates, its energy and infrastructure demands are growing rapidly, particularly through data centres and electricity systems. This event explores a critical and timely question: whether AI can meaningfully contribute to greenhouse gas reduction and climate solutions, or whether its energy and environmental footprint risks undermining climate and sustainability goals. The discussion is highly relevant to students interested in energy, sustainability, climate policy, technology, entrepreneurship, and sustainable innovation.
David Sandalow is the Inaugural Fellow at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy and Co-Director of the Energy and Environment Concentration at SIPA, where he works at the intersection of energy transition strategy, climate policy, and emerging technologies. He chairs the ICEF Innovation Roadmap Project, leading influential roadmaps on sustainable data centres, AI for climate change mitigation, industrial decarbonisation, direct air capture, and carbon utilisation, most recently the Sustainable Data Centers Roadmap (Oct 2025) and the AI for Climate Change Mitigation Roadmap (2nd ed., Nov 2024). He also hosts the AI, Energy and Climate Podcast. A former senior U.S. government official, Sandalow held leadership roles across the White House, State Department, and U.S. Department of Energy, including Acting Under Secretary and Assistant Secretary for Policy & International Affairs.
Angela Yuan is an MPhil Environmental Policy student at the University of Cambridge with experience across grassroots, national, and international environmental policy and management. She has worked with bipartisan U.S. state legislators at the National Caucus of Environmental Legislators, contributed to work on the Flint Water Crisis and PFAS litigation, served with the U.S. Forest Service, and helped deliver an award-winning U.S. EPA competition project. She also founded a clean water initiative in Kenya. Building on her time as a Schwarzman Scholar, Angela now focuses on mobilising private-sector innovation for sustainability through work with the United Nations and Walmart, and as a co-author of a Google-sponsored data centre policy article and a Japanese government-supported sustainable data centre roadmap.